Chapter Text
+ 1: Mac
3x22—Mason + Cable + Choices
The helicopter shrank from view as Mason pulled away from the roof, taking with him Mac’s vengeance, Charlie’s retribution, justice for innocence lost. And there wasn’t a damn thing Mac could do about it.
He lost.
He rubbed at his chest where the tech had injected him, adrenaline still coursing unchecked through his system. His hands wouldn’t stop shaking, but he knew it was a biological after-effect. Once his body burned through the dose, he would be steady.
Back to normal.
If there was such a thing as normal anymore. Charlie was dead. He wasn’t just on mission. He wasn’t off living his life and would get back to Mac later.
He was gone. And Mac had just let his killer escape.
“Mac!” Bozer’s voice bounced off the blackened surface of the roof, startling Mac out of his dark thoughts.
“Mason got away,” Mac growled as he turned around. He saw Bozer’s eyes track to where he pressed a hand against his sore chest, and he dropped it. He didn’t sympathy now; he needed action.
“Are you okay?” Bozer asked, jogging up to him.
“I’m fine,” Mac started to push past his friend, headed back to the rooftop entrance. Bozer grabbed him by the upper arms, halting his movement. Mac focused on his friend’s face, surprised. “Boze?”
“Dude, you just got your ass Pulp-Fictioned by a ginormous needle and then went running all around this damn building. Take a beat,” Bozer entreated.
Mac tried to pull away from Bozer’s grip but was surprised when his body shuddered instead. “I told you, I’m fine.”
“Well, you don’t look fine, Mac,” Bozer told him, finally dropping his hands. “In fact, you look strung out.”
“It’s the adrenalin,” Mac told him, unable to stop himself from rubbing at his chest once more. He was going to have a nasty bruise there. “It will take a bit to get out of my system.”
“Well, how about you go join Desi in the infirmary and let them check you out, then?” Bozer dropped his hands on his hips and tilted his head in a challenge.
That got his attention. He frowned at Bozer. “Why is Desi in the infirmary?”
“She thought she was Captain America—or I guess, Wonder Woman—and got a little bruised up getting your father out of the safe room,” Bozer said, rotating on his heel as Mac started to move at a more sedate pace toward the rooftop entrance. “She’s okay,” he hastened to add.
“Anyone else hurt?” Mac asked as they reached the door. He let Bozer pull it open, his chest muscles sorer than he’d realized.
“Looks like you got the worst of it this time,” Bozer said, following him down the stairs. “But since he was pissed at your father….”
“Yeah, lucky me,” Mac grumbled.
He followed Bozer to the infirmary but found it empty when he arrived. A small part of him wondered if Desi had really been there or if Bozer had just used that ploy to get him off the roof. He let the nurse check him out—and he was right, there was a big-assed bruise in the middle of his chest—while Bozer hung out.
“You don’t have to wait for me,” Mac told him, pulling his t-shirt back on.
“No one likes to be in here by themselves,” Bozer shrugged. “Besides, it’s what Jack would do, so….”
“Jack’s not here,” Mac pointed out, needlessly, feeling the same ache spike in his heart as it did every time the man’s name was brought up.
“That’s…kinda the point, Mac.”
He glanced at Bozer, noting the seriousness in his friend’s tone. He knew they all wondered—though they didn’t ask—why he rarely talked about Jack. If he could have explained that it was for the same reason he wouldn’t talk about Charlie—that they meant too much to him, that saying their name brought up memories of times past that were like shards of glass in his heart—then they might get it.
But for all his intelligence, he wasn’t great at emotion.
When he received the all-clear from the nurse, with advice to take it easy the next few days, Mac nodded his thanks and slid off the exam table, buttoning his shirt. He took his jacket from Bozer’s outstretched hand.
“Thanks, man.”
“You know everyone is coming over for beers on the deck later,” Bozer predicted.
Mac felt something sink inside him. He knew. It was their tradition. But part of him just wanted to curl up in the dark and breathe.
“Yeah, I know.”
“You gonna be okay to make it home?” Bozer asked. “I got a couple things to cover here in the lab, first.”
Mac nodded, heading out to the parking garage, not really looking at anyone or anything as he made his way to his Jeep. He couldn’t seem to stop replaying the day in his mind. The realization that there were two triggers. That this man was better than The Ghost.
That his only choices were bad and worse. That his father’s advice, while not implicitly stated, was that he sacrifice his friend.
And that Charlie took the burden of choice away from him.
