Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Mac hated airport security. Not for himself, he tended to travel light and get through it just fine. He knew how the machines worked. What would look suspicious on the x-rays, what would light up on the body scan, and he could avoid any issues nine times out of ten. No, travelling alone he was just fine with it, it was traveling the others that was a nightmare.

Jack was seemingly on the verge of fisticuffs over body scan issues — probably due to having more metal than bones — and Riley’s bag had been pulled for a bag check because its sheer abundance of electronic and computer parts probably made it look like a damn bomb.

Mac was grumpily calculating how fast he could have been through security and buying obscenely overpriced food if he’d been on his own and not behind a couple nightmare travelling companions, when he got gestured over by one of the TSOs. Great, of course he was the one who got pulled for a random pat down. Riley shot him a commiserating look as he was led aside, and he rolled his eyes at her.

God, after this was all over he was going to beg Matty to let them fly private even off-mission which was definitely an order she might grant and not complete wishful thinking.

Mac would kick himself later. He was too preoccupied feeling pissy, too distracted running through anything that might have made him stand out to be called for a pat-down, and too wrapped up in a civilian mindset that he noticed just a little too slow.

The TSO’s eyes flickering to the side as they entered the room. The fact he didn’t have any gloves on. The barrel of a gun landing against Mac’s temple the moment the door clicked shut behind him.

“Hello, Macgyver.” A sing-song voice called, sounding giddily pleased with himself.

Mac’s blood went cold, far more from the voice than from the gun.

“Murdoc.” He replied, voice coming out flat. Reluctantly he half raised his hands. Across the room, the TSO was doing the same, eyes screaming a silent apology at Mac.

Murdoc rounded in front of Mac, barrel of his pistol gliding across his head from temple to forehead.

“It’s been so long since we’ve had a chance to play.” Murdoc let out a theatrical sigh, but he could not fully erase his elated grin. “You keep cutting our little dates short, it’s making me think you don’t even like me.”

“What do you want?” Mac resisted the urge to raise his voice. Even if he could raise his voice enough for the others to hear him across a busy airport and react, the time it would take Murdoc’s finger to squeeze the trigger was astronomically smaller than the time it would take them to get to him. Just like last time, it seemed like he’d have to get out of this one on his own.

“Let’s start with a little stroll.” Murdoc tapped the gun against Mac’s forehead. There was that gleam in his eyes that Mac had learned to hate, the gleam like Mac was a particularly engrossing insect to pull the legs off of. “I just abhor airports, don’t you?”

***

Murdoc had to have had some external leverage on the TSO, because the man remained quietly compliant while Murdoc kept his gun levelled on Mac throughout. They took a back exit, and Murdoc masked his gun inside a duffel bag he hung off his right shoulder. To a casual onlooker it would look like he was just reaching for something in his bag, but Mac could feel the hard barrel poke into the small of his back through the fabric every now and again as a pointed reminder to not try anything.

They got to Murdoc’s car. The TSO drove, Mac was sat in the passenger seat while Murdoc lounged in the back, gun easily propped up and aimed at Mac.

They’d barely pulled out of the parking lot when Mac’s phone started ringing.

Mac wasn’t stupid enough to try to reach for it himself. Murdoc leaned forwards, retrieving Mac’s phone from his pocket.

Mac hoped that the theatrical side of Murdoc would prompt him to answer it, but instead he just snapped it and tossed it out the window. Mac resisted the urge to sigh.

Mac glanced over at the TSO officer. His face was set grimly and he stared forwards at the road.

“What’s your name?” Mac asked quietly. He couldn’t go quiet enough to not be overheard by Murdoc, but it was at least enough to soften his tone.

The TSO glanced nervously over his shoulder at Murdoc.

“Go ahead.” Murdoc said patronizingly, as if he was talking to a child or a dog. “Introduce yourself, it’s the polite thing to do.” He gave Mac a mock commiserating look. “People are so rude nowadays, aren't they?”

Mac pointedly ignored Murdoc.

The TSO’s gaze jumped forwards again to the road. “Anthony.”

“I’m Angus, but since that’s an awful name everyone calls me Mac.”

A faint ghost of a smile touched Anthony’s lips. “My condolences.”

“Now now.” Murdoc tutted from the back. “I think Angus is a perfectly fine name.”

The hint of a smile instantly vanished from Anthony’s face.

Mac focused on keeping an elusive calm. He kept talking casually. “How long have you worked in airport security?”

“Seven years now.” Anthony spoke tentatively, but agreeably.

“What’d you do before that?”

“I was in the military.”

“Really? I was an EOD tech in the army, Afghanistan.”

“Air Force. Just fixed up the planes, nothing as adventurous as that.” Anthony paused, nervously drumming his fingers on the wheel. “People like you saved a lot of lives.”

“I’d argue that keeping planes in the sky is something a lot of people should be grateful for too.”

“You two are just too cute.” Murdoc somehow managed to sound almost genuine, in a mocking sort of way.

Anthony pressed his lips together briefly. “Do you have a family, Mac?” He looked like he instantly regret asking. Mac didn’t blame him, it would make things a lot easier if you didn’t humanize the guy you’d helped kidnap. Mac was in a similar boat. The chances of either one of them escaping this alive were poor, and the chances of Mac not only escaping but also getting Anthony out were even worse. Still, the option to only worry about himself in this situation was a luxury he couldn’t afford. Anthony was just an unlucky outsider who’d gotten dragged into Murdoc’s and Mac’s game of cat and mouse. He didn’t deserve any of this.

“Not blood family, but a good group of friends.” Mac forced himself to answer eventually. This rapport was important, because Mac needed this guy on his side for if and when he got the chance to act. “You?”

“Glad you asked.” Murdoc interupted, leaning forwards between the seats. His gun jabbed into Mac’s side. “Tony here has a lovely little girl. Don’t you, Tony? What was her name again?” There was an extra sinister tone to Murdoc’s voice that made Mac’s stomach sink. Murdoc had leverage, Anthony had a kid. Sometimes puzzle pieces weren’t pretty when they fit together.

Anthony jaw tightened, but when he spoke it was in a hushed, helpless, whisper. “Her name is Ellen.”

Mac felt vaguely like he’d just been socked in the gut hearing his mother’s name, especially in such a grim context. Murdoc’s broad grin told him that it wasn’t coincidental.

“How old is she?” Mac lost his casual tone.

“Eleven.”

Mac didn’t have any follow-up questions. It was a long, silent, drive from there.

Eventually they were out of the city, then they hit the middle of nowhere. They were out in the southwestern US, so ‘middle of nowhere’ meant dirt, rocks, dried out shrubbery, and scattered cacti.

