AN: Thoughts on the real 3.01, Improvise, at the end of this chapters with spoilers. Lots and lots of spoilers.
And I hope that the title of this story now makes more sense…I always knew that they'd take a different path from what I planned out, so consider this some kind of other universe, where the reality of MacGyver took a different path… :P
PHOENIX JET
SOMEWHERE OVER THE PACIFIC OCEAN
ON-ROUTE TO MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA
Mac absent-mindedly re-shaped a paperclip into the continent of Australia, mind whirring.
It'd been two days since they'd learned Cage's real name, and he still was no clearer as to what to even think about the situation.
Riley and Jill had spent the two days trawling through every single bit of documentation regarding Samantha Cage/Tasha Sommers. Matty and Oversight had pulled some strings and gotten them access to information way above their security clearances.
All records really did state that Tasha Sommers was killed by an unknown assailant just after completing her ill-fated team's mission.
Samantha Cage first appeared in CIA records prior to Tasha Sommers' recorded death, her identity having been cleverly and expertly backstopped.
There was nothing in any of the files to even suggest that name and supposed death aside, Cage or Tasha or Sommers or whatever they were meant to call her had ever lied to or deceived Matty or any of them.
There was nothing to suggest that she could not be trusted, didn't have their backs.
Mac's gut agreed with that.
But he couldn't stop that niggling doubt at the forefront of his mind either.
He'd been lied to and betrayed too many times to not have those doubts.
Riley, phone in hand, walked back into the main cabin, plopping down into her seat, looking rather down.
(Billy had been due to pay her a visit in LA, stay with her for a few days. Riley had taken a couple of days of leave from the Phoenix to spend with him, but then all of this had happened…and she'd had no choice but to cancel on him.)
(Billy got it, he really did, but she knew he wasn't happy. She wasn't either. And it irked both of them that she couldn't tell him exactly why or where she was going.)
(Still, every relationship had its struggles. Theirs just had some particularly thorny and unique ones.)
(And it was worth it. Oh, so worth it.)
Bozer just smiled sympathetically at her and tossed her a packet of M&Ms from the med kit. Jack reached out and clapped his surrogate daughter on the shoulder.
'Chin up, Ri. Least we might get to go for a kangaroo ride!'
Mac, who had pulled himself out of his spiral of thoughts when Riley had plopped down into her seat, huffed out a very long-suffering sigh.
(He might have exaggerated just a little, just to help cheer Riley up a bit.)
'They don't ride kangaroos in Australia, Jack.'
Similarly, everything was not upside down, toilets did not flush the opposite way because they were in the Southern Hemisphere, drop bears weren't real, and Australians, unlike what Jack claimed, did not throw shrimp on the barbecue, they barbecued prawns (which were what Americans called shrimp – Australians called smaller forms of those crustaceans shrimp). Koalas weren't bears, Australians didn't live off Vegemite (the Internet informed him that the reason why many foreigners disliked it was because they put an excessive quantity on toast, but Mac personally wasn't keen to give it a go regardless), and while Australia had many dangerous creatures, they were practically certainly not going to be killed by one, especially given that Melbourne was a very urban city of about 4.5 million people.
Jack's expression fell comically.
(He clearly got what Mac was trying to do, and was rolling with the improvised plan.)
(That was one of Mac's favourite things about his partner. Sure, he complained about it all the time, but at the end of the day, he always rolled with Mac's improvisation.)
'So the Internet was lying to me?'
Bozer snorted.
'Yeah, real surprising, Jack…'
Riley cracked a smile, shaking her head with fond exasperation.
(She knew what they were up to. She really appreciated it.)
Meanwhile, Mac took pity on the still-apparently-deeply-wounded Jack.
'Well, Australia did once declare war on emus…and lost.'
Bozer, Jack and Riley stared at him, unblinking for a moment, then all looked very incredulous.
'No.'
'No way, Mac.'
'You're messing with us, brother.'
Mac shook his head with a little smirk.
'No, I'm telling the truth. In 1932, Australia declared war on emus in a district of Western Australia. Despite valiant efforts on the part of the Royal Australian Artillery, the emus were victorious.'
Jack shook his head as Bozer stared at Mac as if he'd grown a second head.
'Mac, bro, that's just…unbelievable! If I made a movie with that plot, everybody would say it's ludicrous!'
Mac spread his palms wide with a shrug.
'Well, you know what they say: the truth's stranger than fiction, Boze.'
Riley, meanwhile, was typing frantically on her phone. She made a noise of surprise, and turned her screen to face Jack and Bozer, where they could see the Wikipedia page for the Great Emu War.
It was real.
Jack, Bozer and Riley all stared at each other for a long moment, then looked back at Mac, who was smirking, then burst into hysterical laughter.
Mac smiled, shaking his head with a little chuckle at their reaction, as he pulled out another paperclip from his pocket, which soon took the shape of an emu.
I suppose the question now is: why do I know about the Great Emu War?
The answer: I was bored.
I'll read just about anything when I'm bored.
I know the ingredients lists of most common children's breakfast cereals sold in the mid-90s because I used to get bored when Mom took me grocery shopping.
They've yet to come in handy, but you never know…maybe I'll use that information one day.
ESSENDON AIRPORT
MELBOURNE
AUSTRALIA
She was waiting for them on the tarmac when they disembarked, wearing khakis and a crisp cream shirt, hair in a messy knot, looking every bit the woman they knew.
The five of them stared at each other for a long, long moment, full of awkwardness and tension and not knowing what to say.
(Hell, they didn't even know what to call her.)
He might have been imagining things, but Mac swore that as calm as she looked, there was something guilty, regretful in her eyes.
Eventually, she broke the silence, seemingly reading them all as well as ever.
'Call me Cage.' She gave a small smile. 'Welcome to Australia.'
They all managed a smile and a nod in return, and then Cage turned on her heel and led them away from the jet, towards a waiting chopper.
When the chopper landed, in the middle of a field on what appeared to be a farm just past the outskirts of Melbourne, Cage smiled at the pilot.
'Thanks, Gus.'
He grinned back, the smile slightly crooked, and waved as his passengers disembarked.
'Catch you later, Sammy!'
She arched an eyebrow at him, and his grin widened, utterly unrepentant.
Mac, Jack, Bozer and Riley exchanged a glance.
None of them missed the fact that the pilot (who clearly knew her quite well – and was well-liked by her too, or Cage would be doing more than arching a disapproving eyebrow at him) used her new name, her new identity.
Cage herself clearly noticed their exchange, but simply turned and led them towards the farmhouse in the distance.
As they started walking, Jack suddenly stopped, doing a literal, hilarious double-take, pointing at Mac.
'Wait a moment…that guy back there, his name was Angus too, wasn't it?'
Bozer and Riley looked over at Mac too, near-identical mischievous smirks on their faces. Mac himself rolled his eyes and huffed out a long-suffering sigh, while Cage turned back to look at them, one of her enigmatic little smiles on her face and a glint of mischief in her eyes.
