me writing this chapter: aw nuts this is gonna be a short one probably :(

this chapter: sike i'm 5k

me: I MEAN. I GUESS?

have fun everyone thank you so much for sticking with this project of mine! i can't overstate how much i value hearing from you, it makes my day. enjoy!

(title from light's song 'new fears' this chapter.)


Whoever decided to put bulletproof glass in this lab is currently at the top of Mac's personal shit-list. They just barely beat out the woman who had taken that lab hostage in order to obtain several highly volatile compounds for use in the creation of a dirty bomb - the second group hellbent on a dirty bomb that they've dealt with this year, and Mac does not at all enjoy that statistic. Though, depending on how long this standoff lasts, with a civilian scientist hiding behind a desk, Mac with his gun drawn, and the hostage taker pointing a gun right back at him, the ranking of 'who is ruining my day the most at this particular moment' could easily change.

For now, it's still the designer who'd made the sliding doors – locked and sealed – out of glass that withstood Jack's attempt to break it with first the hardened piece of steel at the end of his closed knife and then with a well-aimed bullet. Because that's why Mac is currently stuck entirely in charge of dealing with this situation, one that is really better suited to Jack's particular skillset. Standing down an armed hostage taker who seems to be devolving by the minute is not Mac's niche in this partnership. His first shot had missed when Reed, their bad guy du jour, dodged to the side to slam the button that sealed them off just as Jack had rounded the corner to intervene.

Mac can still feel it, the moment he'd squeezed the trigger just that hair's breadth hard enough and the weapon had fired. It buzzes under his index finger, poised and ready to do it again as soon as he figures out an angle that won't risk the scientist in the corner, who sits solidly in Reed's sights. It's a bad feeling. Mac can't remember the last time he'd had to actually shoot his gun on a mission – usually, he does everything possible to circumvent that eventuality, and especially since Jack was hired, he really hasn't needed to even consider it. Not with someone else a step behind him, sights up at all times.

Not this time, though. This time, that one step behind him had been one step too many, and now he's locked in a bulletproof room with a hostage and a woman who'd decided the best way to make her point was with a dirty bomb in a densely populated city. And things were going bad fast. Mac needs to act, and he needs to act now, but he just can't bring himself to pull the trigger for a second time. Not with the first still humming in his palm and Dr. Monique Robbins hiding behind her desk, square in Reed's line of fire.

There's something about Reed, also, that's giving him pause. Maybe it's the adrenaline of the whole situation, surely coursing through her just as strongly as it's hitting him, but there's something off about the way she aims the gun. First and foremost, is the fact that she hasn't fired it yet. There had been a split second when the door sealed shut and Jack's shouting was reduced to muffled background noise, when Mac's attention had been elsewhere. Just a split second, and then he'd turned back, but it was long enough that any semi-trained killer would've taken the opening. Which means that, for whatever reason, Reed is not a shoot first ask questions later type of hostage taker. This is just fine with Mac, because it leaves him with options.

He knows what James would tell him to do. He can hear it as clearly as if the man were standing right next to him, iron grip on his shoulder pinching poorly healed nerves from the incident in Stockholm he'd just told Jack about not two weeks ago, hissing in his ear.

Do it. Take the shot. Pull the fucking trigger, Angus, what are you waiting for? You've been taught better than this.

But, as he'd done that day in Minnesota in the snow when he knew he should've run for the truck, as he's been doing more and more these days, Mac doesn't obey. He hears the echo of James in his ear, and he tells it no. There's another way. This isn't how I do things.

"Reed," he calls out. The woman's gaze flicks from Dr. Robbins and then back. She still doesn't fire, and the end of her pistol wavers, traces a small pattern in the air. Barely, but it happens, and so Mac pushes harder, tries again. "Josephine Reed. That's your first name, right? Is it Josephine or Jo?"

For a long moment it doesn't look like it's going to work. Reed's grip tightens, the fraction of a movement noticeable in the way Mac's vision seems to have gone high-def, picking up even the smallest hint of a change in their narrowed, sealed environment. Time has slowed to a crawl. Green eyes flash over to him again, and then, the answer.

"Jo," she says, too loud, voice grated out through a sandpaper throat. "It's Jo."

Progress. It's progress. It might not seem like much but every time he can get her talking, he's going to get more information, and if he wants to get everybody out of this alive, he needs all the information he can get. Aside from the very obvious motive of 'I would really, really like to not shoot someone today', Mac also knows they need Reed alive for more than just his own reasons. If they lose her, they lose their best window of insight into her organization, and their best shot at intercepting their plan B, should they have one.