Murdoc had Anthony pull off the road on some dusty, mostly nonexistent off-road.

The trail only got bumpier and rougher as time trickled by, and Mac was was practically holding his breath for one of the tires to pop by the time Murdoc finally ordered them to stop.

The silence that followed when Anthony turned the car off was deafening. For a long few seconds the only thing Mac could hear was his pulse thundering in his ears. Murdoc was milking the tense silence, Mac was sure of it.

“Get out, both of you.” Murdoc ordered eventually. His voice was smooth with the lazy confidence of someone who knew they were in complete control of the situation. Mac hated it, but there wasn’t exactly anything he could do to knock that smugness out of Murdoc at the moment.

Anthony and Murdoc shared one glance. Mac wasn’t sure exactly what message they were trying to send each other through it. ‘I’m here’? Maybe? Or ‘the hell’s he up to now?’, either way it only lasted a second before they silently got out of their respective sides of the car.

Murdoc got the keys from Anthony, and started using the gun to gesture each of them into position like they were actors he needed to set up just right.

“So what now?” Mac asked finally. His throat was dry, and it was hard to keep his tone an annoyed sort of apathetic. “You just shoot me? I have to say you’re not quite living up to your reputation, I thought you’d have a little more finesse.”

“Don’t jump the gun, Macgyver.” Murdoc chided. “You really think I’d just do a simple gun to the head execution? You hurt me.” He laid a hand over his heart and pouted. “No, let’s make this a bit more interesting. Tony, dear, get over here.”

Anthony hesitated, before slowly walking closer to Murdoc. Murdoc twirled his finger when he got close enough, and Anthony pivoted obediantly towards Mac.

“Here.” Murdoc loomed behind Anthony like some dark-clothed spectre before grabbing his wrist and slapping his own gun into it.

Anthony didn’t move, didn’t even grip the gun until Murdoc curled his own fingers over his to force him to hold it.

“Shoot him.” Murdoc ordered imperiously.

Anthony didn’t move, just stared down at the gun in his hand blankly. His eyes were shrouded in shadow due to the harsh sunlight, and Mac couldn’t make out his expression.

“Fine, I’ll even aim it for you.” Murdoc switched his grip down to Anthony’s wrist and let out a put upon sigh as he swung the gun up to aim at Mac’s forehead. They were maybe fifteen feet away, not close enough to attempt to duck out of the way, not far enough to miss.

Mac’s heart stuttered an uneven rythm. For a second he couldn’t breathe as he looked into the eyes of the man with an eleven year old daughter.

Agonizing seconds trickle by. Anthony’s hand started to shake. Murdoc’s, of course, didn’t.

Then Anthony’s face crumpled into something pained but certain. His voice came out in a cracked rasp. “I won’t.”

“Pity.” Murdoc returned disinterestedly. Mac could barely see his other hand as it disappeared into his long black coat.

A gunshot went off, blood splattered across the dirt between Mac and Anthony, and Anthony’s body followed it only seconds later.

Mac’s heart dropped out of his body, ears ringing, but instinct kicked in regardless and he lunged towards Anthony’s body, grabbing for the gun the TSO had refused to fire that had fallen with him.

Mac’s hands wrapped around the handle of the gun. He hadn’t touched one, at least not with the purpose of firing it, since he’d been forced to in basic training, but point, center mass, and shoot was simple.

The gun clicked empty.

Mac’s heart stopped, and Murdoc started laughing. It was a deliriously hearty laugh, like he couldn’t help it, like he’d been holding it in for too long.

“Ohhhhh, can’t say I was expecting that from you. Guns really aren’t your MO.” Murdoc mimed wiping a tear. His second gun, the one he’d used to shoot Anthony, was held carelessly by his side. “This is too good.”

“You gave him an empty gun.” Mac said stupidly. Another realization hit him. “You were holding an empty gun on me for hours.”

“Well of course I couldn’t give him a loaded gun, silly.” Murdoc patronized. “I’d’ve had to risk him being the one who got to kill you. No one gets that honor except me.”

All of the sudden, with the copper of blood and sweetness of brain matter hanging in the air, Mac was angry. Far angrier than he was scared. He scrambled to his feet. “The hell are you waiting for then?”

“What, you expect me to kill you now?”

“What else do you want?” It came out more like an entreaty than Mac wanted. Yet another innocent person had died to Murdoc’s fucked up game, and that fact made it feel like his chest had been hollowed out. At least if it all ended now, that wouldn’t happen again.

“To even out the score of course.” Murdoc said, as if it was somehow obvious. “You’ve escaped me twice, once the first time I came after you, and then again. No matter how many times I grab you you seem to slip right out of my grasp. I’m humiliated to admit that the score is an apalling 2:0 at the moment. If I kill you now, that’ll only bring it up to a 2:1, wouldn’t it? We can’t have that, even in death you’d hold one over me forever.”

“You’re insane.” Mac snapped.

Murdoc’s gun swung down, quick and precise, and fired once.

A searing pain punched through Mac’s leg and with a shout that was almost more surprised than pained, he crumbled onto his side.

The shot had gone through the outside of his thigh. A graze, technically, but it still hurt like hell. Mac scrabbled to press firm pressure with both hands onto his thigh

“I. Won. Don’t be such a sore loser, Angus.” Murdoc emphasized firmly. “2:1. Until next time.”

“There won’t be a next time.” Mac grit out.

Murdoc didn’t bother to reply to that, just chuckled to himself as he strolled back to the car.

Mac squeezed his eyes shut as the sound of a car door slamming shut rang through the air, followed by the sound of the car bouncing away down the rocky road. After the sound had faced away, he let his head drop back to rest on the hot sand.

He blew out a shaky sigh. “Fuck.”

Chapter Text

Mac wasn’t answering his phone. Riley and Jack had been lingering just past security for over an hour waiting for him to get through.

“Do you think he slipped us?” Riley had asked the same question about half an hour ago, but this time it was less wry and more genuine.

“Maybe.” Jack returned, a little doubtfully. “But he’d answer his texts at least, so we wouldn’t worry.”

“Unless his phone died.” Riley pointed out. “He’s probably just enjoying a nice, peaceful, meal without us.”

Technically Riley was right, but Jack had a bad gut feeling about this one, and he’d learned to not overlook those. “Can you track his phone?”

“On it.” Riley’s response was immediate, quickly dropping her nonchalant ‘he’s probably fine’ demeanor. Jack had to bite back a smile. Of course they were on the same page. She’d been in their line of work long enough to develop at least a shadow of Jack’s paranoia. “But I’m going to be pissed if it pinpoints his location in the food court.”

Pissed and relieved. Jack mentally amended for the both of them.