'It's a very common name here…'
Jack clapped his partner on the shoulder, mock-sniffling.
'You're finally where you belong, brother!'
Mac sighed and rolled his eyes again, while Bozer and Riley's smirks and Cage's smile widened. She slowed her pace, walking with them instead of in front of them, as Mac spoke.
'That is one of the reasons I used in an attempt to persuade my dad to move to Australia when I was seven…'
As they neared the farmhouse, Mac finished his story with a sheepish little smirk on his face. Jack chortled, thumping Mac on the back, while Bozer had a fit of giggles, Riley shook her head but laughed nonetheless, and Cage had an amused little grin on her face.
And for a moment, it was as if nothing had changed.
SECRET HEADQUARTERS OF AUSTRALIA'S PHOENIX FOUNDATION EQUIVALENT
(ACTUALLY, WHAT IS IT CALLED?)
(THE BUNYIP FOUNDATION?)
SOMEWHERE WEST OF MELBOURNE
Cage unlocked the farmhouse door, then led them into what appeared to be just a normal farmhouse.
(It really did look like a farm outside, too. There were whole paddocks of sheep that they'd walked past.)
There was even a woman in a chequered shirt and practical jeans in the kitchen, reading a newspaper and drinking coffee. She put down her mug and arched an eyebrow at Cage as the blonde woman led them all into the kitchen.
(Mac waved awkwardly. Jack waved exuberantly. Riley really wanted to face-palm.)
(She swore that sometimes, it was like having an embarrassing dad and a socially-hopeless sibling.)
Cage just gestured to the four of them.
'Our American guests, Shaz.'
The woman nodded and returned to her newspaper, as if it was normal for someone to bring four random Americans into her kitchen in the middle of her Saturday morning.
Cage just led them further into the kitchen and opened the pantry.
It was much bigger inside than one might expect for a farmhouse kitchen, about the size of a walk-in closet. They all fit comfortably inside, and Cage closed the door, reached out and moved around several tins (tomatoes, beans, pineapple and beetroot) in what appeared to be a deliberate pattern.
A hidden panel in a box of oats opened, revealing a retina scanner, and Cage leaned forward, and let it scan her eye.
It beeped in a way that sounded approving, and then a box of teabags opened, revealing an intercom, which Cage spoke into.
'Samantha Cage, with our American visitors.'
There was another approving-whirring noise, and then, the entire pantry began to sink downwards.
It was a cleverly-concealed elevator.
Bozer's eyes widened.
'Secret elevator! Awesome! Seriously, guys, we gotta get Matty to get us one of these!'
Cage smiled.
In a war room that was very much like theirs, albeit underground and with a black leather couch instead of their brown one, Cage stood at the front, before a big screen, while Mac, Jack, Bozer and Riley sat on the couch. She reached out and tapped the screen once to bring up eight photos.
Two they all recognized as a younger Cage, when she'd been Tasha Sommers, and David Parkes.
The other six, Riley recognized as having been Cage's teammates in Operation Shearwater.
The blonde woman pointed to the two photos below hers and Parkes' on the left side of the screen.
'Lachlan Mitchell and Eleanor Tran, the other Australians on the team.' Both were fairly young; Mitchell only looking a handful of years older than Cage (Sommers?) in the eight-year-old photo, Tran surely no older than thirty-five. She pointed to the photos on the right. 'And the CIA's Timothy Flint, our team leader…' He was a serious-looking man of about fifty-five with greying hair in a military cut. '…Talia Markov…' A beautiful brunette in her early forties. '…Nina Hernandez…' A Hispanic woman with a pixie cut. '…and Kevin Osaka.' A very buff Asian guy of indeterminate age. 'Shearwater was headquartered at another secure site, about a hundred kilometres from here. We were eight months into the op and had accumulated almost all the evidence we needed to bring down Keys, Haworth and Donner's operation…'
EIGHT YEARS AGO
OPERATION SHEARWATER HEADQUARTERS
SOMEWHERE IN VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA
Tasha Sommers, newly-minted SASR 4 Squadron interrogation expert and the most junior member of the CIA-SASR team working the op, looked up from her profiles of the smuggling ring's ringleaders (at least, who they thought the ringleaders might be) as her team leader walked into the room, looking even more serious than usual.
He had his phone in his right hand, and spoke without preamble, as was his way.
'Osaka's had a car accident. A fatal car accident.'
All six team members looked around at each other, their expressions turning very grim. Three weeks ago, Hernandez had been killed on a stake-out gone wrong, in a firefight.
She'd been their forensic expert, but Tran (who had some forensic training, even if she was primarily an intelligence analyst) had noted that the angle of the fatal bullet didn't seem to match the location of any known hostiles.
Two deaths in a month?
That was no coincidence.
Someone was hunting them.
'Couldn't sleep, Tash?'
Sommers had heard him coming ten seconds ago, because he'd made his (familiar) footsteps particularly loud, so didn't startle, simply kept leaning against the boundary fence of their remote headquarters (necessary as the smuggling operation Shearwater was targeting was based in rural Australia, a smart move on the part of the smugglers), looking out into the distance.
Lachlan Mitchell, white-hat with a reputation both for his skills and his very stereotypical, yet completely genuine, 'larrikin' personality, who insisted everyone called him Lachie, joined her in leaning against the fence, despite the lack of invitation.
The wind picked up a little, causing Sommers to pull her jacket tighter around her. Lachie, meanwhile, wearing only a T-shirt and his beloved black-and-white Collingwood Magpies Football Club scarf, didn't even shiver. He nudged her with his elbow and held up the scarf's end with a crooked grin.
'I'd offer you this, but I know you've got something unreasonable against the Pies, so…'
She wasn't a Collingwood fan, and by definition, that meant she did have something against the Magpies, but they were both well aware that that wasn't the reason why she'd refuse his scarf, even if she was a little chilled and it'd probably have to snow for Lachie to feel the cold.
(He was from Coldstream, the appropriately-named record-holder for coldest place in the state, and claimed to be adapted to it.)
No, Tasha Sommers was strong, tough and way more than competent.
She knew it, too, was confident in that, but young, female agent that she was, was determined to prove it.
Lachie respected that, and got it.
(Which was at least one of the reasons why she let him get away with calling her Tash in private.)
(Besides, they'd known each other for years. He might be a few years older than her, but they'd gone through training together.)
She trusted him more than anyone else, save her sister, who had no idea what her little sister's job in the Australian military actually entailed.
So, she turned to him and told him what had been gnawing on her ever since that morning, when the news of Osaka's death had broken.
'I think we have a mole.'
'Boss? Can we talk to you for a sec?'
Lachie and Sommers, seemingly returning from the break room where they'd been grabbing a cup of coffee, stopped Flint as he made his way out of his office and into the hallway.
He nodded, and led them both back into his office. Lachie and Sommers exchanged a glance, and then Sommers, never one to mince words, spoke, voice calm, serious and deadly sure.
'Parkes is a mole.'
