so this... took a while. i forgot i had another chapter i'd put up on ao3 but not here. in my defense [waves at the world in general], and i also just got through finals and taking the law school admittance test so. finally got my groove back though so 41 should be coming before too much longer!

chapter warning: fairly descriptive section at the top of mac's shooting in sweden.


The ground under Mac's head is hard and cold. Water seeps through his hair and the sky above him is too bright, like Bozer is editing this scene and has turned the saturation levels up way too high. Mac is lying prone on the pavement, shivering in a way that has nothing to do with the cold and everything to do with the blood. It pulses through his fingers, clasped desperately over the side of his neck, in time to the beating of his fading heart, and he knows he's dying.

That's always the worst part. He always knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he's dying. That his life is going to end in this alley and no one is there to even try to do something about it. Except… Mac knows that someone should be. Someone should be here, he knows someone is supposed to be here. He can't see them, can't even move his neck enough to look around, but somehow he knows without having to that he's alone.

Eyes darting back and forth, all Mac can see is sky and brick walls rising on either side of him. He's bleeding and gasping and dying, there's a bullet mushroomed into the wall behind him where it landed after it tore through his body, and he's alone.

What feels like hours pass and then he blinks and Mac is in the hospital. He's in a hospital room with monitors beeping next to his shoulders, still unable to move. The side of his neck throbs with a dangerous, delicately pieced together ache and Mac is too scared to try to move. If he rips his stitches he'll bleed out, like he almost did in the alley, and just like in the alley there's someone who's supposed to be here.

There's no one. Mac is alone and he doesn't have any stitches, he feels like he's burning and freezing at the same time. Monitors keep beeping and no one comes in to check on him or explain, nobody there to answer his questions, tell him if he's here for a gunshot or heatstroke or what year it is.

Mac's gaze drifts down and he sees that the cooling blankets that have been laid over him are starting to stain. The pale blue fabric, reminding him of the color of the baby blankets he's seen in hospital nurseries on TV, has a violent red patch, starting high by his right shoulder. It spreads as he watches and Mac knows what it is, but he can't move his hands. They're pinned down by his sides by the frigid, heavy coverings and he needs to move them, to try and stop the blood because he must have ripped his stitches and now he's bleeding out, he's going to bleed out if he doesn't-

When he wakes, it's with one hand flying up to grab at the side of his own neck and shoulder so frantically he accidentally scratches one fingernail over the underside of his chin, choking on air. Mac's eyes are open wide and his breathing is coming in shallow, uneven pants. For several long moments he lays there, still, clasping the scarred over remnant of what had once been a near-fatal injury, and tries to breathe through the panic.

There's no blood. Mac is not bleeding. The stitches are long gone. He's in California and he doesn't have heatstroke. And, Mac notices, when he finally manages to focus on those facts long enough to convince his still half-conscious brain to believe him, he isn't alone. Someone else is there with him, a vague shape he'd barely noticed when he'd first opened his eyes down close by his left shoulder.

As he looks over, Jack smiles at him, a little strained but genuine, and the hand braced on the cushion next to him shifts, reaching out and settling against his chest. For a moment, Mac expects it to hurt. His eyes shut tight again and he braces for… something, he doesn't know what. All he knows is that waking had brought with it a rush of pain, gripping his entire body but focused on his torso, and that's a precarious reality to live in when someone reaches out to touch your prone form.

But the hand doesn't grasp, or push, or otherwise disturb the bruises inked into Mac's skin under the button-up shirt he'd fallen asleep in last night. Jack doesn't try to pull Mac's own hand away from his neck, either, just settles his palm on Mac's chest, high and to the right, away from where the worst of the damage is concentrated. It rests there, pressing just slightly, thumb moving over his collarbone in rhythmic, gentle strokes.

In increments, Mac relaxes back into the couch, and the hand stays.

This is not the first time Mac has woken up like this. You'd think he'd be developing some kind of bad association with Jack's couch, this being the second time he's been jolted out of bad dreams there, waking into disoriented pain left behind by the previous day's violence. Except it isn't just the nightmares or the pain that's characterized both times Mac has fallen asleep and then woken on this couch. It's the warmth from the sunlight streaming down over him like a second blanket. It's the faint, distant sound of LA ninety-five point five playing on the radio in the kitchen. It's Jack, his voice and his hands, catching him and holding him when he's dumped abruptly into frightened consciousness.

It hadn't been a fluke, Mac finds himself musing. His eyes squeeze tight closed and he breathes deep and even, concentrating on the sun on his face, the press of Jack's palm on his chest. Calming. Settling. Thinking about patterns.

Waking up that day after his shoulder dislocation, here on this same couch, the way it had felt. The light and the warmth and the promise that someone would care for him… It wasn't a fluke. Once could be an accident. Twice is enough for a pattern. James has taught Mac over and over again - there are no coincidences.