After a minute or two, Riley’s face fell. “That’s… odd. His phone is either bricked or broken.”

“Not dead?”

“No, I could still track it if it was.”

Two things hit Jack almost at once as her words fell like the final nails in the coffin. A cold chill of pure dread, and then a numbing wave of pure, practical, purpose.

He stood up abruptly, limbs moving mostly on autopilot. “I’m going to talk to airport security. Call Matty.”

***

The next couple hours were agonizing. With Matty at their back, Jack and Riley got access to the camera tapes. Knowing what had happened was good in a grimly practical sort of way, seeing it happen was horrifying.

Riley watched Jack’s side profile in her periphery while the mostly top-down camera played out the scene like the shittiest silent movie in existence.

She watched the tension ratchet up through Jack’s body when Murdoc swept into view and put a gun against Mac’s head. She watched the silent panic screaming from his otherwise blankly calm and collected expression.

He reached out and paused the recording the moment Murdoc and Mac swept out of view of the camera, both of their expressions mainly hidden from the topdown view.

“Get me something to go off, Riles.” Jack said finally, simply, voice sounding a little like it was ripping at the seams. “Just get me somethin’.”

“Ok.” Riley said with equal simplicity. It was a big ask, and the weight of what felt like the world settled on her shoulders. She knew that, and Jack knew that too, but he just gave her a curt nod and left the room to do who the hell knew what.

Riley took a long, centering breath, settled her fingers softly over the keys, and got to work.

***

Mac’s first objective was to stop the bleeding. Aside from the obvious downsides of bloodloss, he also just couldn’t afford the dehydration of it out in the arid heat. He didn’t  even have a complimentary bottle of water, apparently Murdoc had faith in him getting out of this one just fine without it. Mac couldn’t help but wonder if that faith was misplaced. Once applying pressure with just his hands for ten or fifteen minutes managed to slow the bleeding to a sluggish trickle, he switched to a more permanent solution. He used his SAK to cut his sleeves off into two long strips, and used them to wrap his thigh, starting from just above the knee and going up, putting a twist into it whenever he passed it over the injury.

It hurt. He tried to detach from the pain, detach from the fact it was his own leg he was wrapping and not someone else’s, but he was still nauseous by the time he was done.

He rubbed his bloodied hands off on his jeans when he was done, but in the oppressive dry heat most of the blood had already dried uncomfortably onto his fingers. He gave up, it was hardly his biggest problem.

He shuffled, slightly reluctantly, over to Anthony’s body. It was still fairly warm from the heat of the environment, and if Mac avoided looking at his head he could almost pretend he wasn’t searching the pockets of a corpse.

There was no phone, but Mac took Anthony’s wallet. Since he didn’t know what was going to happen to the body, being able to bring identification and a report of his death to the authorities seemed like the least he could do. Plus, there was a small, crinkled, photo of a grinning blonde girl in it that Mac didn’t feel remotely ok with leaving to the teeth of wild animals. It was an illogical thing to get hung up on — it wasn’t half as grim as leaving an actual body to that fate — but since Mac couldn’t do anything about the body in his current condition, it served as a poor sort of consolation. He tucked the wallet into his breast pocket, the least bloodied place he could find, and forced himself to move past Anthony’s body and back to his own immediate survival.

There were two ways out of this situation in Mac’s assessment. Either he had to establish communication with help, or he had to get back to civilization himself. Considering the equipment he had consisted of his SAK and the clothes on his back, the communication option was quick to be tossed out the window. Jack liked to claim Mac could pull off miracles, but he couldn’t make something out of nothing.

So it was down to the second option, but Mac was hesitant to just start walking back along the road. For one, he couldn’t rule out the possibility of Murdoc lying in wait for him. The assassin was nothing if not dangerously unpredictable. For another, the journey had taken hours in the car, so it would take far more time walking in the sun, without water or sustenance, on an injured leg. If he cut a straight shot across the fairly flat and traversable desert he might stand a better chance. There wasn’t much of a downside either, it wasn’t like he had much less of a shot of running into a vehicle willing to stop for a bloodied hitchhiker this far out.

Mac tried to find something to support some of his weight, but he ended up just having to keep his eyes out as he set off. Everything seemed to be scrawny and brittle out here. His first attempt half an hour later was a cholla cactus skeleton. It was appreciably straight, but a little too short and the hollowness made it brittle enough to break after a few minutes. He’d been leaning a little too hard on it at the time, and his knees hit the ground before he could rebalance. It took a little more time, and a lot more effort to get up than he was comfortable admitting. Some time later he found a scraggly black branch from one of the rare few trees in the area. He had to wrap his hand with another scrap from his shirt to keep it from digging into his hand, and it was a little heavier than optimal, but he was able to lean on it a lot more and it didn’t snap.

Hours trickled past. The sun bore down unrelentingly on him. His eyes ached from the brightness, his shirt clung to him with sweat, and he was sure he was going to be pretty badly sunburnt by the end of this. More concerning than those, was his awareness of how much desperately needed water he was loosing with every desperate drop of sweat. He felt a little like one of those ‘a spherical tank of water with so-and-so dimensions is losing water at such-and-such rate…’ that he’d had to learn to solve in calculus. He didn’t bother doing the math, it served no purpose. Absently he scanned for compass cacti to stay his course, squat little bulbs with their thorns curving indomitably south, back where he’d come from, as if they were taunting him over what he left behind. Go back, their crooked fingers beckoned, go back and bury the man you failed to save.

“I couldn’t.” Mac swallowed as his voice cracked over the dry words, path forewards stalling as he wavered in place. His voice dissolved into a sore rasp. “I can’t. The ground is too hard here, I-I’d need a pickaxe, I—” He stopped himself abruptly with another dry swallow. He closed his eyes.

God. He was already getting delirious.

He opened his eyes, the bright bite of the sun making him grimace, and he started limping forwards again.

Just a little further. He lied to himself. One foot in front of the other.

Chapter Text

Riley got Jack more than something. She got him a license plate, a car, and scattered data from traffic cams across the city once she finished writing a code to sift through the mountain of data from thousands of different cameras. The latest and furthest out camera caught a blurry car leaving out into the desert with three occupants. Hours later it caught the same car returning with only a single occupant.

“We’ll send teams out to cover the area.” Matty was talking. She was calling in from Pheonix headquarters, and Riley and Jack were crammed into a little room they’d gotten  cordoned off for them. It felt suffocating to Jack, knowing he should be anywhere but here. Matty’s words were slowly drowning out into a buzzing tinnitus. “While our teams are enroute we have gotten local authorities involved…”

It was far too big an area. If Murdoc had hidden Mac away, he’d hidden him well. And if he hadn’t… well, no search and rescue team would make a difference at that point.