That answer didn't really give him much, but the way she said it did, the uncontrolled pitch and volume of her voice when she spoke. This isn't some ice-cold assassin, no military-trained sharpshooter or radicalized grassroots militia member. This isn't someone who is comfortable or familiar with killing, and Mac sees an opening. He keeps his gun up, trying to ignore the way it feels alive and angry in his hands, but loosens his grip on the trigger.

"I'm Mac," he says, wrestling his nerves under control to keep his voice steady and calm. "You used to work here, right? As a security guard? Did you know Dr. Robbins?" Reed's gun wavers again, and he knows he's on the right track. Mac has hit on something important.

Oddly, what's running through his mind right now is a training session they'd done with Riley last week. Jack had been walking her through the basics of negotiation, the very simplest overview of how to talk people down and diffuse impossible situations.

They'd even gotten to a few scenario run-throughs, with Mac at one point agreeing to play a civilian hostage to give her something of a sense of what that kind of situation was like in real time. He can still feel Jack's arm, heavy over his shoulder and across the front of his chest holding him close in a human shield, the press of Jack's fingers at the side of his head in an imitation weapon. It should've felt intolerably unsafe, it should've triggered some innate fight or flight, sent Mac's elbow back into Jack's solar plexus allowing him to break free before he'd remembered where he was and what he was doing.

That hadn't been what happened. Instead, Mac had held very still, trying hard to blink back a highly unanticipated stinging in his eyes and fiercely ignoring that this was the closest he'd ever gotten to hugging Jack. Ignoring even harder that, paradoxically, it's just about the safest he's ever felt.

Out of all of what had happened during that afternoon, there's one piece of Jack's advice to Riley that Mac is focusing on at the moment. He can hear it as if Jack is speaking to him now, standing next to him rather than trapped twenty feet away by that godforsaken sealed glass door.

There are different types of people, and they naturally make different types of threats, Jack had said. There are going to be exceptions, obviously, there always are, but generally, the way a person poses a threat says a lot about them. A sniper isn't likely to stab you. A hacker isn't likely to pick up a gun.

A bomber isn't likely to be extremely comfortable with killing someone up-close. Bombing, especially bombing meant to send some kind of big message, is a distant, detached way to end a life. Sure they can watch, but by necessity from a distance, and there is something far more personal about looking a person in their eyes from less than a room's length away as you end their life. And everything he's seeing right now in Reed is telling him they're dealing with a bomber through and through, someone with a message who believed the ends outweighed the means, but was struggling with the idea of getting blood on her hands directly.

It reminds him of Owen Holte, who had pulled the plug on his father's weapons smuggling when the risk to the public grew too great, too direct.

"Did you know Monique when you worked here?" he repeats, through the question forcing Reed to acknowledge the person on the other end of her gun as that – a person. He'd told her his name, and now used Dr. Robbins' first name, personalizing them both as much as possible.

"No. I don't know her," Reed finally answers, and Mac curses internally. That would've been a decent point of leverage to play off her humanity. But just as he's thinking this, another voice joins the dialogue. Dr. Robbins herself speaks up, still hiding behind her desk, hands over her head.

"I remember you," the scientist says with a small, thready voice. "I mean, not directly, but-" Dr. Robbins chokes and stops, clearing her throat before going on. Mac can't see any part of her from his angle aside from the toe of one purple sneaker and the ends of a few of her braids, decorated with colorful beads. The braids waver and then still again as she continues, "The day security guy, Tom. He was sad when you left, said you brought him coffee on shift change. He said you were a good coworker."

It's a display of unbelievable bravery, that this civilian research chemist has even a fraction of the composure and wherewithal to speak directly to the person pointing a gun at her. And it works. What she says seems to shake Reed even further, the gun bobbing up and down as she lowers it slightly then raises it back up again. Out of the corner of his eye, Mac catches sight of Jack, outside in the hallway, his own weapon out but lowered by his hip, ready just in case but, practically speaking, useless. He tries to put something reassuring into his expression, communicate to Jack through the glass that he has this under control.

"I know you're angry. You've got a message, and this is how you've decided to spread it." By killing at minimum hundreds of people, probably several thousand, and sending shockwaves through the international world. But Mac can't let how he feels about this show on his face. Not when he's trying to at least make it seem like he empathizes with her. "There are a lot of people out there who agree with you, too. Now I could stand here all day long and tell you that this bomb isn't the way to send your message, but I know there's no point in that. You wouldn't have gotten this far if you could just be talked out of it."