She'd hardly finished her sentence when Flint's phone rang. He shook himself out of his shock (he'd suspected that there was a mole somewhere in Shearwater, but had thought it most likely to be someone at HQ, not one of his very own team…they'd worked together for eight months, saved each other's asses more times than he could count), and answered.
Sommers and Lachie had the (unfortunate) privilege of seeing all the colour drain out of their normally-unperturbable boss's face.
He hung up and turned back to them.
'Markov's dead. Explosion at the cannery she was checking out.' They all knew that it was no industrial accident. 'Initial forensics suggests C4.'
Whoever was hunting them wasn't doing subtle anymore.
They wanted them to know they were being taken out.
'Damn it!'
Tran, Sommers and Lachie all exchanged a glance as they saw their boss lose his cool for the very first time.
It wasn't surprising.
They'd just gotten into sight of a granary ten miles from the nearest human that Parkes had been sent to check out, to follow a lead that he'd supposedly found.
The building was going up in flames.
There were several possible conclusions.
Parkes had gotten away and set the fire as a forensic countermeasure.
The smuggling ring had decided that Parkes was a loose end that needed tying up.
Or Parkes had decided to tie up his own loose end.
Based on what she knew of the man (which was a lot, even if he'd hardly told her any of it – she was just kicking herself that she'd never noticed what he was doing, but consoled herself with her mentor's words - you always missed something), Sommers would put money on it being the last.
Hours later, when the firemen had all gone, waiting until the building cooled more to return for clean-up and investigation, under the cover of darkness, Sommers, Flint, Lachie and Tran picked their way through the burnt-out granary.
Sommers' flashlight fell on a grim sight.
A badly-burned skeleton.
'Flint, Tran, Lachie!'
Her three remaining teammates gathered around her, and after a moment of silence, Tran spoke, her voice a touch shaky.
(He was a mole. He was, indirectly, responsible for the deaths of three of their teammates. Friends.)
(But he'd been a friend too.)
'Male. Appears to be the right age and build to be Parkes.'
Sommers stepped forward, closer to the corpse, ignoring Tran's noise of protest. She carefully hooked the butt of her gun under a silvery chain that'd been partly fused to the body, pulling it up and holding it up so that the others could see the ornate cross at the end.
(Sommers knew Parkes wasn't religious. He wore that necklace at all times due to sentimental value, most likely associated with his mother, whom he had lost in early childhood.)
There was another silence. Not even Lachie attempting to crack a joke or lighten the mood.
Flint broke it this time, his voice as serious as ever.
'We have a job to do.' He turned to the three agents, the three youngest and least experienced on his team, whom he had only known for eight months. He knew they were good agents, and they'd be great ones in a few years, with more experience under their belts. They all nodded seriously in acknowledgement and agreement. They were down four. They were being hunted by someone who was far too good. They were outmatched, and time was running out. But they had a job to do – gather all the evidence needed to take down an entire smuggling operation threatening both US and Australian national security. 'Stick to the plan.'
Again, they all nodded seriously.
At the time, Sommers had had no idea that stick to the plan would be the last words Flint ever said to her.
(Looking back, years later, when it was all over, when the pain was less raw, she'd decide that he'd have liked it that way.)
At the time, she hadn't been able to feel anything.
There was no time.
Flint's dying act had been to get Tran the financial records that were one of the three gaping holes left in their evidence against the ring.
Now, she just had to follow the money.
As the young Vietnamese-Australian agent got to work, her face pale but focused, Sommers cornered Lachie outside what had once been Flint's office, and asked a question she already knew the answer to.
(She just had to hear it from him.)
'You couldn't find another way into their servers, could you?'
Lachie just shook his head.
'No.'
Tasha nodded in acceptance.
She wasn't sweet or sentimental.
(That was Lachie's job.)
Still, she reached out and hugged him tightly, relished in the feel of his arms holding her back.
It would be the last time.
'He did it!'
As she spoke, Tran was already downloading the entire contents of the smuggling ring's servers, which Lachie had sent to her using a heavily-encrypted, two-way network that he'd put together just the night before.
Sommers heard her, felt a surge of triumph and pride that he'd succeeded, but remained focused on listening to a local police radio channel, which they'd tapped into.
'…reports of gunshots, repeat, reports of gunshots, at the corner of Adams and Spencer…'
In her pocket, her phone vibrated.
She didn't look at the message. She already knew what it'd be.
Four minutes later, the police radio crackled to life again.
'…one deceased, male, brunette, blue eyes, mid-late twenties…'
Tran reached out, grasped Sommers' forearm for a moment, eyes soft and gentle and sympathetic and sorry.
'Can you…can you do it?'
She gestured with her free hand to the very short denim shorts and halter top hanging on a spare chair (there were a lot of those now).
There was still one last hole to fill.
Sommers just nodded.
'We have a job to do.'
Seduce a target, then hack their brain to get every last piece of intel out of it was one of the oldest tricks in the spy book.
It was also, quite possibly, Sommers' best trick.
She was done very quickly, and after gagging the ring's 'on-the-ground' leader, a former local petty criminal, she was copying over the audio and video file from her phone to a USB, so that she had a second copy, just in case.
That was when she got the text from Tran.
He's found HQ. Set off the security to slow him. Rendezvous 6.
Her expression returned to that grim line it'd been in nearly-permanently for days, it seemed.
Then, purposefully, she grabbed her target's keys, ignoring his muffled and incoherent sounds of protest, and strode towards his car.
Sommers pulled up at the rendezvous point, tires screeching, at the same time as Tran.
The other woman staggered out of her vehicle, clutching her side, which was seeping blood. She held out her other hand, which was also bloodied and clutching a hard drive, to Sommers.
(The hard drive held the only copy of all of their evidence on the ring. They couldn't risk sending it over a network; they didn't know how compromised the op was. The plan called for them to get it to Lucius Marlowe, a CIA agent that Flint trusted absolutely, who was currently at Puckapunyal Military Base, 120 kilometres away, due to an unrelated, classified matter.)
Sommers took it, tucked it into a pouch held close to her body, then moved to help Tran, who was very pale and weak from blood loss, still clutching her side, to the car she'd 'borrowed' from her target. They had to get moving; the assassin who was hell-bent on taking out every member of their team would be here any minute. The other woman shook her head, jerking her head towards the car she'd taken from their HQ.
'I've left 2.5 litres in there.' Sommers knew what that meant. With effort, Tran pulled her gun out of the holster at her side. 'If he gets here fast enough, I can buy you some time, but that's all.' Sommers swallowed, hesitating for a moment. She might not be sentimental or sweet or even soft, but she cared. She really, really did, and just leaving her teammate, her friend (Ellie, the woman she'd sometimes shared a bottle of wine with when they were off-duty, Ellie, who was unfailingly kind and selfless and a die-hard believer in the goodness of people and quite possibly the most intellectually-brilliant woman Tasha had ever met) here to die alone…but Tran just gave a weak nod of her head towards Sommers' stolen car. 'Go! Now!'