Jack felt… honestly he didn’t know how he felt. Just bad. The closeness of it was going to make him go insane. Mac had been right there, rolling his eyes at Jack and Riley’s shenanigans, mentally preparing himself for a long, dull, flight… close enough to touch. Then he wasn’t, and Jack had stood around with his thumb up his ass for hours while Mac slowly got further and further away.

Mac was out of Jack’s reach now, probably somewhere in a vast, desolate, expanse of desert, maybe tied up in an underground bunker drugged out of his mind, maybe… maybe even worse. Or maybe Murdoc was trying to trick them once again, returning with Mac in the trunk in the guise of returning emptyhanded. The convoluted loops the psychopath would put them through required untangling that only Mac ever seemed to have a chance at unraveling.

For Jack, there was only one clear way to get to Mac now — and it was through Murdoc.

Jack stood up abruptly, cutting off Matty in a move that would probably have gotten him smacked if she’d been there in person. “Riley. Can you track Murdoc’s car down?”

Riley glanced hesitantly between a stone-faced Matty and Jack. “Yeah? I mean, he could have switched cars but I’ll do my best.”

“If he ditches the car we can look for reports of stolen cars in the area he was last seen with it in.” Matty supplied, apparently aggravated at being interupted, but not letting anything distract her from their objective. “But Jack, if we locate him you can not go after him alone. I have a TAC team enroute—“

Jack reached forwards and switched off the monitor, cutting Matty off into a black screen. Riley looked at him as if he was insane. He probably was.

“Call me when you have a location.” Jack clapped Riley on the shoulder and walked out the room. She didn’t say anything in response, and there was a wide-eyed, uncertain, look in her eyes — but Jack knew she’d call him when she got a location.

Matty started calling him by the time he reached the parking lot. Jack didn’t pick up, just got in his car and then onto the road. He had a lot of distance to make up, and he needed a gun.

***

Mac took a break the moment he saw a hint of shade, a jagged rock casting a shadow large enough for Mac to slide into. The sand under him and the rock behind him were still hot, but it felt heavenly to not have the sun beating down on him. The sun was starting its slow descent towards the horizon, which was both a boon and a curse. A boon because once night hit it would start to cool down which was wonderful for a variety of reasons, and a curse because if he didn’t make it to civilization by nightfall he’d probably have to hunker down until sunrise to avoid getting lost in the dark. At that point he’d have to find water somehow, he couldn’t survive two days without water, especially not when he was losing it at such an alarming rate. His best bet would probably be to try to reach help before nightfall, which meant he should’ve gotten up ten minutes ago.

It was stupid. Mac had survived worse, had persisted through slimmer odds and crueler conditions, but right now he didn’t want to get up.

A small shadow of his usual logic piped up that it was the tax of heat exhaustion and sun exposure wearing at him, the he needed to mind-over-matter his way forwards. But his mind couldn’t help but wonder if it mattered. If he staggered his way out of this one, how much of a respite would Murdoc give him before just coming back to finish him off? He didn’t feel like the score was 2:1, like he’d won in any of their encounters, he felt like a spider getting its legs twisted off one-by-one to entertain Murdoc’s sadistic itch. He was tired. Tired of getting shot and drugged and tied up, tired of his friends having to ride the wake of that chaos, and mostly he was tired of people like Anthony who kept dying from it. If he got out of this one, would he just keep living like a toy on the shelf until Murdoc felt like playing with him again?

Murdoc wanted him to painstakingly claw his way out of this one, and a weary, petulant, part of Mac craved robbing him of that satisfaction.

Mac let his head loll back, resting it against the rock holding him up.

You think too much. The rock hummed against the wind, sounding a little like Jack. One foot in front of the other.

Mac got up.

***

An hour later Jack had reached the last place Murdoc’s car had been seen, so he pulled over to the side of the road until he could hear from Riley. It was a small, fringe, road, asphalt cracked and greyed, and few cars passing by.

Jack leaned back against the side of his car, the gun tucked into the back of his waistband pressing against the small of his back.

It was hot and dry today. Mac hated the heat, always sweating like hell, looking miserable, and futzing with the air conditioning in the car. Jack usually cracked a few jokes at his expense. Right now it didn’t feel too funny.

It was about half an hour more before Riley finally called him. In that time Jack just stood with his back against the car. The scenery of the desert had burned into his eyes, and his clothes clung uncomfortably to his body with sweat.

“The local authorities found a body out in the desert. Male.” Riley opened with that before even a greeting, quick and flat as if she just wanted to get the news out before it burned a hole through her mouth. “Gunshot wound to the head, partly mummified and no ID so they haven’t conclusively identified it yet.”

All the restless, uneasy, thoughts in Jack’s head faded, blurring into a incessant ringing.

When Jack didn’t respond, Riley kept speaking, voice gaining a strained, reassuring tone. “Murdoc had two people with him. It might have been the other guy. He’s shot his hired help before, right?”

Jack finally spoke. “Did you pinpoint Murdoc’s location?”

“Jack…” Hesitant, scared. Normally Jack would have cared about that, but the ringing was drowning out everything else.

Jack was silent. He waited. A trickle of sweat dripped down his neck to his collarbone. His gaze didn’t shift from the horizon.

“Yes.” Riley gave up, finally. “Will you wait for the TAC team?”

Jack didn’t answer that either. Riley knew the answer already.

The silence stretched. Riley caved first and gave him the location.

Jack hung up, stepped around his car, slid into his seat, and started driving again. He turned off his phone when it wouldn’t stop buzzing.

***

Night fell, and it fell hard. The light from the stars barely illuminated the stark silhouettes of looming saguaros, and the branches of the sparse scraggly trees formed black outlines like splintered glass against the marginally lighter sky.

The second time Mac stumbled into a stubby cactus and had to pull spines out of his foot he decided to stop for the night. But first, he needed water.

There were a few ways to find water in a desert, none of them were particularly efficient. Digging was an obvious one, given he could find a good spot, but the effort and water lost doing it made it almost worthless in the short-term. Dew wouldn’t accumulate until morning, and — in the darkness — trying to stumble upon a hollow of water that had survived throughout the blistering day didn’t sound like a great use of his time and energy. In the end, he settled on collecting prickly pear fruit. Digging into random cacti was more likely to be hazardous than helpful, but the prickly pear fruit was one he could vaguely recall as safe to eat.

Unfortunately, they weren’t exactly safe to grab. In the dark the fruit themselves appeared spineless, but when he tentatively grabbed one, he got unnumerable tiny slivers in his fingers that he had to use his SAK to help remove. Glochids, his brain belatedly recalled. Jack would have probably come up with a cruder name for them if he’d been there.