"You're damn right I won't be talked out of it," Reed says, and Mac's nerves jangle loudly, like he's just made a huge mistake. She seems more resolved now, less thrown, and that could either be a very good or a very bad thing.

"Then you've also got to understand that the road ends here," he tells her, banking on this being true. "There's no way this ends with you walking out of here with what you need for your bomb. Even if you manage to shoot both of us, there's only one way out of this lab, and my partner is on the other end of it. You wouldn't have a snowball's chance in hell- a snowflake's chance in hell of making it past him. The only way you walk out of this at all, and any part of your message makes it out, is if you put the gun down."

A bead of sweat trickles down the back of Mac's neck, and the tension in his body sends an ache pulsing through his scar. He's taken a massive gamble here and if it backfires, the consequences will be massive. The room is still and silent and the air feels like it's getting heavier by the moment. Reed doesn't move, except for her eyes, which dart across to the door to look at Jack, then return to Dr. Robbins, jittery and fast. Then something catches her attention, something on Dr. Robbins's desk.

Slowly, while Mac's heart beats so hard in his chest he can almost hear it, Reed's finger slips off the trigger, and the gun goes down. Inch by inch, the gun goes down.

The wave of relief in Mac is so strong it almost takes him to his knees right there. He feels somehow even closer to the verge of panic now than he did when he'd pulled shot at Reed, than the entirety of the negotiation. Her gun hits the table and Mac shuts down, focuses entirely on getting through the next minutes, the next seconds. As soon as Reed's hand is off the gun he moves, snatching it and sticking it into his own waistband, then lurching over to slam the button that unlocked and opened the door with a gentle hiss of air.

Jack takes over from there, taking custody of Reed and securing her hands behind her back with zip-cuffs. Mac walks over to Dr. Robbins, helping her to her feet. She's saying something to him, some expression of terrified gratitude, but Mac can't quite hear her over the ringing in his ears. He finds his eyes inexplicably drawn to the same place Reed had been looking when she finally gave up, and that's when he sees it. The framed picture on the desk, of Dr Robbins, another woman, and a little girl with the same beaded box braids as the doctor wears. The implication is immediate and obvious, and Mac almost goes down for a second time, white-knuckle clutching at the edge of the desk.

So much didn't happen here today. So much could have happened here today, and he feels it as surely as he'd feel the whistle of air as a bullet passed so closely to his head that it grazed his hair.

The next hour passes in a blur that Mac barely registers, until he's sitting in the backseat of a car taking them towards their exfil location. A touch on his hand gets his attention, and he looks over as Riley presses her palm against his, lacing their fingers together. He responds in kind, hanging onto her so tight he's almost worried he's going to hurt her. She increases her own grip in response, and Mac feels a lump rise suddenly in his throat.

Closing his eyes, Mac tries to focus on Riley's hand, to put thoughts of guns and bombs and Jo Reed and the picture of Dr. Robbins's smiling, round-cheeked daughter out of his head.


From outside the lab, Jack hadn't been able to make out any of the words being spoken inside it. If he'd focused, he'd likely have been able to lipread at least Mac's half of the conversation, but that kind of attention to detail was nowhere near justified for the sake of understanding the words exchanged. Not when there were so many other factors in the air.

It's one of the most frustrating and anxiety-inducing situations he's been in since starting this job, being trapped outside while a situation unfolded involving two guns, Mac, and a random scientist. In the allocation of duties between their partnership, this kind of thing belonged squarely in his court, and to not even be able to help is anathema to his very existence.

When Mac somehow, somehow talks their bomber down and opens the door, Jack is so proud he could have yelled it through a megaphone if one had made itself available. That's my boy, he'd thought triumphantly, and then staunchly refused to interrogate the phrasing of that thought. He said what he said, and he meant it. Well. He thought what he thought, and- the intent is clear anyway.

Mac himself is markedly less excited. In fact, he barely says a word all the way back to Los Angeles. Jack sees in the rearview mirror in the car that he and Riley are holding hands, clinging to each other with a degree of desperation that gives him pause. There's no good moment to check in on him, not in the car, not on the flight home, and once they arrive, Jack quickly loses track of him. One moment they're deplaning, the next he's standing in the hall at DXS with absolutely no idea where his partner's disappeared to.