She did.
Without looking back.
She drove as fast as she could.
Her mind whirred even faster.
The assassin had to know that there was only one sensible route to Puckapunyal from Rendezvous Point 6.
Thankfully, she knew the route well.
That meant she knew that the best place to take her out with, most certainly, a headshot from a medium distance (efficient, unlikely to miss, and clean, preventing any chance of her taking a risk and sending out the evidence in a data dump using the 'panic button' on the specially-built hard drive in the middle of a fight), was coming up in just two clicks.
Which meant she needed to come up with a plan if she was going to get the drive to Marlowe.
Half a click from the spot, Sommers jammed the accelerator down with a couple of spent magazines, then tied the steering wheel in place with her belt.
Then, counting in her head, she scooted over the centre console and to the passenger-side door, jumping out only seconds before she reached that spot.
She landed hard and painfully on the floor of the forest beside the road, rolling to disperse her momentum and get further into cover.
Behind her, her car exploded into a fireball.
She felt the searing heat of the explosion wash over her, as well as shrapnel (in very small pieces) fly everywhere.
A rocket launcher, her brain registered dimly. A rocket launcher.
She automatically reassessed her mental profile of the assassin.
Clearly, he was some kind of narcissist with a love for drama.
She rolled further into the bush, before, a little shakily but with great determination, getting to her feet.
It'd play to her advantage.
After all, if she'd been in that car, she'd have been vaporized, or at the very least, blown to smithereens.
If the assassin bothered to verify his kill (she didn't have enough information to decide whether he would or not), it'd take him a very long time to determine (if he even could, if he'd been expecting vaporization) that she wasn't dead.
She had more time.
Tasha Sommers was bloodied and bruised and looked an absolute fright when she reached Puckapunyal. Her hair was singed and she smelled a bit like smoke and her skin was seared pink from the heat of the explosion.
She was also exhausted and dehydrated.
But she got the drive to Marlowe.
The first arrests were made within hours. Prosecutors began working on cases within days.
She spent days in debrief. One of her trainers (the one who'd told her, you always miss something) was one of the debriefers, and he made sure to emphasize how well she'd done.
Marlowe himself (he was a hard man to impress, one who rarely gave out praise, she'd determined within minutes of meeting him) had said she was a good agent.
Everyone thought so.
Tasha felt a little like she was underwater, listening to them. Like she had felt when she was four years old, in her neighbour's pool, in that sudden calm that'd settled over her after all that panic, hearing her mother's voice…
She had expected herself to reach Puckapunyal alive.
(She was Tasha Sommers. She was strong and very, very good at her job. She would finish it, no matter what.)
She'd been far less certain on reaching Puckapunyal in a state that meant she would be alive for much longer.
(All she could think of then was a dying Ellie, clutching her side, telling her to go.)
Finally, after debrief was done to both the SASR and the CIA's satisfaction, Tasha sank down on her single bed in the tiny room she'd been provided (its only saving grace was that it was private). She pulled the standard Army-issue pillow to her body, and at long last, took out her phone and opened that very last text from Lachie.
It said exactly what she'd known it'd say, but reading the words was something else.
It was like a dam broke, and she curled into herself, sobbing, deep, heart-wrenching, painful sobs, finally, finally, finally letting herself feel everything.
She remembered Lachie, with his crooked grin and perpetually messy hair, remembered how Tran – Ellie – looked at her with so much sympathy after his death, remembered how Hernandez would take it upon herself to make them chocolate-chip cookies from time to time, how Flint had taken her aside to offer some words of comfort and advice when her very first solo task had gone a touch sideways, how Osaka was the best cook of them all and the delicious meals he'd prepare whenever he had the chance, how Markov kept her toenails painted at all times and was always willing to share her nail polish, because even if they were women in a man's world, why couldn't they be girly?
She cried and cried until she couldn't anymore.
And then, she sat up slowly and took deep, shaky breaths until they weren't shaky anymore.
After that, she got up and went to the bathroom and took a very long shower, washing her face carefully, then applying a cold compress until the puffiness of her eyes went away.
She watched the water run down the drain in the sink when she washed out the towel she was using for a compress, and let herself imagine it was her pain and her grief and her guilt and her anger.
Marlowe himself handed her a copy (completely un-redacted) of the final report for Operation Shearwater.
The causalities page listed all eight agents, including Tasha Sommers.
That came as no surprise to her.
It was better for everyone to believe that Tasha Sommers was dead.
(Her sister included, as much as it would hurt. As much as she'd miss her.)
It was better if the mysterious assassin believed that he'd succeeded in his mission.
(The assassin concerned the CIA the most of everything that'd gone so wrong in this op, she knew.)
(He'd taken out seven highly-trained operatives, shamefully easily. Almost taken out the eighth.)
(And he hadn't left a single trace. They'd searched, long and hard. And come up with nothing.)
Marlowe then handed her a second file.
A new identity.
Samantha Cage. Formerly of Australia's SASR 4 Squadron, then recruited to the CIA.
She raised her head when she read that, looked up at Marlowe, looking him in the eye.
He was serious.
He was the one who broke the silence and spoke, his voice not gentle, but not unkind or unsympathetic either.
'D.C. is a long way from country Victoria.'
She looked down at the file again, remembered the water going down the drain.
(As much as she tried to visualize it, as meaningful as the symbolism was, that water was not her pain and grief and guilt and anger. Those would not be so easily washed away.)
She nodded, looked up into Marlowe's eyes again.
'I accept.'
He inclined his head, having seemingly foreseen her answer.
'Welcome to the CIA, Cage.'
She hadn't looked back.
Had buried it away, not to be unearthed until the day Murdoc had whispered those words in her ear, shot her for the first time.
Despite her best efforts, after that, she'd never been able to quite bury it that deeply again.
And then, she'd looked into his eyes that fateful Christmas…and she'd known.
In the early days of her recovery, once her medication decreased enough to clear her mind, she'd had a lot of time to think, even with Mac, Jack, Bozer, Riley and Matty's frequent visits.
She'd come to two conclusions.
Firstly, she couldn't keep running. She couldn't keep going on knowing that her beloved sister thought she was dead, or knowing that she'd never seen Lachie's grave or Ellie's grave, never paid her respects or told them she was sorry and she missed them or replied to Lachie's last text.
(It took having a family again to make her realize that. Sometimes, she really did wonder just what she'd given up in the service of two countries.)
And secondly, one day, the truth would out. Murdoc would make sure of it.
And she didn't know if she could bear the fall-out from her newfound family.
(They could say all they wanted about how she could hack minds; she wasn't always right, and honestly, she really wasn't sure they'd ever really trust her again, once they knew.)
So she'd gotten to work talking her doctors into letting her go back to Australia.
Home, she'd called it then, and realized that maybe, even after all this time, it still was.
PRESENT DAY
NOT-A-FARMHOUSE SECRET HQ
(WHAT ELSE ARE WE SUPPOSED TO CALL IT?)