For Mac’s next attempt he sawwed off the bottom few inches of one of his jean legs and used the denim as a glove to handle the fruit. He still ended up getting stabbed a couple times throughout cutting and peeling several fruits, but the sheer heavenly sensation of eating the juicy fruit made all the fumbling in the dark and quiet swears worth it. They were surprisingly sweet, and Mac decided that if he survived this he’d need to try them again to see if it was the delirious thirst talking or if they were actually good.

After Mac had done as much peeling as he could take, he swept aside the top layers of the sand to the slightly cooler deeper layers and tried to settle into at least a restful doze. He didn’t have anything to create a proper shelter with, so he had to deal with sand sticking to his sweat-slicked skin and the dull discomfort of sleeping on the ground.

In the morning I’ll get to civilization and take the longest shower known to man. Mac promised himself. He was feeling envigorated by finally eating, and knew he needed to hang onto that lighter feeling in order to survive. Then I’ll made the others try prickly pear fruit, but I’m not telling them about the glochids. They deserve it for not listening to me about what airport security would allow them to take onto the plane.

With the comfort of that extra, petty, motivation to survive, Mac drifted to sleep.

Chapter Text

Riley didn’t think she’d ever been as terrified as she had been when she was walking into the morgue with grim-faced police officers lingering. Almost worse than the anticipation, was when she’d spent at least thirty-seconds staring at the body and just… not being sure. The skin of the body was deathly pale, face damaged and swollen and awful from the gunshot wound, partly mummified from the dry heat. There should have been a million ways she could’ve identified him, but with her mind reeling all she could think to look was for the freckle on the side of his neck, just under his jaw. Someone else kindly wiped the blood away from the area, letting her crane over to look. She was glad for that, because she didn’t think she would’ve had it in her to touch the body herself.

She couldn’t even hear herself when she said, blankly but shakily, that it wasn’t Mac. She’d walked out, tried to call Jack only to go to voicemail, and then broke down on the phone after she called Matty. It’s not him, were the only words she could force out of a constricted throat, but Matty knew what she meant.

Riley cried for a long time in the bathroom, the cold of the filthy tile soaking through her. She cried because she was relieved, because she was scared, because of the fact that she was stuck here alone while Jack refused to answer his phone and Matty was hundreds of miles away.

Then she splashed water on her face, tried to stop imagining Mac’s face on a metal stretcher under a white sheet, and got coffee. It was going to be a long night.

***

It was almost deathly silent when Jack reached the location Riley had sent, what seemed like an old, abandoned, residence. He closed his car door quietly, not wanting it to ring out in the still air. There were cicadas, and that was about it, nothing but an incessant buzzing. But then again, there’d been buzzing for hours so he didn’t know if he could really blame it all on the insects.

Jack drew his gun and slunk in careful and smooth, clearing each room as he went. No amount of emotions could overwhelm training and decades of muscle memory.

He found Murdoc on the second story, in the bedroom. He was sitting on the bed, the sleek black of his outfit at odds with the aged beige of the bare mattress.

He had a gun, of course he did, a handgun resting easily on his thigh. He’d been facing the door, and smiled as Jack entered.

“Hands up. Now.” Jack ordered sharply, bringing his gun up to aim at Murdoc’s chest. After a second of thought he brought it a little higher up, to Murdoc’s head, in case the assassin was wearing a vest.

Murdoc didn’t bother to comply, absently angling his own gun up slightly as a reminder of its presence more than an actual threat.

“Where is he!” Jack yelled, taking a couple steps forwards. Amateurs would shake or gesture with their gun, full of pent up adrenaline and lacking sense. Jack kept his aim stone still, not wavering in the slightest. He couldn’t afford to give Murdoc even the slimmest opportunity.

“I assume you are referring to Angus?” Murdoc smiled, faux-innocent. “What, you haven’t seen him around recently?”

“Where. Is. He.” Jack repeated through gritted teeth.

Murdoc tilted his head, carelessly abandoning his innocent act with an air of smug satisfaction. “Oh, I think you know, Jack.”

“Tell me where Mac is, or I swear to god I’ll shoot you.”

“So you really haven’t found him yet?” Murdoc seemed genuinely surprised, in an amused sort of way, though sincerity was never easy to determine with him. “I thought I’d have led you right to him, out in the desert.”

Jack kept breathing, kept holding his gun steady, but he felt like everything else inside him was faltering. Out in the desert. The body. Murdoc’s smug grin.

“We did find him.” Jack managed, finally, just to watch Murdoc’s reaction.

The assassin relaxed back, smile widening. “Playing games now, are we? I’m impressed, Jack, I didn’t think you had it in your. Did you like my handiwork, then?”

Jack stayed silent. The buzzing was loud, too damn loud. His thoughts stuttered in his head, desperately not wanting to believe what he knew to be true.

Murdoc ran his free hand lovingly across the side of his gun. When he spoke it was in a proud tone, like he was fondly reminiscing. “This right here was the one I used.”

It all stopped, then. Jack’s heart, his breathing, his thoughts, the entire world it seemed.

He couldn’t even hear the buzzing. For one, haunting, moment there was just nothing.

Then two guns went off.

***

They got a call for a male gunshot wound victim near the very edge of the desert. Riley lodged her spot in the passenger’s seat of the first patrol car going out despite the officers’ halfhearted complaints. They feared Matty enough at this point to let Riley get away with murder.

The whole time it felt like she was scrabbling for the sparse trickle of information that seemed to make its way to her with staggering slowness. Let me talk to him. Did he give any details? Did you get a name? Was he the one who called or was it a good Samaritan? Just please for the love of god, let me talk to him.

Then they arrived, Riley desperately leaning to peer out the window, and the fight drained out of her so fast it left her dizzy. Or maybe the dizziness was relief.

It was Mac. Leaning on the caller’s splintery porch, watching the police pull up with a somewhat weary but mostly unreadable expression. The sleeves of his shirt were all torn up, the shirt itself dirty and clinging to him with sweat. His face and ears shone pink with sunburn, and dried blood streaked down his bandaged leg— but he was alive, alert, and even fucking standing.

Mac was already talking to the first police officer that pulled up by the time Riley hopped out of her own, still moving, vehicle and launched into a run.

“…His name was Anthony Philips. He was being coerced, you need to send agents to secure his family…”

The cop had just stepped aside to radio off information when Riley reached Mac. She barely restrained herself from barreling into him for a hug, managing to tone herself down to just reaching out to carefully rest her hands on the sides of his arms where there didn’t appear to be any injuries.

Mac’s face cracked into a small, but earnest, smile when he saw her. A profound look of relief on his face like it had been in her arrival rather than the police that meant he could finally relax. “Hi.”