The thought of James is enough to make him shudder, eyes snapping back open and searching for Jack, but still the hand stays, soothes him through it without asking what thought had prompted such a reaction. For someone who talks as much as Jack does, he sure seems to also have a strange ability to keep quiet when he chooses to. The silence sits softly, like a blanket rather than a slab of concrete to suffocate him with, and Mac can barely handle it. He has to look away from Jack, unable to keep making eye contact with him, not as the previous night crashes back down. Not when Jack is just kneeling there, next to the couch, saying nothing and maintaining that gentle, grounding pressure.

Jack doesn't try to make Mac look at him either. There's no irritated snap about disrespect, no click of fingers in front of his face, no lecture about paying attention to people when they're talking to you-

He's not talking, Mac reminds himself. Jack isn't talking, never mind demanding anything from him at all, and what's more, he isn't James. This isn't James. It's Jack. Mac is in Jack's apartment, on Jack's living room couch, with the light from the wide, high-set windows warming his face. Everything is calm and quiet and still. It's safe. He's safe.

After a while, Jack asks, without the scarcest suggestion of impatience or rush, "You with me, kid?"

Forced to go slow by the guiding hand on his chest and Jack's mutter of, "Careful, there," Mac sits up. Even when he's upright Jack doesn't let him go completely, his hand coming up away from Mac's chest to cup over his shoulder, right at the side of his neck. His palm is now pressed right over the scar Mac had grabbed for the moment he woke up, and Mac can feel his own pulse against Jack's thumb.

What follows mirrors that last day too, the bottle of pills Jack leaves on the coffee table when he finally leaves to get breakfast started. They're over the counter painkillers this time, rather than the prescription Mac had been sent home with after dislocating his shoulder, and there's an actual glass of water set next to them. Mac reaches for them absently, wincing when it stretches his re-injured shoulder, snagging the bottle and shaking a few out, tossing them back with a swig of water.

Wandering into the kitchen, Mac has a strong sense of deja vu. He's moving stiffly and slowly just like last time, though it's his ribs he's guarding with an arm, and even his shoulder is throbbing again despite the lack of a bulky brace to move around. Jack's standing at the stove just where Mac has found him after the disastrous exfil, though he isn't making hot cereal. There are a few bagels sliced on the counter next to the stove, and Mac can't figure out what he's going to do with them.

Instead of heading to sit at the table, he diverts towards the stove, peering at what he's doing to try and figure it out. Jack doesn't try to make him sit down, though he looks over with an appraising sweep of his eyes, up and down like he's trying to evaluate whether he should let this continue. Evidently, he's concluded that Mac isn't going to topple over at any moment, so he turns back to what he's doing. What Jack is doing is frying eggs, laying slices of cheese over the tops of them when they're sufficiently cooked, leaving the cheese to melt when he switches his focus to strips of bacon.

Fascinated, Mac watches him crosshatch bacon over half a bagel, putting what are turning into sandwiches together like puzzles. Bagel sandwiches, the meal he'd made the day after Bozer found out the truth, the hot cereal when Mac couldn't handle anything heavier.

"So, you're something of a cook then, huh?"

The laugh crinkles the corners of Jack's eyes and he shakes his head. "No, not really. Just breakfasts. When we were kids, as soon as we got old enough to be trusted with knives and stoves with some supervision, me and my sisters each got a meal that we'd help with during school breaks. Laurie had dinner and Debbie got lunch and mine was breakfast - I was the only one who could consistently get up early enough. Kinda picked up a bunch of stuff doing that, so it's my one skill, cooking wise. It's all my momma, in the end."

It stings a little to hear about Jack's family like this, when Mac can almost picture it. Some big cliched Texas farmhouse, the kind he imagines Jack grew up in, the woman in the picture on Jack's mantle guiding a spatula with her hand wrapped over the small one of a young boy. Two girls, one older than the boy and one younger, running down the stairs, a man from another room calling, "Don't you run on those stairs, Lauren, Deborah, you'll fall and break a hip." At the same time that it stings, though, Mac likes thinking about it. That bright, busy, happy house.

"Sorry," Jack says when the story stops, abruptly in the middle of detailing how one morning Debbie, the youngest of the three Dalton siblings, had tried to help him start before their mother got up. He must have noticed the odd expression on Mac's face, as his own has gone apologetic. Remorseful. "Didn't mean to rub it in."

"No, it's okay. I like hearing about your family." Shrugging, Mac looks down at the tiled kitchen floor. "They sound like good people."

"They are," Jack agrees, the smile back in an echo of itself, tugging up the side of his mouth. "We've got our moments, y'know, but they're good." Now the smile is back full force and Jack laughs shortly. His eyes shine fondly the way they always get when he tells stories about his sisters, the house just a little ways outside of Odessa. "They're gonna love you, y'know? My mom and the girls. Especially if you use your Mr. Fix It wizard skills on any of the half-dozen little projects Laurie and her husband keep promising our mother they're gonna get around to one of these days."