It took him almost a full minute to realize that he’d climbed into the passenger side of his Jeep, rather than behind the wheel. He glanced over at the empty driver’s seat and huffed out a self-deprecating laugh, his memory crowded with instances and images of Charlie—weighed down by eighty pounds of gear—driving their Humvee, heading from IED to IED, knowing every time he got out of that transport, he may not be getting back in.
Mac dragged a hand down his face, feeling the slide of tears beneath his fingers. He hadn’t realized he was crying. He didn’t want to cry. Not now. He needed to get through tonight. Just get through the rest of this twenty-four-hour cycle and then he could figure out what to do next.
How to honor Charlie. How to keep his promise.
Don’t think about him. Don’t feel it. Don’t think about how he died. Don’t think how he spared you from making the choice. Don’t think how he saved you, again.
Taking a breath, Mac climbed over the gear shift and settled behind the wheel. Adjusting the rear-view mirror, he startled as he thought he caught a glimpse of Jack in the reflection. Feeling ridiculous, Mac twisted around, staring at the empty back seat.
Sighing, Mac rubbed at this forehead with the heel of his hand. Whatever his traitorous mind was trying to tell him, he was not ready. Just…no.
Don’t think about him. Don’t feel it.
He didn’t remember the drive home. One minute he was sitting in the Phoenix parking garage, the next he was in his driveway. He really hoped he’d hit all green lights along the way. Heading inside, he grabbed a shower, pointedly ignoring the bruise on his chest.
By the time the sun had set and the lights of Los Angeles were illuminating their skyline view from his deck, Bozer and Riley had arrived with beer and Mac was exhausted. He smiled at Matty’s reassurance that they had every available asset searching for Mason and clinked his beer with Bozer and Riley in a shared promise of bringing Charlie’s killer to justice.
They didn’t need to know that he had no intention of meting out their usual version of ‘justice’. Charlie deserved more.
He deserved vengeance.
As the group looked out across the Los Angeles hillside, Mac felt something give inside of him, that sinking feeling he’d had earlier growing. As if he were falling in the dark.
It felt…wrong to be standing here with his friends—his family—when Charlie would never be able to do this again. He would never have a beer again. Or look at these lights again.
His hand slid on the condensation of his beer, shaking him back to the present.
Don’t think about him. Don’t feel it.
Over Riley’s head, he saw Desi join them and felt a rush of something a bit larger than gratitude, but not quite happiness. He moved around the group to greet her.
“Hey,” he said, painting a smile in place. “I wanted to, uh…to thank you. For saving my father. I heard what you did was a little, well…risky.”
Desi’s responding smile was almost shy. It surprised him. “I only did what I thought you would do,” she replied. “Guess you’re rubbing off on me.”
His smile relaxed into something a bit more genuine. “Well, thanks. You want a beer?”
She never stayed for a beer. She never stayed, period.
“Sure,” Desi replied. “I got some time.”
Mac drew his head back slightly in surprise. “Look at that.”
She tilted her head, here dark eyes seeming to suddenly measure him. “Actually, I just got off the phone with Jack.”
The sinking feeling grew. How could he tell Jack that he’d let Charlie die? What would he think about him after he heard that?
Don’t think about him. Don’t feel it.
“Really?” He fought to keep his voice even, casual. “How’s he doing?”
Desi narrowed her eyes, as though calculating his response. “He seems good. I tried to catch him up on things,” she said, shrugging. Mac felt himself go cold. She’d told him. He knew. “But you know him. Couldn’t get a word in.”
Jack knew about Mason. About Charlie. About Mac’s failure. He knew. Mac forced himself to take a slow breath, his heart slamming against his ribs as though the adrenaline shot had never worn off.
“Point is,” Desi continued when Mac didn’t respond. “He’s still tracking down Kovacs, so…looks like you’re stuck with me a while longer.”
Mac swallowed hard. “Well, I…uh. I miss him. But…I’m glad you’re on the team.”
Charlie had helped save Jack’s life when The Ghost wired Mac’s house as a kill box. Jack had gone across the world to save Worthy, a friend to him as Charlie had been to Mac. Jack wouldn’t have let Charlie die.
Don’t think about him. Don’t feel it.
“Glad to be here,” Desi was saying.
Mac tried to pull his attention forward, focus on now. Desi was standing on his deck for longer than she had since she joined the team. He needed to find a way to keep her there, keep with the traditions, make sure no one looked too closely at him, telling him it was okay if he wanted to talk.