“Hi.” Riley returned simply, but her voice nearly cracked over that syllable alone. She swallowed down the wave of emotion lurching in her throat. The ‘I thought you were dead’ the ‘oh god, you terrified me’ the ‘fuck, are you alright?’.

Well, maybe she could still use that last one.

Then Mac’s gaze flickered over her shoulder, and he gave a small, consternated, frown. “Where’s Jack?”

“He’s…” Riley struggled for something to say that wouldn’t immediately ring alarm bells for Mac. He’s just out hunting Murdoc and won’t answer his phone. Oh, he just believes you’re dead and has gone radio silent. Oh, nobody knows right now, but don’t worry about that just yet. She didn’t think there was a single answer that wouldn’t have Mac stealing a police car and tearing off into the distance. Instead she just gave up and craned over her shoulder.

“Hey.” She snapped her fingers to get one of the police officer’s resigned attention. “How long until EMS gets here?”

“Just a few minutes, ma’am.”

“Riley.” Mac grabbed her arm insistently. “What aren't you telling me?”

“First you have to promise to get in an ambulance and get checked out at the hospital before doing anything else.”

“Riles — you’re being juvenile.” Mac dismissed impatiently. “Just tell me—“

“No.” Riley was sick and tired of stepping back and letting her team be idiots. “You were abducted, shot, and then wandered through the desert. You’re getting checked out if I have to haul your ass to the hospital myself.”

Mac almost physically deflated, leaning harder against the porch rail. Riley grabbed his elbow automatically.

“Ok.” Mac caved. It had been much easier to accomplish than usual, which made Riley feel guilty for yelling at him. The guy had obviously been through hell.

“Ok.” Riley softened her voice. Then she grimaced. “Jack is trying to track down Murdoc, he thought Murdoc either still had you with him or could lead him to you.”

Mac hummed, closing his eyes. No doubt they were aching from the constant sun exposure. “How’d Matty get a TAC team out here so fast?”

“She didn’t.”

Mac’s eyes flew back open and he straightened up. “He’s going alone? Did you tell him—“

“I tried. He hasn’t been answering his phone for… a few hours.”

“You can track him though, right?” Mac was wide-eyed, and looking more frazzled than he would usually let on to.

“Yeah. Look, Mac, I’ll deal with Jack. You just need to get yourself looked after, that’s all any of us want, ok? We were terrified.”

Mac opened his mouth, then closed it. The sound of ambulance sirens sounded distantly, growing closer.

“I was too.” Mac finally said, ruefully and quiet enough to be nearly drowned out by the sirens.

Riley stepped forwards, more instinct than thought, and looped her arms around Mac. He was warm, and smelled like sweat, blood, and dust.

Mac leaned into her slowly, weight shifting from the porch to her, arms draping over her shoulders and his face landing against the side of her neck.

Riley hugged him a little tighter, adjusting her stance to deal with the extra weight.

It was silent for a long moment, just the sound of sirens slowly approaching and both of their breathing.

Then Mac let out a shuddering sigh, the type of sigh that came a fragile few seconds before a sob. “I’m… tired, Ri.”

“Shhh.” Riley’s eyes burned. She floundered for what to say to his shaky confession, whispered quiet enough that it was for her ears only. She turned her face into his sandy blond hair, speaking soft enough for him only. “I got you.”

Chapter Text

Jack wasn’t the type of person to spend too much time looking backwards. He wouldn’t try to recall whether he pulled the trigger before or after Murdoc started raising his gun. He wouldn’t reflect on the closeness of it, as the bullet hit his vest right over his sternum instead of his throat or head where Murdoc’s aim had no doubt been headed.

He focused on the present. The stench of copper, the still body, the red soaking into the beige mattress.

It was a minute or two before Jack moved, during which he just watched a trail of blood dripping off the edge of the bed, splattering on Murdoc’s fallen gun and ruining the hardwood floor.

Then he clicked the safety on his gun and jammed it back into his belt. There was no relief, no satisfaction. Jack wasn’t surprised, but that wasn’t saying much considering he wasn’t really anything. He’d stuffed his emotions down at the beginning of all this in order to be functional, because he’d had a purpose to fulfill. Now there was no purpose, but it still felt like someone had put him through a strainer, leaving his emotions floating somewhere above him while the rest of him churned down a drain.

He didn’t bother cleaning up the mess. He just… left.

He drove off, though he was tempted to just sit in his car. People had to have heard the gunshots.

He parked on the side of the road a few miles away. Part of him wanted to keep going, to drive until the car just stopped working, but his eyes were blurring and he didn’t want to kill someone in the dark.

He stepped out of the car, and his knees were crumpling before he even registered the fact he was crying. Not loudly, not making any sound at all, just leaving wet streaks down his face.

He crouched, then leaned back heavily to sit with his back against the side of his car. It was warm. Despite the late-hour everything from the car to the very air was clinging to the heat from the day. It was as if they believed the sun would never rise again, that this was the very last they had of it.

Jack thought of the last time he’d seen Mac. Just yesterday, though it felt like seconds ago and eternities all at once. Mac had been rolling his eyes and irritably trying to convince Jack that a ceramic knuckle-duster wouldn’t get through security, no matter how many movie characters had pulled it off.

Mac had been right, the knuckledusters had been found out immediately. Jack really wished Mac was rubbing that in his face right now.

About an hour later, while the heat was slowly dissipating and a chill slowly sinking in, Jack finally checked his phone. He’d missed hundreds of texts and calls, almost all from Matty and Riley, enough that his voicemail was full.

He didn’t bother to check them, just called Matty.

Partly he just wanted to be yelled at. He deserved it, for countless reasons. He also just needed someone to point him in a direction so he could start fucking moving again, and that was something Matty had never failed to do. Tell me where to go. Tell me what to do. Tell me how to fix the unfixable. Tell me how to breathe.

“Jack?” Matty’s voice filtered through his phone. She sounded equal parts concerned and angry.

Jack opened his mouth. Only a sliver of what he needed to say actually left his mouth. “Yeah.”

“Thank god you finally remembered what a damn phone is. You need to—“

“I killed Murdoc.” He didn’t know exactly why he interrupted her, not when she was saying exactly what he needed to hear, but it spilled out of him like a confession — though this was one sin he wasn’t seeking absolution for.

A beat of pause. Processing. Jack let the back of his head thud against his car and waited patiently with closed eyes.

“You what?” The shock in Matty’s tone was a rare thing. On any other occasion, Jack would’ve savored it.

“I found him. I shot him. He’s dead.” A succinct but empty summary. Jack delivered it with a dull, apathetic tone — after all, what did it matter now?