He's talking about it like it's a given, an easy assumption of unquestioned truth. Mac turns that over in his head for a minute, Jack talking like they already have some trip planned, like his mother and his sisters and their families already know who Mac is and are waiting for him out there in West Texas, with breakfast and projects and big, wide windows that let the sun stream through.

"Sorry," Jack says again, misinterpreting Mac's quiet. "Didn't mean to-"

"No." When Mac interrupts his voice is strong, sure. "It's okay. I'd like that."

Breakfast is good. The pills he'd swallowed down before coming into the kitchen take the edge off the bruising, which has deepened and bloomed overnight, leaving a gruesome watercolor painted over his torso which Mac gets a good look at when Jack insists on checking them over. Mac feels a little off in the aftermath of all of it, sitting at the table and sipping coffee. It's like there's an elephant in the room, now. An elephant that it takes him the duration of the short exam, breakfast, and the following cleanup to drum up the courage to turn to and address directly.

"So, what happens now?" he asks, hoping it sounds casual, rather than as nervous and unsteady as he feels saying it. "After last night, I… what now?"

Sitting across the table, Jack looks up from the sports section of the newspaper. The paper folds over on itself and Jack leaves it there, forgotten completely. "You mean now that I know about the abuse?"

It's blunt though not unkind, but Mac flinches anyway. He has a hard time hearing that word, so blatantly applied to his situation. Abuse. Jack doesn't qualify it or minimize it at all, just says it, direct and without any hesitation or reluctance. Despite the instant lance of guilt that spikes through him at the thought of calling what James does 'abuse' when there are so many people who have it so much worse than him, Mac nods his silent agreement to the question.

"I'd ask you not to tell Riley and Bozer," Mac says stiffly, haltingly, barely able to look Jack in the eye, "but…"

"But they already know."

Mac nods again.

"It's good you know that, at least," Jack tells him, his voice gone quieter, gentle without tipping over into the over-caution of how Mac had been afraid the man would start talking to him, like he was helpless or broken. There's no pity in Jack's words, just kindness. It sounds the way his hand had felt, pressing against Mac's chest when he woke up this morning. "If you ever want to talk to either of them about it, I know they would listen."

Thinking about it, Mac's face twists sharply. He can't imagine just… talking about it, broaching the conversation himself for no reason other than to have someone listen. Have someone hear him when he tries to give shape to the pain and how long it's been in him, where it came from, when it would all seem so stupid to say out loud.

"And neither of them would take it for anything less than what it is, if that's what you're worried about. None of us are gonna tell you that you're overreacting, or that it doesn't matter, or… Am I close?"

Though he can barely stand it, Mac nods for a third time. He feels his face getting hot, and he can't look at Jack at all any more, looking away instead. There are small spots of sunlight dappling the table, one of them glinting off a dime Jack found on the floor earlier, thoughtlessly tossed there.

Taking a deep breath, letting it blow out through near-shaking lips, Mac mutters, "Sorry."

"What is it you think you're apologizing for, then, huh?" The question is stronger than Jack's earlier ones had been, not quite angry but intense. Maybe even upset.

Waving a hand, Mac shrugs. "I don't know. Last night. All of it. For not being able to… I don't know. Feels like I should be able to handle it." He gets quieter and quieter until he gives up and drops his face down onto folded arms so his shamed expression isn't visible. Mac speaks into his own forearms, ignoring how the position strains his bruised ribs. "I'm twenty-four. I'm too old for this."

Though he can't see it, vision obscured completely by the fabric of his shirtsleeves, Mac hears Jack's low sigh and can picture his shoulders moving up and down, slow and tired. He hears the shift of the chairlegs too, when Jack moves his seat around the table, so he no longer sits across from Mac but beside him, close enough for Mac's sharp, focused hearing to pick up his breathing.

"Do you know how many people I've worked with, trained operatives with decades on the job, that I've seen break down after experiencing a major trauma?" It's not what Mac was expecting, though what he had been expecting Jack to say he couldn't quite elaborate on. "And that's without twenty years backin' it up. That was the first time you ever talked about it, right? First time you ever told someone what's been happening to you?"

Fabric shifts under Mac's face when he dips his chin in agreement. "Bozer tried," he says. Mac tells himself the muffled, choked quality to the words are because of his face being obscured, rather than the thick feeling in his throat. "Couple of times, he tried, but I didn't… Wouldn't really let him."

When Bozer had tried, made those attempts to broach the topic of James, what he thought of the way Mac's father treated him, Mac had brushed him off. He'd told himself that Bozer didn't have the full picture, that he didn't know what Mac's job was like. That if he let himself open the Pandora's box of James that everything else would pour out with him, so Mac had shut down, shut away, went quiet.