God help him, he did not want to talk. He wanted to hide. To disappear. To sink inside himself.
“Look,” he said, grabbing Desi’s attention once more. “When it comes to…y’know, to why you owe him? Tell us in your own time. No pressure.”
Desi tilted her head and this time she didn’t look like she was measuring him. In fact, if he were to guess, it looked like she was…interested in him.
“How about next week we grab a bite to eat? You tell me about Cairo, and I’ll tell you about why I owe Jack.”
Mac smiled, nodding. “It’s a date.” Oh, shit. “I mean…uh, it’s like a figure of speech. A social…y’know. Appointment.”
And now she was laughing at him. This was going well.
“I know what you meant, egghead. It’s fine.”
Mac closed his eyes briefly in embarrassment. When he opened them, he saw his father move into the living room, sitting down on the couch. He frowned, puzzled. He couldn’t remember the last time his father had willingly walked into this house, let alone join them for after-mission beers.
“Beer’s over there,” Mac nodded toward where Bozer and Riley were leaning against the railing. “Help yourself.”
“Will do,” Desi replied.
He made his way into the living room, crossing to his dad as the man rose to his feet. Hugging his father still felt…odd. Like they didn’t quite fit together.
“Glad you’re safe,” Mac said into his father’s shoulder, trying a smile on for size as he pulled away. James was looking at him with heavy eyes. A stranger’s eyes. “You want to come join us? Get a beer?”
“Angus, I think you should sit down,” James replied.
Mac felt the pit inside of him roar suddenly forward, the blackness seeming to swoop around him and tug.
“Everything okay?” he asked, hearing the strain in his voice.
He didn’t sit.
He went still. Holding himself motionless, bracing for his father’s next words.
“In Mexico, I promised to always keep you in the loop. Never lie to you again.”
Mac nodded once. “Yeah, I remember.”
James spread his hands to his sides, as though in surrender. “And the change has been great. It’s kind of the way I’d always hoped things could be between us.”
Mac fought back the voice inside of him that shouted you had fifteen years. He’d been fighting to silence that voice for months now. It had too much weight for peace.
“Yeah,” he replied, feeling the room press around him. “Me too.”
James took a breath and Mac saw him set his jaw. “That’s why it’s only fair I think you should know there’s more to Mason’s story. You deserve the whole truth.”
Don’t think about him. Don’t feel it.
“The ‘whole truth’?”
“As I said, sometimes there’s only choices between bad and worse.”
Don’t think about him. Don’t feel it.
Mac felt the air around him thin out. “Don’t tell me his son died for nothing.”
“Just the opposite,” James shook his head. “He died for the most important thing I can think of.”
Oh, God.
After all these years. After all that time. Watching him, using him, manipulating him.
And now his father brought forward the truth. This truth. This truth that caused death.
So much death.
Just not his.
“What are you trying to tell me?” Mac managed. But he knew. He already knew.
“The intelligence asset on that op, the person he died for…was you.”
Mac felt the blood rush from his face, leaving him dizzy. It was his fault. Charlie died…because of him. He didn’t just not save him…he got him killed.
“Understand,” his father was saying. “It was my decision. It was the only one I could make.”
Rage shot through Mac, hot and clean and perfect in its ferocity. His decision. His decision?
He decided to walk out. To leave. To fucking hide from his own son for fifteen years, using him as an instrument. A tool. And now he dared to use his love as a father to justify….
“You understand,” Mac shot back, his voice trembling with rage, with pain, with the absolute unfairness of it all, “that Charlie gave his life to save innocent people. His life, Dad. Which is exactly what I would have done. Had you ever thought…ever once thought to give me that choice.”
James shook his head, his eyes sorrowful, as he lifted a hand, reaching out in a plea for understanding
“What you did…,” Mac curled his fingers into a trembling fist. “What you did violates everything I believe in.”
“Angus—”
“I think you should leave.”
James stared at him a moment, but Mac clenched his jaw, refusing to give way. His eyes burned, body coiled into something tight and bright with fury. And pain.
God, he hurt. Everything, all of him. And yet his father stood and stared.
James exhaled slowly, his breath seeming to seep into Mac’s soul like a cloud of sorrow. He waited as the man moved quietly past him, exiting through the front door and closing it behind him. The room seemed to close in, the knowledge that Mason had gone on his warpath not just because of James but because of Mac himself was like a noose at his neck, pulling tighter with each breath.