A long silence. Jack couldn’t imagine what was going through Matty’s head.

“He killed my kid, Matty.” Jack’s voice squeezed its way out of his throat into something dangerously close to a keening whine. Better out than in. “What was I s’posed to do, I—“

“Christ. Fuck, Jack I thought you already—“ Matty cut herself off, as if too impatient to get the words out. “Mac’s alive, Jack, Riley’s got him.”

The world shifted underneath Jack. He was scrambling, then he was on his feet, pitching like a drunkard and barely catching himself against his car. His words come out tiny and breathless. “…what?”

“He was shot in the leg, but he’s at the hospital now. Walked back to us through the damn desert.”

“He’s— Mac—“ The world was spinning again, far too fast and all wonky, but it was spinning.

“He’s going to be just fine, Jack. I promise.”

Jack sobbed, a loud, raw thing now. His legs nearly crumpled from underneath him again, and he just barely caught himself against his car, fumbling around it back over to the driver’s side door.

“Where is he.” Jack sunk into the driver’s seat, desperately dashing as his eyes with his sleeve to try and clear his vision.

“I got your location, Jack. If you just stay where you are I’ll have someone pick you up—“

“Matty— please.” No amount of threatening or cajoling ever got Matty to cave, so Jack went straight to pleading. “I need— I don’t need a ride, I need to see him. Please, Matty, please just tell me where he is.”

“You need to calm down before driving.” Matty dropped some of the sweetness in her tone to be blunt.

“Matty, I swear to god I’m gonna start checking every hospital in this godforsaken state if you don’t just tell me—”

“And I’ll fly down there to kick your radio-silent ass if you don’t shut the fuck up and take a few deep breaths.”

Jack hung his head, planting his forehead against the top of the steering wheel before taking a long, shuddering, breath. He’d been trying to exaggerate it to spite Matty, but then the next one came easier, until finally he was breathing again in a way that felt even remotely human.

After an excruciating minute, Matty finally gave him the location. He didn’t hang up on her.

***

“Heard back from the cops while you were in surgery.” Riley lounged back. She had her feet kicked up on Mac’s hospital bed, typing on her laptop with one hand and holding a granola bar in her other. She felt a little bad for eating while Mac was on fluids only while they managed his dehydration, but she’d barely eaten a bite while he’d been missing and she was starving.

Mac shifted slightly. His leg was now swathed in white bandages and propped up on a pillow, and his face and the sunburned tops of his hands glistened with aloe vera. The aloe vera had been Riley’s contribution, she’d started packing it more often once she realized how quickly both Mac and Jack would burn and how rarely they bothered to wear sunscreen.

“Yeah?” Mac prodded, eyes opening. He’d been keeping them closed more often than not, so Riley guessed they were irritated from the blowing sand and glaring sun.

“They tracked down Anthony’s wife and kid. They’re alright, but we’ll keep an eye on them in case Murdoc set something up.”

Mac let out a quiet sigh of relief, closing his eyes again. “Good. That’s good.”

“And Matty managed to get in contact with Jack. He’s on his way.”

Mac hummed in nonchalant acknowledgment, but Riley watched the tension seep out of his shoulders. “He’s going to be insufferable for a while.”

“Isn’t he always?”

A small chuckle slipped out of Mac, and Riley took it as a tiny victory. “Fair point.”

“In his defense, he’ll have a pretty valid reason to be overprotective this time.” Riley hated to bring the light mood down, but she couldn’t help but point it out. There was still a thrumming anxiety sitting in her chest, like Mac was just one blink away from disappearing again, and if she was feeling that she was sure Jack would have it even worse.

Mac let out a quiet, almost inaudible sigh. “Just between you and me? I don’t know how much I’d mind it this time. I’m just… I’m just sick of always looking over my shoulder. I know it’s a part of the job but…” Mac stumbled through the words, gesturing vaguely. The IV line connected to his arm tangled around his elbow, and he didn’t bother to fix it.

“This is worse?” Riley hesitantly filled in.

“Yeah. I’m always having to wonder, like ‘when is he going to be back, and who’s going to die this time?’.” Mac’s attempt at flat frustration failed, voice trembling slightly on the last few words. 

“It isn’t your fault.”

Riley’s shot in the dark apparently hit home, because Mac frowned and turned his face away, jaw working.

“It isn’t.” Riley repeated insistently.

Mac’s hands raised as if he was going to scrub them across his face, though he apparently remembered the sunburn and aborted the movement halfway through.

“Mac…” Riley swung her feet off the bed and straightened up. Not for the first time, she wished Jack was here. She was so sick and tired of holding down the fort alone, and she wasn’t nearly as good as Jack was at this type of stuff.

Mac cleared his throat and turned his head back to face her. His expression was profoundly tired but composed. “Could you get me some more water?”

“Yeah, ok.” Riley hesitated briefly before sighing, this was clearly not a conversation they were going to have right then. With the tentative slowness of treading unknown territory, she craned forwards to press a chaste, featherlight kiss on top of his head before getting up and leaving the room to get water. She pretended to believe that the dampness on his cheeks when she returned was just the aloe vera.

Chapter Text

Mac wasn’t quite sleeping when the door to his hospital room had opened, but he had been resting with the soothing ambience of Riley’s snoring settling at least some of his anxiety.

When the door opened, for a second he was hit with pure fear-filled adrenaline. He straightening up in bed, mind cataloguing everything around him that he could turn into a weapon…

Then, between one panic-struck thought and the next, he recognized the silhouette and all the tension drained out of him so fast it left him dizzy. He didn’t think there could be more profound flip of emotion than going from thinking Murdoc was standing in his doorway, to knowing it was Jack.

Mac squinted as Jack lingered silently. While they’d dimmed the lights in his room, the hospital hallway outside was still blindingly bright, which reduced Jack into an unreadable looming shadow.

“Jack?” Mac finally called, tentatively bemused, and quiet in order to not wake up Riley.

Then the door clicked shut, Jack staying on the wrong side of it. 

For a few seconds it caught Mac so off guard that he didn’t even register it. Jack left.

Then a cocktail of emotions hit Mac all at once. A spike of indignant hurt, no small amount of concern, but mostly just pure confusion. The cold shoulder was not in the realm of typical Jack behavior, let alone for the current situation. For a long while, Mac’s brain just churned it over, trying and failing to reconcile it into something that made sense. Was Jack mad at him? What could Jack possibly be mad at him about enough to ditch him after he’d just been kidnapped? Every attempt at explanation just buried the hurt deeper.

Then, pettily, he thought: fuck this.