"Right," agrees Jack, and though Mac doesn't make out any kind of judgement he looks up anyway, lifts his head to speak as clearly as possible.

"It wasn't his fault," Mac tells him, forceful and anxious. He can feel it welling in his chest, the worry that he's made it seem like something it wasn't, like Bozer didn't care or just dropped it, when the truth was so far from that. "He tried, but I wouldn't let him, he just-"

"I know. I don't blame him for that, Mac, I promise. It wasn't his fault you couldn't tell him, and it wasn't your fault either. I'm just… Really glad you told me. Real proud of you for that, too, I know it wasn't easy."

Like someone had jabbed fingers into the places where Murdoc had kicked him, Mac's chest throbs. He breathes shakily, looking back at the dime in the sunlight, and then Jack's hand is back. It's set on his forearm, gripping lightly, and Mac is glad. He's grateful, in this ripped open moment where he's already too embarrassed over all of this to feel even more so, for the way Jack touches him so often now.

Over the course of recent months, especially since Minnesota, Mac has noticed it, the way Jack touches him and how frequently it happens. How it's made him feel - acknowledged and important, like he's seen and accounted for. Like he matters. Jack gets his attention with a tap of Mac's shoulder, a nudge in his ribs, the flat of a palm against his back. He slings an arm around Mac's shoulders as they're walking down the street, rambling about nothing. It's like he always knows where Mac is. Jack is a very physical person, it didn't take long to figure this out about him, someone who knows and maps the shape of his world with his hands, holds the things that are important to him to commit them to memory, and somewhere along the line, that shifted to include Mac.

For the first time in… longer than he wants to try and qualify in case the answer is 'the first time in his life,' Mac is being touched like he matters, like he's a person not a tool or an enemy, outside of the house he shares with Bozer. For years, the person he is inside that house, vulnerable and young and aching with the need to be handled softly, has stayed there. Now the lines are blurring, every time Riley's hand takes his and their fingers lace tight together, or Jack lays a blanket over him when he's drifting in and out of sleep on the jet.

Or maybe they were never separated at all, and Mac was no more capable of leaving his heart behind at the front door than he would've been able to physically leave the organ itself there. Maybe that had been the problem all along.

"So, what happens now?" Mac eventually finds the strength to ask again. "This isn't going to happen the way it does in Lifetime movies, or whatever." Bozer had watched a few of those once, as 'research' for something or other. They'd always struck Mac as trite and oversimplified, too easy and too routine. Things don't resolve that way, not in real life. "You can't just lay down some kind of ultimatum with him and make him stop or else."

"Would you let me if I could?"

Mac thinks about it for a moment. It's such an odd question, like what he wants would matter at all, but that's pretty typical of Jack. He's always saying weird things like that. As for the question itself… Would he let Jack do that? Allow someone to step in and force James to stop. No more yelling. No more belittling, degrading, insulting, hurting.

"Yeah," he admits. Jack's hand, still on his arm, squeezes. "I would."

"Well, we're just gonna get as close as we can, then. We'll make sure at least that he's not alone with you whenever we can avoid it," Jack says like it's really that easy. Like he can just put himself between Mac and James and refuse to move and that will be it. "I'll talk to Matty, see if she can develop a sudden interest in running point on our missions, stuff like that. I'm not stupid, I know what'll happen if I try and confront him directly, and I'm not gonna get myself fired that easy, but whenever possible, we'll do what we can to protect you from him. We all will. We just need you to decide you're going to let us."

It feels so strange to Mac, talking about plans to 'protect' him from James, talking about what's happening like it's something real and substantial enough to worry about protecting him from. There had been a teacher once, who'd caught Mac alone after class and asked some very pointed questions. Nothing ever came of it - she dropped it after Mac was very clear that James had never struck him.

"Is it alright if I bring Matty and Riley in on the plan then? The sooner we get started the better."

Despite the immediate fear that knee-jerks through him at the thought, Mac forces it down. They know, he tells himself. They already know. "Yeah, okay."

Getting home and seeing Bozer for the first time since admitting what Jack had asked him about his father shatters Mac's composure. He nearly collapses into his best friend's arms moments after catching sight of him, Bozer holding on just as tightly, neither of them quite able to get a full breath in. The bruises on Mac's torso screech out their displeasure but he doesn't care, ignoring them completely.

"I told him the truth," Mac gasps out before the question can be asked, digging his fingers into Bozer's jacket. "About dad. About what- About what he's like, what he-" He can't finish, but he doesn't have to.

"Good," Bozer says fiercely, seeming to have already figured out what Mac was trying to say. "That's good, Mac, that's really good."

When Mac steps aside to compose himself and catch his breath, he notices out of the corner of his eye the moment Bozer hugs Jack too, as fierce as his barely audible 'thank you.'