“Mac?” Riley’s voice came at him from the deck, curious, questioning, and not a little worried. “You coming back out?”
“Uh, no, listen,” he cleared his throat not turning around. “I think that adrenaline shot’s finally wearing off. I’m gonna go crash.”
He heard Riley step into the living room.
“You okay?”
Taking a quick breath, Mac turned around, giving her a small smile. “Yeah, just…y’know. Tired. You guys stay. I’ll check in with you later.”
Riley frowned at him but nodded.
“Tell the others?” he asked.
“Sure, Mac. Get some rest.”
He smiled again, then headed to the back of his house and the safety of his room. He didn’t bother turning on the lights; he simply sank down on his bed, dropped his head into the hammock of his hands and breathed.
The house was quiet. He could hear the low murmur of voices as one by one, each of his friends left until Bozer was the last. He heard Bozer shuffle down the hall to his room, felt him breathing on the other side of the door, listening. Then heard him shuffle back across the house. He appreciated his friend checking on him but was so glad he hadn’t opened that door.
He just…couldn’t. Not now. Not with Charlie….
Don’t think about him. Don’t feel it.
He was suddenly bone-weary. He toed off his boots, leaning back with a soft groan to lay on his bed, not bothering to get undressed or climb between the sheets. He just wanted to sleep. To sleep and to forget. Just for a moment.
Forget that a man who’d saved his life countless times was dead because of him.
Mac closed his burning eyes, the sting of tears slipping beneath his lashes and tracing a path across his temples. He felt the pressure of sorrow against his chest, his heart pushing back desperately. He wanted to cry—to scream, to wail, to thrash against the reality of a world without his friend.
But instead, his body gave way to exhaustion and he finally, finally fell into the black.
He was standing in front of the elevator, the glass panel separating him from Charlie. He watched the glass spiderweb and he pressed his hand against the cracks, slicing his skin on the fragments. Tears of blood ran from Charlie’s eyes.
“Why, Mac?”
I’m sorry! He screamed, but his voice, his words were swallowed up, a silence so loud it seemed to crush him. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!
He pressed both hands against the glass, the cracks growing beneath his fingers, seeping into his skin. Charlie stared at him with accusing eyes and Mac felt his hands begin to crack, skin splitting until blood smeared against the glass leaving a perfect, red handprint behind when his lifted it.
He took a step back, looking at his bloody hands, the broken skin spreading up his arms, across his chest, up his neck to his face. He looked back through the cracked glass and saw Jack staring back at him, eyes dark and hollow.
“It should have been you.”
Mac sat forward with a gasp, his body trembling, his clothes plastered uncomfortably to his skin. He ran a shaking hand through his sweat-soaked hair and blinked in the darkness. Unable to shake the last vestiges of the dream, he turned on the bedside light and swung his feet over the edge of the mattress.
He needed to get out of this room. To move, to escape.
Making his way to his bathroom, he turned on the light, half afraid to look at his reflection in the mirror. He splashed cold water on his over-heated skin, then blinked the water from his lashes while regarding his own reflection.
No blood, no cracked skin. Just shadows of a guilty mind bruising his eyes.
He straightened up, grabbing the towel to dry his skin…when he saw it. Tucked into the corner of the mirror where he’d put it all those weeks ago.
The card.
Jack’s special Bat Signal, just for him.
He’d wanted to call so many times. So many times. He’d just wanted to hear Jack’s voice, ground himself back into a world where his best friend and partner had his back, watched him, knew him. But he hadn’t let himself—it wasn’t fair to Jack.
Pulling the card from the corner of the mirror, he turned it over in his hand, running his thumb over the numbers written in Jack’s unique scrawl.
Desi had ‘caught him up’, she’d said. Jack already knew what Mac had done. Maybe he wouldn’t even answer. Maybe he was too ashamed.
His room felt too small. Quietly, he slipped down the hall in bare feet, his cargo pants feeling rough against his overheated skin, his shirt untucked and twisted from his nightmare. He headed to the open deck, Jack’s card in one hand, his phone in the other.
A zephyr of cool air slipped through the night to wrap welcoming arms around him. He made his way over to the railing, looking out at the lights for a moment, then sank down to the floor, his back against the wooden slats of the railing.
He stared at the number in his hand for several minutes longer, seeking a path that didn’t lead to this.
Something that he could hold onto, give himself traction, give himself balance. Something he could use to get through tomorrow. And the next day. Something that would help him face his father again. Help him find Mason. Help him avenge Charlie.