SOMEWHERE IN VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA
Cage and Riley were in front of a giant screen, the blonde standing and staring at it with an evaluative gaze, the hacker seated and typing rapidly.
Cage's people had been keeping an eye on Donner and Keys from the moment they'd entered Australia. Their techs had turned over everything to Riley when she'd arrived (it was a condition of their joint op, and Cage promised they'd get over it, though she did suggest – a little tongue-in-cheek – that they buy them a round of beers when it was all over), and it appeared that the duo planned to go to ground.
Several potential sites for their hideout had been tabled.
One of them was in the middle of the Western Australian outback. At that moment, Bozer was reading a survival guide to the region written by a local Indigenous ranger and oohing and aahing at the spectacular landscape, while Jack was planning out the best possible routes for an assault on the property and complaining about having to fly another five hours there, as Mac memorized a map of the local area (which covered 500 square kilometres) and toyed with a paperclip.
Their respective focusses were all broken by Cage pointing to the latest location that'd appeared on the screen, speaking with great certainty and conviction.
'There. That's where they'll be.'
SOMEWHERE IN THE AUSTRALIAN BUSH
NEAR-ISH BALLARAT, VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA
The small wooden cabin, so similar to the cabin that Mac and Nikki had liked to spend romantic weekends away in (he supposed there were only a finite number of variations possible for a 'small, quiet, isolated wooden cabin suitable for romantic getaways') appeared deserted when they burst in, Jack and Cage at the front, guns at the ready, followed by Riley and Bozer (she with her own gun, Bozer with a very hefty tree branch), then Mac (who'd somehow whipped up a shock-stick from what looked like bits of a toaster he'd taken from HQ – Cage just knew she was going to have to explain Mac and his ways to Shaz when they got back), but it showed signs of recent habitation.
There was a pot in the fireplace, with food scraps in it that had yet to go off. There were tins that'd previously held soup in the trash can, as well as wrappers from some Hershey's kisses (unusual in Australia, hence almost-certainly brought over from the States by Donner and Keys). Off to one side, there was a sturdy wooden chair, with a roll of duct-tape and, for some reason, a red silk tie on a small table beside it.
They only just had time to come to that conclusion when suddenly, gunfire rang out, bullets coming through the windows, and reflexively, they all sought out the best cover, running into the bedroom at the back of the house, which was free of windows.
The door swung shut behind them with a rather ominous thump, as the gunfire suddenly stopped. After a moment of them all catching their breath, Jack motioned to Bozer, who was nearest him, and the two of them got up to check the door, Jack holding his weapon at the ready as Bozer tried to open it, tugging hard.
'It's locked, guys!'
Mac, Riley and Cage all exchanged a glance, and then, Mac cocked his head to the side.
'Brother, what-'
He held up his hand.
'Quiet.'
Mac listened carefully, then picked his way carefully over to the bed, taking very light footsteps, and pulled the pillows off it, revealing a bomb underneath, which he immediately began to examine.
Jack cursed. Loudly.
Bozer jerked his thumb at the older man.
'What he said.'
Riley shot him a look, and Bozer shrugged, a what? expression on his face, while Cage glanced at Mac, who was focused on disarming the bomb. He spoke without looking away from the explosive.
'See if you can get that door open.'
The ticking bomb kept counting down.
01:18.
01:17.
01:16
0:34.
0:33.
The terrifying red numbers blinked a few times, before going out with a low whirr, and Mac breathed a sigh of relief, as Bozer, Riley, Jack and Cage, still struggling with the door, sank down to the floor, leaning against the wall, Bozer and Riley on the left, Jack and Cage on the right.
'…Semi-automatics hidden in the trees, rigged to fire five minutes after the front door opens…'
Mac held up a pair of tiny sensors and a tangle of wires in his right hand, as they finished up their search of the cabin.
Jack looked up from where he was finishing up gathering samples for forensic analysis under Bozer's supervision, as Riley perched on the kitchen counter, typing rapidly. Cage walked out of the bedroom, which she'd been searching, just as Mac finished explaining the really-rather-simple device.
'We just about ready to bounce, then?' Mac nodded, and Jack let out a whoop, then scratched the side of his neck. 'Good, 'cause the local wildlife seem keen on eating me for breakfast, lunch and dinner!'
Mac gave a little smirk.
'Better you than me.' Jack glared at him, then slapped his neck as he felt the tickle of another mosquito, squashing the insect into his own flesh, which made Riley wrinkle her nose and Bozer let out a long eww. Still, Mac reached into his messenger bag and pulled out a blue bottle labelled Aeroguard Insect Repellant. Jack shot him a look, and Mac just shrugged. 'Boy Scout, remember?'
Besides, there are no fewer than twenty-three off-label uses for insect repellent. It's handy to have around.
Meanwhile, Cage just stared at the sturdy wooden chair and the table next to it, bearing the roll of duct-tape and the red tie.
NOT-A-FARMHOUSE SECRET HQ
SOMEWHERE IN VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA
As Cage walked out of the war room that they'd apparently taken over to talk to her boss, Jack leaned over, closer to Mac.
'Is it just me, brother, or has she been particularly…cagey ever since the cabin?'
Mac rolled his eyes.
'Jack, that is a terrible pun.' His face grew serious, and he nodded. 'But yeah.'
She'd been clipped, serious and utterly professional the whole drive back.
That clipped, rather enigmatic bearing reminded Mac a little bit of their very first mission together in Turkey.
Which meant that she was taking this really, really personally (which was completely unsurprisingly).
He also got the feeling that she was bothered. Unsettled. Her equilibrium (which had seemed to be, frankly, unperturbable, except for when she was at risk of drowning) was disturbed.
They'd seen, perhaps, hints of that when she'd been shot by Murdoc.
(After all, Cage had suddenly seemingly about-faced and practically disappeared to Australia, going home for the first time in years.)
(Which begged the question…at the time, had she known that Murdoc had killed her team?)
'…these are stills from the video Cage took during her interrogation of O'Donnelly.'
He was the man that she'd interrogated to fill the last gap in their brief of evidence to take down Keys, Donner and Haworth's operation.
Riley brought the stills up and let them speak for themselves.
O'Donnelly was duct-taped to a solid wooden chair, wearing a bright-red silk tie. A later image had the tie stuffed into his mouth and tied around his head as a gag.
He was also clearly sitting in a wooden cabin with a fireplace, practically identical to the cabin they'd been in just hours ago.
Jack let out a low whistle.
'No wonder she's so cagey…she saw a ghost.'
Meanwhile, Mac's brain was whirring and rapidly coming to a conclusion he really did not like.
'How did Keys and Donner know we were heading there, of all the potential sites?' He gestured at the photos on the screen. 'And how would they know about all these details? Parkes was dead by then, and Cage took that footage herself and it was never transmitted it over a network until it was verified that Parkes was the only breach. It was tightly classified and compartmentalized.' Only Marlowe had seen the tape, until the four of them, Matty and Oversight had gotten their hands on it a couple of days ago, and even then, they hadn't actually watched it, having higher priorities at the time, leaving an algorithm of Riley's to screen it instead. Mac swallowed and turned around to face Jack, Bozer and Riley. 'If you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.'