Riley gets there not long after and Mac meets her out front alone. He hugs her too though not even a rushed half-admission makes it out this time, and after they let go of each other their hands stay entwined between them. They stand on Mac's front porch, looking at each other for a long, empty moment, and Mac can't find anything to say. He tries a few times, opening his mouth and taking a breath, but nothing comes out.

"I know," Riley says when he closes his mouth a second time, feeling like a suffocating fish on a dock, unable to ask for help or explain what he's doing there. But, much like with Bozer inside, the explanation wasn't necessary. Maybe Jack told her, or maybe she'd guessed. Mac would believe either option, though as she repeats it, "I know," he's more inclined to the latter.

While he hadn't been at all surprised by Riley's quick arrival, the fact that it doesn't take longer than an hour for Matty to make it to the house is far more unexpected. She doesn't hug Mac like Riley and Bozer had, but she stands in front of him where he sits on the couch and meets his eyes directly. There's something faintly angry about her demeanor, under the firm set of her jaw and the furrow of her brow, though Mac knows without question it's not aimed at him.

That's one thing he appreciates about her. When Matty is angry with you? You'll know.

"Whatever I can do to keep you safe from him," she says intently, "I promise you I'm going to do it. I know you don't like our investigation. I know you don't think we're right about what we've found and what we're looking for. And that's okay. I get that. But I need you to understand that investigation or not, I am on your side, and I could never stand by and let someone I work with treat anyone like this, not one of my agents and especially not his son. So we're going to keep you safe."

Mac doesn't know how to respond to that, and Matty doesn't make him answer. She just reaches out to briefly clasp his wrist, and lets the conversation end there.

However, as it turns out, Matty isn't just there to talk about their plan going forward regarding James. It comes up after everyone has had a few minutes to find some kind of solid footing, Mac stepping out onto the back porch until he can look any of them in the eye without feeling like he's going to lose it all over again.

"I had a meeting this morning," Matty tells them. "With Oversight."

The instant he hears it, Mac's heart rockets into his throat. Jack and Riley ask questions as she explains, Bozer keeping silent while he digests what's going on. Matty throws in an aside specifically to him every so often, bringing Bozer up to speed on the investigation at the same time as she tells the group as a whole about the meeting that took it to the next major stage. He looks a little green, but he seems to be handling this latest revelation pretty well, as far as Mac can tell.

Much like Bozer, Mac doesn't ask questions while she talks. He listens, a faint buzzing underlying all of it, while Matty tells them that it hadn't gone over very well when she'd presented her suspicions to Oversight. The panel of three in charge of DXS don't seem to be taking her very seriously, and at least one of them had suggested she might be imagining things. But they hadn't shut Matty down either, nor indicated a plan to tell James about what she'd said, which was more optimistic at least than being dismissed outright. It will be, she tells them, an uphill battle to convince them that she's right, but they have a foot in the door now, and that means there's hope.

Hope. Mac snorts softly when he hears that, too quiet for any of the others to hear. Hope is not what this investigation feels like to him.

"There's something else, too," Matty says, and Mac feels like he's got a headache coming on.

"What else can there be?" That's Bozer, finally speaking up, voice climbed about an octave in shocked incredulity. Mac doesn't blame him - it's a lot to take in.

"I heard about what happened on your mission yesterday," she says, directed towards Mac and Jack.

This prompts Bozer to interject again, asking, "Sorry, what 'happened' yesterday?"

Matty makes no move to immediately answer, neither does Jack. This leaves Mac to figure out how to answer it himself, his roommate's eyes turned on him in a look of growing worry and dismay. It's a tug of war to decide what to tell him, to find a middle ground between not lying and not scaring Bozer unnecessarily, when he's still so used to this. 'I was pistol whipped, thrown to the ground, had the shit kicked out of me, then got stomped on,' while technically the truth, is harsher than he needs to hear.

"I got… attacked, while sweeping a building," Mac says hesitantly. He hates the look on Bozer's face, the hurt he can see there, the narrow of his eyes as he's surely noting the bruises dotting Mac's jaw from where Murdoc has grabbed his face. "I'm okay," he's quick to add. "He didn't break anything and I didn't need any stitches, it's just bruising."

"Just…" Bozer starts, unable to finish through lack of air to do so. The word was breathless. Incredulous and wounded.

"The guy who did it, he knew things." Maybe Mac goes on so soon to get it out before he loses the nerve to talk about his terrifying encounter with the hit man, or maybe he does so before he has to hear whatever Bozer has to say about Mac characterizing what happened to him as 'just' anything. Either way, he's talking again before the sentence can be finished. "About me, about my dad, about our… Our relationship. He knew about you, too, Bozer, and he took responsibility for Bosnia. Sounds like he's been watching me for a while now."