Having already sent Riley off home with a promise that he'll check on Mac and give her an update later, Jack wanders around the building. He finds no trace of Mac down any hallway or in any conference room, and a thought springs into his head as he walks past the hall of Directors that if he finds Mac and James has him backed into some corner, shouting at him for whatever reason he's pulled out of his ass today, Jack is not going to be responsible for what he does. He's still daydreaming about exactly how good it would feel to sock his boss in the jaw when his distracted wander almost sends him straight into Matty.

"Head in the clouds, Dalton?" she asks dryly with one of those almost-smirks that he knows means she's not actually irritated with him.

"Something like that." Ordinarily, he would rise to the bait and they'd go a couple rounds, but right now he's got a different priority. "Have you seen Mac? I've been looking for him everywhere, it was kind of a rough one. He was- he was incredible, Matty, but I have no idea where he's gone off to and he was weird the whole way home."

Matty thinks about it for a moment then shakes her head, shrugging. "No, sorry. Try Research, he's usually down there when I can't track him down."

Well, duh. Of course. "Thanks," he calls over his shoulder, already halfway back down the hall by the time his manners catch up to him.

The trip down to Research and Development is the same length it's always been, but for some reason, it feels like it takes way longer. Probably just the nerves skittering up and down his spine, making every moment drag out twice as long as it normally would feel. Jack taps his foot impatiently as the elevator takes him down into the levels of the building below the ground, and he can almost feel the air cool by degrees as he goes. Finally, a soft ping alerts him that he's reached R&D, and he heads down the hallway to a room he's grown quite familiar with.

When he gets there and pokes his head in, two other heads swivel over to look at him, a conversation stopping dead in its tracks. Bonnie Whittacker and Peter Tam both stare at him expectantly, with the same irreverent boredom they always regard him with. Mac obviously being something of an outlier, Jack has always got the feeling that Whittacker and Tam don't hold much regard for field agents. Given the general attitude he's seen from some of them, Jack can't exactly say he blames them.

"Either of you two seen Mac today?" he asks, getting straight to the point. Tam looks at Whittacker who shrugs.

"Ran into him in the hall upstairs a bit ago," she tells him. As she continues, the boredom on her face turns into outright dislike, the reason becoming evident when she elaborates. "He was on the way to the range. The Director has him recertifying. Probably gonna be there a while." Bonnie Whittacker does not care for Director MacGyver, and is a little less subtle about it than most of DXS.

"Thanks," Jack says distractedly, thumping the doorframe with his fist and turning right back out of the room. He, Whittacker, and Tam have an understanding of sorts between them, warming their relationship from frosty to neutral, and it's not one that includes many pleasantries. They have exactly one thing in common, and that is Mac. While that's enough to prompt greetings in hallways, they're never going to be exactly friends.

Mac is, exactly as Whittacker had advised, in the range. This confirmation stirs the pit of unease in Jack's gut, and he hesitates a little before opening the door and walking in. It takes his eyes a moment to adjust from the bright hallway to the dimmer lighting in the small range, and as he waits, he snags a set of ear and eye protectors from the rack near the door. Settling the large headset over his ears and blinking through the well-kept plastic of the glasses, Jack takes stock of his surroundings.

The lanes themselves are well lit but the rest of the range is somewhat shadowed, a blueish hue to everything. Only one lane is currently in use, and he's grown very familiar with the blond hair scruffed into slight disarray by earmuffs, facing away from him in lane three. Mac is looking straight downrange, handgun held up in near-perfect form, firing repeatedly at a target Jack can't see from this vantage point.

It's something Jack just can't get used to, seeing Mac shoot. He's seen the kid draw his weapon on a mission so rarely that it always looks like absurd play-acting when it happens, and before today, there's never been a reason for him to actually fire. Simply put, Mac does not like guns. He barely looks like himself now, at least the part of him Jack can see, a sliver of a profile with a deadened expression, squeezing the trigger over and over.

Recertifying. The list of things Jack would like to have a word with James about gets longer every day.

After not two more minutes, Mac must reach the end of the set, because he discharges the now empty clip, makes sure there isn't anything left in the chamber, and sets the gun down on the ledge in front of him. He reaches up and presses the small yellow button next to him as he pulls his ear protectors down around his neck. The target makes a mechanic whirring sound as it slides up the range towards him, and without turning his head, Mac speaks over it.

"Did you need something, Jack?"

Jack doesn't bother to ask how Mac knew it was him, instead ambling over and leaning against the lane divider next to him. The target has reached the ledge by that point, and he glances over at it, appraising the grouping. It's good. It's not amazing, but it's decently skilled shooting. Mac isn't a bad shot, in fact he's quite a good one, but you wouldn't know it from the way the kid is frowning at the paper, at the featureless outline of the man printed on it, a dozen holes blown through its chest.