There were only five people who could possibly have both pieces of information that'd be needed to set that trap.
(While Marlowe, Oversight, Jill and Matty had or could have watched the footage, none of them were aware of the fact that they'd gone to the cabin.)
Mac himself, Jack, Bozer, Riley and Cage.
Obviously, he wasn't a mole. Jack, Bozer or Riley being a mole was also impossible.
Which left Cage.
He didn't like it, but it was the only possibility.
He watched as it sank in to his teammates.
Jack was the first one to find his voice.
'No, son, there's no way she could…all seven of 'em died!'
'Bro, I know you're, like, smarter than Sherlock Holmes, but…don't you think…I mean…you gotta be wrong sometimes, right?'
Riley was lost in thought, considering, and spoke after a moment.
'Maybe we missed something.'
Mac swallowed and nodded. He really, really hoped so.
That little bit of doubt in his head reared its ugly head again, growing ever larger.
At that moment, Cage walked back into the war room.
She looked at all four of them for just a couple of seconds (Bozer, Jack and Mac looking like they'd just been caught with their hands in the cookie jar, Riley managing to conceal her guilt better), and then spoke with vehement conviction.
'I am not the mole.'
She sounded completely, utterly genuine.
The problem, Mac thought, was that they all knew Cage was a master liar.
If she were lying, they'd never be able to tell.
She looked at them all again for a beat, before her voice grew quieter, a little weaker. Jagged around the edges, perhaps, instead of her usual smooth calm.
'Lachie, Ellie, Markov, Hernandez, Osaka, Flint…they were like family.' Her voice actually wavered a little on the last word, and she looked down, then back up at them. 'I would never get them killed.'
Mac looked her in the eye.
She could see it on his face.
He wanted to believe her.
Very, very badly.
He just wasn't sure if he could. If he should.
'…it's highly sophisticated, I've never seen anything like this…'
Riley, looking a little frustrated and even jealous, gestured to the screen, which had lines of code on it that none of Mac, Jack, Bozer and Cage could make any sense of.
It was, apparently, an expertly, incredibly well camouflaged program buried in the SASR's network that relayed extremely specific intel to an as-yet-unidentified computer.
It relayed only information containing specific keywords related to Operation Shearwater.
The specificity of it, how little intel it stole, was apparently one of the reasons why it'd escaped detection for over eight years.
'…They never used DNA to verify that the dead guy was Parkes!' Bozer gestured at his computer screen. 'Seriously, people, didn't you watch enough CSI? Always, always check the DNA!'
The identification of Parkes' corpse by Cage and her teammates had been verified using dental records (which Bozer knew could be faked with enough skill and effort and access to a corrupt dentist – he'd done a lot of research for one of his movie scripts), but not a DNA test.
Which meant that, maybe, just maybe, it wasn't impossible that Parkes was the one and only mole after all.
It wasn't impossible that he was still out there, reading the info that that program Riley had found sent out and setting them up.
Which meant…
He looked over at Cage.
They'd all been, unsurprisingly, watching her closely since Mac had channelled Sherlock Holmes.
His BFF especially.
(Bozer didn't blame him. If he were his BFF – whose ex-girlfriend had faked her death, then pretended to be evil, before revealing that she was really deep-cover CIA, with a little back-and-forth in the middle, whose boss of years had been revealed to be a bad guy, whose big-boss had turned out to be the father who'd abandoned him and not only wasn't who he thought he was, but had also been puppet-mastering his life for years, and whose new teammate, friend and member of the family and possibly someday-love-interest had lied to him about her identity – he'd have trust issues too.)
Still, Mac had relaxed a little, like they all had, when Riley had uncovered that sneaky little program, and Bozer could practically see his BFF exhaling in relief as he also glanced over at Cage.
(Seriously, sometimes he really wondered how he'd bought that Mac really just worked at a think-tank for all those years.)
(His boy had no guile, was pretty darn transparent and was an awful liar.)
The doubt, the suspicion, that she could read clear on their faces, in their eyes, in their stances, faded notably with Bozer and Riley's findings.
Cage felt lighter for it.
They didn't have that unwavering faith and loyalty for her that they had for each other.
She hadn't quite had it yet when she'd left (even Matty hadn't completely then, though she did now), but she'd been well on her way to earning it.
Now, Cage thought, it was like the beginning again. When she'd first met them all.
Then, they were willing to trust that she was on their side, that she'd have their backs in the field, based on Matty's word and her own actions.
But then, they'd also had their doubts, had some wariness.
(Unsurprisingly.)
(Especially – perhaps unexpectedly to some, but not to her – Bozer, and Mac, even if he hid it far better.)
(In fact, might have hidden it so well he didn't consciously notice.)
(She was quite sure that there was always so much going on in Mac's brain that even he couldn't keep track of it all.)
It gave her hope.
That one day, things could be more-or-less the same as they'd been before.
'Got them!'
Riley, who'd spent hours and hours trying to track down Donner and Keys, gave a cry of triumph and hit the enter key on her laptop, bringing up an image of a burned-out structure in the middle of nowhere on the big screen.
Cage sucked in a breath, and the other four all turned to face her, Jack speaking.
'That the granary?'
She nodded.
There was silence for a moment, as the paperclip in Mac's hands took the shape of a head of wheat, before Bozer spoke, breaking the tension.
'Why do all the baddies always have such a sense of poetry and drama?'
That drew snorts from everyone, even a tiny one from Cage, no more than a particularly hard exhale.
Bozer counted that as a win.
BURNED-OUT GRANARY
SOMEWHERE IN VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA
'This, brother, is why you don't bring a knife to a gunfight!' Pinned by near-constant gunfire, Mac, Jack and Cage, the latter two with their weapons at the ready, huddled behind some old metal drums. 'Especially when the other guys have semi-automatics!'
Mac was scanning the still-miraculously-mostly-intact wall of the granary behind them, taking in the blackened and charred items lining the wall.
His I-have-an-idea face appeared and he turned to Jack with a little smirk on his face, holding up his Swiss Army knife.
'I can do a lot more with this than a gun.' He gestured to a spot thirty feet away, where there was a bench with cans of something on it behind another cluster of charred metal drums. 'Cover me!'
Mac darted away as Jack turned and fired a few shots over the top of their cover, grumbling all the while about being saddled with a partner with no sense of self-preservation whatsoever.
Cage tuned it out.
(She'd learned it was best to just leave Mac and Jack to bicker. It was their admittedly slightly weird way of reminding one another in the field that the other one was there, that they weren't alone, and so, things were going to be okay, no matter what.)
Something on the opposite side of the warehouse, in the far corner, near where they'd come in but gotten pinned halfway through by Donner and Keys, caught her eye instead.