"What I'm more concerned about right at this moment is what happened after your run in with, what did he call himself? Murdoc?" When Mac nods, Matty goes on. "Because I was never brought into the loop by James, and I checked. There's no sketch on file, and no debrief scheduled."

"He said it could wait," Jack says, the venom in his voice making it very clear how he feels about that call. "Mac asked right away which artist we were gonna use and when the debrief was gonna happen and the Director just blew him off, then took off as soon as we got home. So we've got no idea who this guy is, just some alias. We didn't get him on any cameras and now we don't even know if we're gonna get a sketch at all."

"I could do one."

Everyone, including Mac, turns to look at Bozer. He still looks a little sick, but there's something set in his face too. Determined and stubborn.

"Y'know, I've seen his drawings," Jack says to Matty, nodding slowly. "They're not half bad. They're really good, actually, that might not be a bad idea."

"Are you up for this?" Matty asks, and Bozer doesn't hesitate even for a second.

"I want to help. This is something I can do."

Riley goes through the folders Matty had brought on Bosnia and on the other moments Murdoc had mentioned during his and Mac's brief altercation, looking for any evidence at all of a connection between them. As she combs through the files for evidence that there had been another presence there, Mac and Bozer sit at the table, working on the sketch of their mystery man. He is indeed a very skilled artist, Mac has seen it time and time again over the years, but there's something disconcerting about seeing his talent used like this.

It's chilling to see Murdoc's face again. Even rendered in a two dimensional, pencil-on-paper sketch, Mac's skin crawls when he sees those eyes for a second time, remembers them staring at him through the gloom of that building in San Miguel. He looks at Bozer's drawing for a long time, then nods and calls Matty over.

"This is him. This is Murdoc."

Riley comes over too after a moment, abandoning her papers at the coffee table, and when she sees the sketch she stops dead in her tracks. She points at the paper and says, "Amsterdam."

"What?" Mac asks, looking up and over his shoulder at her, then back down to the sketch. "What about Amsterdam?"

"That's the guy I saw. Down on the street in Amsterdam, remember? When we were doing that stakeout and I had my Rear Window moment. I'm sure it was him, that's who I saw watching us. He was watching us in the apartment and he was following us in the car."

Silence reigns while Mac, Matty, Jack, Riley, and Bozer all stare at the same piece of paper, the drawing of the man's face. Whatever is going on here, one thing is clear. Murdoc has been watching them for a lot longer than Bosnia, and Mac has the distinct feeling he's not done yet.

"Did he say anything else to you?" Matty asks, touching Mac's arm to get his attention. The flinch is small, but it's there, and she's gracious enough to pretend she doesn't notice. "Aside from taunting you with everything he knew about you, did he say anything that would indicate any kind of plan he had?"

"Not really," Mac tells her through a sigh. He rubs his hands down his face and shakes his head, unable to keep his eyes from creeping back to the sketch. "He was hired by someone, was supposed to kill me in Bosnia, but he didn't, and then I guess he thought I was too interesting to kill. Before he left, he told me…" His throat feels dry and he stops, swallowing. "He told me I lived because he decided to let me, and he wanted me to remember that."

"Jesus, Mac," Bozer says, hollow and shocked, and Jack swears quietly.

Before she takes her leave, Matty has a few instructions for them. She tells Riley first to continue going back over the files, looking for any hint of Murdoc and promising to bring another set over later. Every mission from a month or two before and everything after Amsterdam will need to be examined too. As for James, she tells them to let her worry about him.

"I'll do my best to figure out why he didn't have a sketch done right away," Matty says, tucking Bozer's drawing into the briefcase she'd brought with her. "And you two, Mac and Jack, you tell me right away if the Director does schedule a debrief or a meeting with an artist. In the meantime, I'll keep you all updated on how things go with Oversight. I have a follow-up scheduled with them next week, and this might help."

"They agreed to a follow-up? Do you think they're even going to listen?" As surprised as Jack sounds is about as surprised as Mac feels. He hadn't been expecting that.

"I pushed until they agreed. And I'm going to push until they listen, too." There's steel in Matty's eyes and her voice and Mac doesn't envy the Oversight board. He wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of that look from her, that's for sure. "At the very least, this deserves a formal investigation opened. They're going to see that."

To the surprise of everyone, maybe himself most of all, Mac agrees, saying, "You're right. They do need to look into it. Something needs to happen to get to the bottom of this, whatever it is you guys found. If it's James" It can't be him, "or whoever, maybe they can find it."

Maybe, if Mac's own suspicions were right, then Oversight will find Walsh before James can. And, maybe, if Walsh is found, things might get better. It's all he can hope for, now.

The next few weeks pass in a blur. It's an unsettling monotony of a milk-run mission and a pair of assists to other teams, against a background of tense waiting for Matty to update them on the progress of how things are going with Oversight - which, so far, is slowly. They're busy people and obviously the red flags Matty has raised about James aren't taking great priority.