"Just lookin' for you," Jack says, turning away from the target and towards Mac himself. "Seems to me, you just went through this whole dog and pony show last week. I thought he only made you recertify once a month." The fact that nobody else that Jack has heard of is put through the same insulting ordeal goes unmentioned. He doesn't get the feeling it would be entirely helpful to point out.

Mac looks at him for a second, then away again. He holsters his gun and takes down the target, folding it up, all without saying a word. It feels like a very long time before he says anything in response, and Jack's chest feels tight.

"He says I can't be trusted to use my instincts," Mac says eventually, sounding exhausted and far, far older than twenty-four. There's no mention of who 'he' is and there doesn't need to be. They both know. "So he's making me recertify in the hopes that next time, I'll remember."

"That's such bullshit." Jack can't help it. He's not gonna let that one fly by unquestioned. No way, no how. "Everything you did today was pure instinct, and it was great work." When Mac snorts quietly and looks down, smiling faintly, Jack doubles down. "I'm serious. The bomb never got made, and everybody in that room walked out without a scratch. Do you know how amazing that was? You made a call and it was the right one. Nothing untrustworthy about that."

Still looking down, Mac nods, but doesn't respond verbally. Jack doesn't make him, content to stay leaning there with his arms folded, giving Mac the space to sort through whatever is going on his head. The gears are turning visibly, and what's coming next feels important. Eventually, the smile faded completely away, one hand hovering without thought over the hip where the gun now rests, Mac starts talking.

"I can still feel it."

"Feel what?" Jack asks. He keeps his voice quiet and gentle. This has been happening more often, moments where Mac will say something unprompted and honest, and the last thing Jack wants to do is spook him into stopping.

"The moment I fired. I can feel the trigger under my finger, the weight of it in my hand." That hand flexes, careful inventor's fingers splaying out and curling back in again, shaking just the slightest bit. "It's like I burned myself or something. I can't get it off." Another long moment of silence elapses between them and then, in a rather startling move, Mac actually looks Jack directly in the eye. His voice gets stronger, a fraction louder, as he says, "I hate it. I hate that thing. It feels like I'm carrying death around strapped to my leg, and I just… I hate it."

"So stop." It sounds so simple when Jack says it out loud, the suggestion he's been building to for some time now. There just hasn't been a good moment to bring it up, and he's been trying to put it together in his head first, a way to justify it.

"What?" Now Mac's hand has gone still, hanging loose and limp at his side. He looks almost amused.

"Stop carrying," Jack clarifies, and now that he's said it, he's sure it's the right decision. "Look, okay, I've been thinking about this. Honestly, there's no reason for you to be carrying if it's not a tool you're going to use. I'm not saying you should, just that if you're not going to, it's just going to get in your way and confuse things when you have to make a call. You can make a weapon out of just about anything, you just showed today that you can connect with people better than you can make the call to take them out, and I mean. You've got me."

There are not a lot of moments in which Jack gets to revel in the feeling of having stunned Mac speechless. This is one of them. Mac just stands there, mouth slightly open like he'd been about to say something but lost the words themselves, squinting at him. Jack shrugs, letting the concept just sink in for a while. After what had to have been a full forty-five empty seconds, Mac shakes his head once, rapidly.

"I can't just…" He shakes his head again, brow furrowed. "The Director would never okay that."

"We won't tell him."

"He'd make it into a huge deal when he found out."

"We won't let him."

Jack is sure Mac is about to interrogate the hell out of that claim, completely dismiss offhand the idea that they could let or not let the Director do anything but, surprisingly, he doesn't. He closes his mouth and tilts his head to the side, studying Jack hard. Something in Jack's lungs feels light and effervescent. Carbonated, like champagne, as he waits for it.

"Okay," Mac finally says. He's got an odd look on his face, but it isn't a bad one. If Jack had to guess, he'd say there was a similar feeling happening on Mac's end. It's the dazzling, breathtaking question – could we really get away with this? "Okay."

It doesn't feel as if it's actually been done until they're called out on their next mission and they're approaching the building together. As he pulls on the door to open it for the both of them, Mac pauses for a moment before going inside. Without a word, he lifts the side of his coat, to show Jack the place his holster used to be. The place it isn't any more.

Mac isn't carrying.

Jack grins at him and grabs his shoulder, spinning him around and pushing him into the building first, following it up with an affectionate ruffle of Mac's hair, earning a squawk of indignant protest. Progress feels damn good.