It was just a glimpse. A flash.
Of a balding head and a set of shoulders.
The head had far less hair and the shoulders were a little wider than she remembered.
But it was nonetheless familiar.
It should have been impossible.
But with the doubt Bozer had cast, with the fact that she knew she was not hallucinating…
Well, when you eliminated the impossible, whatever remained, however improbable, had to be the truth.
On autopilot, operating on instinct and training and years of experience, Cage started making her way over to that corner, ignoring Jack's groans.
'Oh, God damn it, two of 'em? Really? Cage, come on, Mac I expect it from, but I thought you were better than that!' There was the clang of a bullet striking metal. 'Oh, can it, will you! Mac, brother, hurry up!'
She followed that definitely-not-a-ghost out of the granary, tracking the footprints through the unmown grass, and into the bush.
'Hello, Tasha.'
She whirled twenty degrees to the right, her gun fixating onto Parkes' forehead, right between his eyes. His own weapon was trained between her eyes too, and he had a smirk on his face.
She looked back at him, her hands steady, gaze cool and calm.
'Parkes.'
His smirk widened, as the two of them circled one another around the clearing.
'It's been a long time since someone's called you that, eh? Do you prefer Samantha now?'
She let some of that burning anger she felt show in her eyes as she locked gazes with him.
'Why?'
They had been a team. Friends. Maybe even family.
And then he'd betrayed them.
Killed them.
Parkes' voice turned bitter.
'You remember that recruitment pitch. Save lives, serve your country, make the world a better place.' His mouth twisted into a bitter parody of a smile. 'After twenty-three years…you start seeing the patterns, the cycle. How they claim you're helping, but all you do is trigger something even worse. How the collateral damage starts adding up…' He snorted, just as jaded as his smile. 'You're not doing any good. And then, when someone offers you ten times your pension…' He shrugged. 'What're you gonna say?'
Her fingers tightened on the trigger.
How could he be so blasé? His disillusionment was at least reasonable enough to be understandable (even if she felt wholeheartedly that he was wrong), but those were the lives of their team he'd exchanged for cash.
Parkes laughed.
'Come on, Tasha. Pull the trigger. I know you've got it in you. For Hernandez. Osaka. Markov. Flint. Ellie. Lachie…'
He was taunting her.
She knew it, recognized what he was doing.
(She hadn't been wrong, after all, in the end, all those years ago, when she'd concluded he'd most likely tie up his own loose end.)
If she killed Parkes now, maybe there'd always, always be that doubt in Mac's mind, in everyone else's mind, that maybe, just maybe, he wasn't the mole, or wasn't the only mole.
Only circumstantial evidence implicated Parkes in the latest leaks, and none of it actually cleared her.
She shouldn't kill him.
He should be captured and interrogated by her boss, both former and current.
Which would clear her name, once and for all.
But even if Murdoc had pulled the trigger, even if it'd been Haworth and Keys and Donner who'd ordered it…in the end, it could have been any assassin, or any bad guy.
It'd been Parkes who'd ultimately killed them.
And she was the only one left to avenge them.
She'd spent eight years running.
The past had still caught up with her.
It was time to end it.
Once and for all.
A gunshot echoed through the trees, followed by another.
Mac and Jack glanced at one another and picked up their pace, skidding to a halt in a clearing.
There was a bullet lodged in a nearby tree.
And Cage was standing over Parkes, who was clutching his right shoulder, blood seeping through his fingers, her gun fixed on his forehead.
'You were right. I could kill you, and I'd sleep fine tonight.' She paused. 'But it's been eight years. This has to end.'
She brought the butt of her gun down on the back of Parkes' head, knocking him out, then turned on her heel, sheathing her weapon, not wanting to have to look at him any longer.
Mac offered her a little smile, sympathetic and approving, before getting to work binding Parkes' shoulder and securing his wrists. Jack gave her a smile too, clasping her shoulder for a beat.
'You did good, Cage.'
She managed to smile too.
On the way back, they stopped at a gas station so Mac could buy some supplies to clean off the stinky black gunk that coated Donner and Keys (it was a lot like the disgusting residue you got when you didn't clean your oven frequently enough), and some snacks for him to eat (as he hadn't eaten properly in days and was starving).
Cage, who was driving, turned a little in her seat to face Bozer (in the front passenger seat) and Riley and Jack (sitting in the back with Mac and the prisoners), a knowing little smile on her face.
'Who is she?' Jack and Bozer looked confused. Riley gave a knowing little smile right back, and Cage elaborated. 'The woman Mac has feelings for, which he hasn't acted on yet, despite being in deeper than he thinks for her?'
'Oh, her, why didn't you say?' Riley looked like she really wanted to face-palm at Jack's words. The older man continued, smirking and crossing his arms. 'And why don't you tell us, Ms Mind-Reader?'
She leaned back a little, studying the three of them as she ran through what she'd already determined.
'She works for the Phoenix, but started after I returned home. She's support staff, not field…and not admin, HR or wardrobe…' She studied Jack for a beat. 'Either an analyst or medical…no, definitely medical.'
Jack let out a low whistle, as Bozer clapped, and then, the older man spoke.
'You haven't lost your touch, Cage.' A soft, fond smile grew on Jack's face, which made Cage give a little smile too. Mac's relationship with his biological father was even rockier than it'd been when she'd left now, but it was nice to see that his relationship with Jack was just as strong and loving as ever. 'And her name's Beth. She's a sweetheart, most of the time. Sometimes a spitfire.'
Bozer chipped in.
'And the only doctor my bro will listen to.' He affected a disbelieving tone. 'Sometimes, he's actually almost a good patient for her!'
Cage's smile widened a little more, as she arched an eyebrow, even though she knew what Bozer said was true.
Sure, Mac had an obvious weakness for beautiful and intelligent women, but making him an almost-good patient was something she'd never expected anyone to actually be able to do.
(He was that bad.)
(The time he'd been poisoned with VX gas, she'd gotten a phone call not ten minutes after she'd left the hospital, reporting that he'd been caught just inside the front entrance, trying to escape.)
CAGE'S APARTMENT
OUTSKIRTS OF NORTH-WESTERN MELBOURNE
VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA
Her apartment was all sleek, clean, modern lines, with a touch of industrial, reminiscent of her place in LA.
There were few decorations or knick-knacks or clutter, save for a cluster of framed photos on a sideboard.
One of a teen Cage and her sister, a girl who looked a few years older and an awful lot like Cage, just with light brown hair and a slightly curvier figure.
One of Cage with her sister and a man they assumed was her husband, as well as a boy and a girl of about six and four respectively. Cage's niece and nephew, surely.
And there was another photo of Cage, looking eight or nine years younger, leaning her head against the chest of a sandy-haired young man with vivid blue eyes and a crooked grin. He had his arms wrapped around her waist, his head tucked over her shoulder, and both of them were grinning at the camera, looking young and happy and carefree and very much in love.
They recognized him.
Her former teammate, Lachie. Her deceased former teammate.