Though Mac doesn't really know what Oversight does on a daily basis, he knows that the infiltration had to have thrown things off, especially with the sheer extent of how deeply James had cleaned house. Every one of the people he'd ousted must now be individually investigated to see whether they were truly involved or not, and if they were, how much they knew. Mac isn't surprised it's taking them this long, especially with a Deputy Director and most of the upper level technical analytics staff among that group.

Amidst all of it, the saving grace is Jack. He's decided to keep up the crusade he'd started with the roller skating rink, dragging Riley, Bozer, and Mac all over town in an attempt to 'teach you over-serious kids how to have some real fun for a change'. After the first trip to the rink, Jack makes them take turns choosing what to do, which is an admittedly helpful distraction from everything else going on.

Tonight is one of those Jack enforced 'you're going to have fun and you're going to like it' nights, the ones Mac and Riley have been groaning about but are enjoying far more than they'll admit to without great persuasion. First up in the rotation, Mac had chosen bowling, which everyone seemed surprised by. Then Bozer had brought them along to a production of a friend of his' drunk Shakespeare company. They were doing A Midsummer Night's Dream, and had even managed to collectively peer-pressure Matty into coming along.

(The troupe, the Boozy Bards, are doing the Tempest the following month and Matty's already agreed to join them for it again.)

Now it's Riley's turn, which sees her, Jack, Bozer, and Mac crowded together in the stands of an actual bout of the Los Angeles Derby Dolls roller derby league. Everybody's getting pretty into it, watching the competition, Mac included. He's not usually much of a sports person but it's amazing how being with somebody who's really into something can make you get excited for it too, and Riley's giddiness is contagious. She'd started talking on the way to the track and hasn't stopped since, at first answering their questions about what they were about to see, then telling anecdotes from her time playing.

It's good to hear her talking like this, fast and enthusiastic, one line of thought leading right into another. Riley is happy and fondly nostalgic, and Mac can feel some of the tension of the past weeks seeping out of him as he laughs along with Bozer at some story she's telling about a long-lasting grudge she'd developed with a skater on a rival team.

"Yeah, and then she was out for like, a couple weeks with an injury and you know what?"

"What?" Mac asks through a smile, playing his part in the story when she pauses, waiting for it.

"I actually missed her!" Riley sounds incredulous and a little affronted as she says it, her hands going up in the air as if to ask can you believe that? Bozer and Jack laugh and Mac can't help but join them, shaking his head at her expression. "No, I'm serious! It's like there was something missing without her, I think we were closer to friends by the end of it than anything. It was weird. Man, I wonder what she's up to now…"

Mac returns from the concession stand near the end of the first half with a bag of chocolate-covered candies just in time to hear Bozer say, "Hey, Riley?"

"What's up?" Her eyes don't leave the track. Following her gaze, Mac sees that Riley is tracing the path of a trio of skaters who have formed a kind of triangle, one woman skating backwards, braced against two of her teammates facing her. They seem to be using the formation to block an opponent from getting around, and Mac is impressed. He remembers the unsteady, wobbling feeling of being on roller skates and doesn't think he'd last five seconds in a competition like this.

"So those names," Bozer says, pointing down at one of the skaters at the side of the track with her back to them. She's got a long, curly blond ponytail tossed over a shoulder and DOLLY SPARTAN screen-printed on the back of her uniform shirt in bright purple block letters.

"Derby names, yeah."

"So, you have one?"

There's been a time-out called, the action on the track at a stand-still while the refs speak to a skater, gesturing out towards another. With nothing much happening down there, and the possibility of finding out this piece of backstory on their friend, everyone is focused on Riley. Mac can feel himself grinning as wide as Bozer is next to him, and Jack's eyes are glinting on Riley's other side. She shakes her head and snorts, looking up to the rafters.

"Oh come on," Bozer groans, leaning half over Mac's lap to give Riley a pleading look. "You've got to tell us. Was it something good? I bet it was something good."

Holding out for just a few seconds longer, Riley quickly relents. "Fine, okay, my mom sent me a picture, actually, after I told her about the rink the other day. Hold on…"

The picture she pulls up and passes around is priceless. A younger Riley stands proudly with her hands propped on her hips, back to the camera and mugging over her shoulder with a mock-tough expression. Twin braids hang down from under a bright green helmet and she's wearing a uniform much like the woman down on the track. Plastered across her shirt, in the same green tone as the helmet, are loud, bold letters.

"Ruth Slayer Ginsberg?" Mac reads off, then looks up, raising an eyebrow at her. "As in- as in a pun on the United States Supreme Court Justice Ginsberg?"

"The very same."

Bozer is doubled over his knees now, slumped half against Mac's leg, and Mac is whacking him on the back to keep him from choking on his own laughter.

