AN: This is set pre-canon and is canon-compliant with both Seasons 1 and 2 (so far). No knowledge of the Every End is a Beginning AU required whatsoever.

Thoughts on 2.09, CD-ROM + Hoagie Foil, at the end of this chapter, with spoilers.

RILEY AND DIANE'S RESIDENCE

LA

There was a series of knocks on Riley's bedroom door, loud and clear and familiarly slightly obnoxious, and with a roll of her eyes (she was this close to getting in; she knew it), she pulled off her headphones and navigated to a more innocuous-looking webpage.

(Sure, Jack was a bathroom tile salesman and not very computer-literate, but she wasn't taking any chances.)

She opened the door, revealing her mother's boyfriend. With a grin, Jack held out an envelope to her, plain white with a slightly-wonky bright-red bow on it.

'Merry Christmas, Riley.' He shrugged. 'I know you and your mom don't make a big deal of it, but…' His grin became a little more child-like. 'It's Christmas; I had to get you a little something.'

Riley opened the envelope.

A little something was apparently a gift voucher for her very favourite tech store, which sold everything she adored from video games to parts for a custom rig.

A gift voucher with a very generous sum of money on it.

She looked up at Jack, so, so moved and full of gratitude on the inside, but with an eyebrow quirked in disbelief and scepticism on the outside.

'How did you-'

Jack put his hands up in supplication, but there was a little something in his eyes that seemed, to Riley, to show that he understood that she loved the present.

'Hey, I ain't blind, I know you're into the computer stuff.' He shrugged. 'And bathroom tile's been selling real well lately.'

(Riley wasn't completely sure what it was, but there was something off about the last sentence.)

But there was a little fuzzy warm feeling in her chest, because Jack noticed, because Jack cared, because Jack loved her almost as much as Riley's mom loved her.

Because Jack really, truly, was the closest thing to a father she'd ever had.

So Riley reached out and hugged him.

'Merry Christmas, Jack.'

He hugged her back just as tightly, and she could hear the fondness, the affection, the love in his voice when he responded.

'Merry Christmas, Riley.'

Tomorrow's ficlet: 'Merry Christmas, Annabelle.'

I think that makes tomorrow's ficlet's plot/focus pretty clear…

Thoughts on 2.09, CD-ROM + Hoagie Foil: I don't know where to start with that episode, there were so many threads, so:

Firstly – I liked solo!Cage, I like the way she, Mac and Jack worked in this episode. I think the writers have done a good job in the last three eps with balancing giving her a role and keeping that dynamic we all fell in love with in Season 1. In terms of Mac waking up to her being by his bedside…well, I see why they did it, given the fact that they're definitely running with Mac/Cage (still not sold), I think it was better handled than some of the previous Mac/Cage scenes. I do kind of wish it'd been Jack, but he is helicopter-parenting two really stubborn 'kids' determined to do everything themselves.

Secondly – Mac going solo searching for his dad, Riley asking Jack not to interfere – I'm a bit annoyed at Mac, but he seems to have made up with Jack about it, Riley's reasons are better, methinks. I think it's in-character, Riley especially, but I think it's going to blow up in someone's face.

Thirdly – Bozer's tragic backstory. Oh, Bozer…and why does everyone have to have a tragic backstory? (Side note: I think they based his brother's death on the reason why Mac has an aversion to guns in the original series?)

Fourthly – the intrigue in this episode. Ellwood is involved in something bad. Inevitably, this is going to end badly, it's just a question of exactly how. Matty in the film that Mac's dad probably left for him – three possibilities, I think. One, Mac's dad is a spy, like Matty (that may blow up in their faces; can you imagine how mad Mac would be if Matty knew the truth about his dad all along?), two, either Matty or Mac's dad is a bad guy and is manipulating everyone, three, there was an accident of some sort while Jill was restoring the film, leading to Matty being in it, and it's a red herring. I've got two bets for the mid-season finale: either we have that whole Ellwood mess and Jack helps Riley either save or stop her father (or both) or we have whatever's going on with Mac's dad being revealed. Maybe even both – what if it's Mac's dad who wants Ellwood dead?

Finally – little chemist rants – VX gas can't possibly be that shade of green (the colour would come from impurities – we admittedly say in chemistry that a little colour goes a long way in solids, but it would be different for gases as the particles are more dispersed, I'm quite sure –it'd have to be really impure), and I think that argon gas wouldn't make a very good stand-in for it. (I think you could probably release a little bit of the gas into something like a balloon and run some really quick tests based on Cage's lie that it was argon; argon's an inert noble gas, very different from VX, an organophosphate!) Also, with Carson's lab – we don't keep our chemicals next to our glassware, and nobody has that much clean glassware lying on the shelf! People would steal it! And we're too lazy to always wash glassware/need to keep everything!