Mac, Jack, Bozer and Riley all turned to her, silent for a moment, trying to come up with a respectful way to ask.
In the end, they didn't have to, because she just nodded, a sad, wistful smile on her face, and took the photo from Mac, looking down at it for a beat, before setting it down carefully back into its place.
Eventually, Jack broke the silence.
'No wonder you don't date people you meet at work.'
Cage shook her head, brushing a speck of imaginary dust off the glass.
'I've had that rule ever since I was fifteen and stacking shelves at my local supermarket.' She paused, still looking at the photo. 'I broke it for him.'
'I'm sorry.'
Cage closed the fridge door (there wasn't enough to feed five in there that was suitable for eating; she hadn't been home for over a week), and looked up at Mac, who was standing next to the fridge, fiddling a little awkwardly with his hands.
(They were alone in the kitchen; Bozer, Jack and Riley were sitting on the couch on the other side of the great room, watching an early pre-season AFL game on TV, loudly bickering about the rules, which none of them actually understood.)
She shook her head, understanding on her face.
'It's alright, Mac. In your position, I'd have done the same.'
Even she agreed it hadn't looked all that good for her after that trap at the cabin.
He shook his head vehemently. Guiltily. Automatically, he pulled a paperclip out of his pocket, beginning to unwind it.
'No, you…you were family.' Cage had earned it. She shouldn't have been doubted the way he had, not without concrete evidence, not when there was evidence to the contrary, even if it wasn't quite concrete. 'You shouldn't treat family like that.'
They were silent and still for a beat, before she nodded and shot him a teasing little smile.
'There's one way you can make it up to me. Make sure Mom lets the family come visit Cousin Cage in Australia once in a while.'
Mac chuckled and nodded, the paperclip in his hands now in the shape of a boomerang, before he gave an awkward half-shrug of his left shoulder, growing more serious.
'Guess you aren't really the girl next door anymore…'
Cage nodded, something wry and teasing but also a touch regretful, maybe even sad, appearing on her face.
'I'm just a little too far away now…'
They stood there in comfortable silence for a while, that last little bit of tension between them dissolving, and then Mac held his arms up for a hug.
'We'll visit, I promise.'
Cage smiled and hugged him back, just as tightly.
CAGE'S FAVOURITE PUB
OUTSKIRTS OF NORTH-WESTERN MELBOURNE
Jack enthusiastically raised his forkful of chicken parma (a chicken schnitzel covered in tomato sauce, ham and melted cheese and served with chips and salad) to his mouth, then talked with his mouth full (earning a disgusted look from Riley, which quickly turned into a shared look of commiseration and exasperation with Cage).
'This is amazing! It's a pizza and a schnitzel in one!'
Bozer, who was digging into a beef burger that had beetroot on it for some reason, as well as a fried egg (he wasn't complaining, it was delicious – he was totally inspired!), looked sceptically at him, while Mac raised an eyebrow at his partner dubiously, washing down his mouthful of fish and chips with a sip of beer.
'I'm not sure that consolidating them into one easy-to-manage meal is a good idea…'
AN: Woo…that was a crazy ride to write! I got stuck partway through, when I started writing the 'flashback' section. I hope you guys liked how I dealt with this storyline, and my characterization of Cage and the backstory I've given her – I've always found writing her difficult, but I really, really wanted to do this. If you're a regular reader of my work, you'll know that I am really not Cage's biggest fan, but I really didn't like how her character was written out of the show, especially with the hints they dropped about her past and what they were building between her and Mac (which I have never really liked, but that's a whole other story) – she pretty much disappeared completely! I might not have liked her all that much, but she deserved better. I wanted there to be a reason she left Australia and didn't go home for years that also served as a good reason for her to suddenly go back, and I hope this was a good one!
I also hope you guys liked the little glimpses into Australian life – yes, it really is true that Angus is a common name here; I've known seven or eight, a friend graduated high school with four, and we have at least three AFL footballers and two military commanders with that first name, off the top of my head! Mac's last line in this ep is a little in-joke for Australians – we have an ad here for Latitude Finance personal loans staring Alec Baldwin, who says something about the parma being a pizza and a schnitzel consolidated into one easy-to-manage meal.
There'll be an episode tag for Detours for this ep. It's called Souvenir, and here's the summary:
Cage takes the team shopping for tacky souvenirs in the downtime they've got between their really long debrief and really long flight home. Or, Riley can do romance too, Diane is one lucky woman and a sheep called Pythagoras.
I think it'll be up on Tuesday or Wednesday.
And here's the press release for the next episode:
3.15, (Safe)House to Home. The team must retrieve the illegitimate son and daughter of the US ambassador to Colombia, who are being held hostage by their mom. Meanwhile, Cassian is brought to the Phoenix, and Diane, Jill and Beth confront Matty.
Thoughts in 3.01, Improvise: Oh, wasn't that a ride! I really enjoyed that – I love how Mac Mac was in the ep, with his banter with Jack and their bromance and the way he saved his dad's life at great risk to his own without any thought whatsoever (and then dramatically handed him his knife and refused to talk to him) and how he came back for Jack but is returning to Nigeria for love (but as we can all guess from the end of that ep, he's never going back for good…poor Nasha and poor Mac), though I kinda want to knock both MacGyvers upside the head (like I think Matty, Jack and Nasha all want to) and tell them to just sit down and have a chat. They really, really need to do that – problem is, James is still a bit of an ass who refuses to understand/accept that Mac is behaving somewhat reasonably, all things considered, and that he really has to start again with him instead of doing the whole I'm your dad thing, while Mac is stubborn and hurt and won't give an inch, because he's Mac. Jack was also great in this ep; I do love how he decided to chase Walsh down so that very convoluted chain of events would happen (so Jack!). I also really liked the chat Matty and James/Jim had at the end – their dynamic is very interesting, especially with what James let slip about hiring Bozer (though that's a continuity error, since Thornton hired him…I guess the first time probably didn't count though, since she was a traitor and all…). I like Bozer/Leanna better this season, their dynamic seems better, though Leanna is kinda like 'new Cage' right now? (I mean, with the chopper and the badass scene at the start – though Bozer's reactions are great!). Nasha is now officially my second-favourite canon love interest for Mac of all time – she had so little screen time, but I really like the way she implicitly understands Jack and Mac's relationship, and that she nudges him to talk to his dad, and the fact that she seems to get and accept that the world needs Mac, that she has to share him with the world but doesn't doubt his feelings (she doesn't ask for promises, but gives him a reminder to come back, and she's so happy when he tells her he is returning). (Seriously, why do I always like the ones that he can't possibly have a future with?) (In fact, I liked them so much I wrote an episode tag centered on their relationship - check it out, it's called The One Who Makes Magic!). I get what they're trying to do – Mac's definitely going to have some kind of voiceover about sacrifices at some point, and possibly maybe even a chat with his dad about having to leave people you love. I'm also really hoping that Jill isn't really dead, but I think that she probably is…