"It was either that or Mazel Tov Cocktail," Riley tells them, shrugging when Mac's other eyebrow joins the first. "What? I was the only Jewish girl on my team and I had a point to make, okay?" She's laughing too, and Bozer's wheezing and breathless.

Jack grasps Riley's shoulder with a mock-serious face, telling her, "I'm still so proud of you for that one. Think you should've gone with it, honestly."

Mac closes his eyes and lets the moment wash over him. His chest feels tight but for once not in a bad way, like his lungs could burst at any second from the fizzing, over-aired balloon sensation. If he could, Mac would bottle this feeling and save it forever, go back to being this light, this happy.

They're still talking on the way home, it being Jack's turn to tell anecdotes from what he remembers of Riley's derby days, back when she'd been on the junior team learning to skate with kids her age.

"And I was her other emergency contact, right-" For a brief moment at a red light, Jack's eyes flick from the road to the passenger's seat where Riley's sitting directly in front of Mac, addressing her directly. "And you still absolutely hated my guts at the time, Ri, so do you remember what you did when they called me after you took that fall and couldn't get ahold of your mom?"

"I kicked you in the shin," Riley says, a shade proudly. She doesn't sound upset at the memory, despite the conflict it speaks of in their early relationship. Instead she's smiling, shoulders jerking in a short, choppy laugh at the antics of her younger self.

"She kicked me in the shin! With her skate on and everything!"

It's an amusing mental image, but it makes something else jump into Mac's mind, something he thinks about for the rest of the drive home. He goes quiet and contemplative while the car around him is still alive with the sound of the other three talking. If they notice his slight change in demeanor they don't show it, except for briefly on the way up to the house, Riley's hand slipping into his for a quick squeeze and then letting go again.

It takes until he's standing on the back porch alone for anything to come of it. Jack walks out after he's been there for maybe two or three minutes, leaning on the railing and watching the skyline. He doesn't say what he's doing there, but Mac knows well enough Jack is there to check on him. So, finding his moment and grabbing onto it, he says it before he can change his mind.

"I want to change my emergency contact."

"What was that?" Jack asks, confused and curious. Mac can hear him walking closer but he doesn't turn and look. He doesn't want to lose his nerve.

"I said I-" About to repeat what he'd said, Mac cuts himself off instead. "Listen, when I was in the hospital after my run, the heatstroke, they only called my-" He chokes on it a little, clearing his throat and looking down at his hands on the railing. The knuckles are pale and bloodless and Mac relaxes deliberately, uncurling his fingers from the wood and resettling them lightly. "They only called him because his number was listed and they couldn't understand what I was saying."

"Yeah," Jack says quietly. He steps closer, their shoulders brushing now. Mac shivers. "I remember."

"Well, it's always just been him, I never thought to change it, but every time I end up- I think I should change my emergency contact. And I- I want it to-" Mac trails off too quiet even to hear his own voice at the end of the sentence, voice dying into silence.

"Gonna have to speak up a little there, buddy, I couldn't quite catch that."

"Iwantitotbeyou," Mac admits in a rush. He can't look next to him, cheeks burning, staring instead out over to the skyline.

"Yeah." When Jack agrees, his voice has gone quiet and a little odd. Mac glances over at him, nervous, and sees something on his face that's not dubious or pressured, whatever Mac had been worried he was going to see. No, his expression is soft and fond, smiling a little, enough to crinkle the edges of his eyes. "Yeah, okay. We'll do that, I'll go in with you tomorrow and we'll fill out whatever papers we need to."

"Okay." Feeling a little silly and weird for having made such a big deal about this, Mac's thoughts begin to race faster and faster, until they're stilled by an arm settling around his shoulders. He's tugged a little closer into Jack's side and goes easily, leaning a little, and then harder as the moments pass. "Thanks."

At first Jack doesn't say anything, and then Mac feels his chest against the back of his shoulder, giving a stuttering inhale, then asking, "What are you thanking me for?"

"For agreeing to… y'know." Just before he'd have shrugged, Mac catches himself, not wanting to accidentally hit Jack in the chin or something. It's another step Jack never had to take, another increased level of responsibility he wasn't obligated to. And he'd agreed so quickly, like he hadn't even had to think about it.

"If it were just up to me," Jack tells him lightly, "I'd have changed that designation myself months ago."

Mac can't think of what to say in response to that so he just shrinks slightly under Jack's arm, watching the lights. Jack doesn't move, doesn't pull away or turn to head back inside, and Mac gets the feeling he won't. Not until Mac decides to move first. And he knows he should, should straighten up and step away and go inside. Get himself together.

When he takes a deep breath, Jack's hand rubs his upper arm for a moment, a thoughtless, almost unconscious acknowledgement that he'd felt it, noticed the sigh. Maybe in a minute, Mac decides. Maybe for now, he'll just stay here with Jack, warm and safe, and watch the lights.