Mac swung his legs out of bed. Even just sitting up prompted dizziness and nausea. He rode it out with a white knuckled grip on his IV stand. He glanced over, somewhat guiltily, to where Riley was sprawled the best she could across the uncomfortable hospital chair. She was still fast asleep, laptop precariously half-slid out of her lap. Mac deviated from his objective slightly, stretching over to carefully grab the laptop and place it on the chair next to her. When that failed to rouse her, he deemed it safe enough to stand up.

He wavered, gripping the IV stand tightly. He internally resolved to fall backwards onto his bed if he had to fall in any direction, but the lightheadedness cleared after a few seconds of prickling skin and greying vision.

Mac huffed a breath, then tested the stability of the IV stand. It wasn’t very reliable, mostly because it was on wheels which meant it was liable to slide out from under him, but as long as he kept it close to himself it would do. He didn’t have the time or energy to wrangle something better up. Hopefully looking for Jack wouldn’t require a hospital-wide search, because he didn’t know how long even spite could fuel him to hobble around on his bad leg. Even the short stretch of distance to the door pushed the burning pain in his leg past the reach of painkillers.

Mac swung open the door and stepped out, internally planning excuses in case a harried nurse caught him.

It turned out he didn’t have to walk very far, because Jack was sitting on the ground with his back against the wall right next to the door.

Mac leaned heavily with his forearm braced on the doorknob for support. He felt at least slightly mollified by Jack’s proximity.

“I know the hospital chairs are pretty crap, but…” Mac started in a sardonic, wry tone, but trailed off when Jack’s head whipped up and over to look at Mac. His eyes were red-rimmed and face the blotchy, reddened, sort of face that only happened after a shit-ton of crying. Honestly, he almost looked worse than Mac, and at that most of Mac’s lingering hurt melted into concern.

Jack’s eyes widened the moment he looked at Mac, and he lurched up to his feet.

“Whoa— whoa! You s’posed to be out of bed?” Jack fussed urgently, grabbing one of Mac’s elbows.

“I’m fine.” Mac rolled his eyes, briefly sidelining his concern in favor of a little much needed familiarity. He did, however, accept Jack’s supporting arm slipped around his side and ushering him back into his hospital room. “I was barely putting any weight on my leg anyways.”

“Barely ain’t nothing, and I’m pretty sure nothing is what you’re s’posed to be putting on it.”

Mac sunk down into the bed when they reached it, tolerating Jack’s agitated reprimanding. He grabbed Jack’s wrist and held on just in case Jack decided to try to slip away again. Normally Mac could outrun Jack, but he was currently at a disadvantage and he wasn’t about to let Jack take advantage of that.

Instead of trying to leave, Jack sat down on the bed next to Mac, shoulders brushing.

There was a moment when one of them should have said something. The moment passed in what Mac couldn’t quite decide was an awkward or comfortable silence.

Mac drummed his fingers on his good leg, sorely missing something to fidget with.

“How’re you feeling?” Jack finally asked. It should’ve been a throwaway, but Jack delivered it with far too much shaky intensity to be anything like it.

“About as well as I could be.” Mac shrugged. He weighed his own question, rolling it around in his mouth. He didn’t know if it was even worth asking what had gone down with Murdoc. He’d slipped away, surely. Someone would have said something to him if they’d gotten him into custody. He figured it’d just be poking a sore spot to ask Jack about it. “You?”

“If you’re good, I’m good.” Jack’s response was immediate and unconvincing.

“Well, then it’s pretty obvious that neither of us is good.” Mac sent Jack a wry smile to soften the bite of his words. “So there’s no need to bullshit.”

“If there’s no need to bullshit, how about you actually tell me how you’re feelin’?”

Mac silently raised his hands in rock-paper-scissors position, raising an inquiring eyebrow.

“I ain’t rock-paper-scissoring who talks ‘bout it first.” Jack scoffed, but Mac caught a sliver of a smile as he looked away. “You know that ain’t fair, you have some psychic trick that makes you win every time.”

“It’s not psychic if you always choose rock.”

“I just…” Jack’s voice sunk back into a serious tone, and Mac quickly lowered his hands. “I hate this. I hate that you’ve had to go through this so much. The bastard just… he always made me feel so damned helpless. Lookin’ out for you is my job, hoss, and when I fuck it up you’re the one to get the short end of the stick for it.”

Jack let his head sink down, grinding his palms into his eyes. “Shit. I’m just… I’m sorry, man.”

“Don’t apologize, Jack, no one’s expecting you to be omnipotent except…” Mac tried to launch into reassurance, but one word Jack said lodged into his over analytical brain and spun circles. “Wait, what’d you mean by ‘always made’?”

“I mean.” Jack let out a wet scoff, lifting his head and swiping his sleeve roughly across his face. “If the bastard’s still making me feel helpless from beyond the grave, that’d be pretty pathetic, huh.”

A grenade erupted in Mac’s brain, derailing a dozen trains of thought all at once. For what felt like a lifetime, there was nothing but white noise.

Then the pieces began to fall.

***

“What?” When Mac spoke, it was in the smallest voice Jack had ever heard from him. Tiny, and overwhelmed, and lost.

Jack craned his head over. Mac’s eyes were wide, deer in the headlights style, and his hands were no longer fidgeting on his lap but trembling.

Somewhat frantically, Jack combed through the last few things he’d said. He found it. His stomach sank like a rock. “Matty didn’t tell ya?”

Mac shook his head, once, sharply. His whole face was rigid, brow furrowed, lips thinned, jaw tight. Jack had seen that face when Mac was trying to cling to rationality over emotion, like a rock under a crashing wave. Jack meanwhile floundered. He wanted to crush the kid into a hug, but wasn’t sure if that would break Mac’s tenuous control, if Mac would resent him for that.

“Ah, kid.” Jack finally said, forcefully keeping his hands in his lap and letting all the repressed warmth pour out in his voice instead. “It’s over with, I took care of it. I promise you he’s gone.”

The words were apparently enough. Mac cracked in slow motion, lips trembling, eyes crushing shut and sending a tear streaking down his face, curling slowly but inexorably down.

Jack caught him, pulled him sideways into a hug before he could slip off the bed.

Mac’s hands were in fists up by his face, bent arms pinned against his body under Jack’s embrace. He was crying in earnest now, shaky sobs, red-faced, trying in vain to duck his face out of view behind his hands.

Jack dropped his cheek down to rest against Mac’s hair, which was dry and gritty with sand and dust. Jack tried not to imagine Mac stumbling through the desert, injured and alone. He tried not to imagine Mac’s eyes widening at Murdoc swung a gun onto him. He focused on the dripping of Murdoc’s blood spilling onto the floor, and of the weight and warmth of Mac in his arms.