Something not Jack.
He was dialing before he was truly conscious of it. The phone rang twice before he heard a click and then Jack’s drawl echoed in his hear.
“You know what to do, bud.”
Voicemail.
“Uh, hey…it’s me,” he started, stammering over how to begin, feeling both relief and disappointment that Jack hadn’t been waiting for his call. “But you know that already. Bet you wondered if I’d ever turn on the Bat Signal, huh? Tell you the truth…I didn’t want to call. I, uh…I wanted to be able to handle stuff on my own. But…,” he took a slow, shaky breath. “But something…something real bad happened today. Charlie….”
Tears pressed a fist against the back of his throat, choking him. “Charlie was k-killed. And...it was because of me.” His voice broke over the last word. He could feel control slipping through his fingers as though he was gripping sand. “I can’t get his face outta my head, man. I keep…I keep trying to catch him. Keep trying to stop it. But I can’t…and I…,” tears burned tracks down his face, “I don’t know what to do.”
Pulling in a trembling breath, he cleared his throat, trying in vain to gain control of his emotions. “So, if you’re at a place you can call me…I…uh,” he sniffed, swallowing hard, forcing the words out. “I need you, Jack.”
He cut off the connection, the phone sliding from his hands to land with a thunk on the wooden surface of the deck. He pulled his legs up to his chest, bracing his elbows on his knees and pressing his palms to his eyes. He trapped a sob in his chest like a prisoner, his will a warden.
The pain of this moment was too much—the reality too overwhelming. If he let it win, it would drown him, and he wouldn’t be able to find solid ground on his own. He sat perfectly still for a long stretch of time—long enough he started to shiver in the cool night air.
“Hey, bud.”
Mac jerked, startled, certain he was hearing things. He dropped his hands, his tear-blurred vision wavering. A man stood across the deck from him, next to the recessed fire pit. He was dressed in dark clothing, his hair close-cropped, a beard framing his jaw. In one hand he gripped a jacket, and in the other, a phone.
“I got your message.”
Mac gaped at him, blinking. “Jack?”
Jack made his way carefully across the deck until he was close enough Mac could see him clearly. He crouched down when he was next to Mac, his knees popping from the motion. He looked tired, a little smudged from the road, but the same.
He looked exactly the same.
“I’m so sorry, bud,” Jack said softly, an aching sadness framing his words.
Mac froze, fighting to hold in the emotion, fighting the instinctive need to let go, to be cared for, protected. His breath stilled in his chest; his eyes wide in the darkness. Jack reached out a careful hand, its weight finding a home on Mac’s shoulder.
“I am so, so sorry about Charlie.”
It hit Mac then, the weeks without Jack by his side, the weeks before that when he worked to face each trial on his own, the knowledge that James had sacrificed another man’s son for his own, facing a bomber more-skilled than The Ghost, the look on Charlie’s face when the elevator dropped—it all crashed against him in a tsunami of pain and emotion and Mac felt himself shatter.
As he folded in on himself, Jack was reaching for him, twisting his body so that they were side-by-side, pulling Mac close so that his face was buried in Jack’s shoulder. Mac grabbed at Jack’s shirt, curling his fingers into the material and holding on as wave after wave swept over him and he wept.
“I gotcha,” Jack breathed, his voice a vibration of sound against Mac’s skin. “I got you, brother.”
Jack held on, his grip solid, practically rocking him as Mac’s pain poured out, spilling over them.
“I can do…all these things,” Mac sobbed. “But I couldn’t…couldn’t save him.”
“It’s not your fault,” Jack whispered against his hair.
“I t-tried,” Mac gasped. “I tried every…everything. None of it…none of it worked.”
“It’s not your fault, Mac,” Jack repeated, tightening his hold.
“He looked at me…he knew.” Mac felt his breath rasping and skipping. “I watched him fall.”
“It’s not your fault,” Jack said, this time his voice was like a shove. “You hearin’ me, man? It’s not your fault.”
“But…see, that’s just it…,” Mac pushed slightly against Jack, pulling his hot, tear-soaked face away from Jack’s shoulder. “It is. Desi didn’t know, so she couldn’t tell you.”
Jack shifted so that he was leaning against the wooden slats next to Mac, aligning their shoulders so that Mac could melt against him. Mac was too tired to resist.
It felt like he’d been granted a reprieve from learning to live with a missing limb. For this moment, he felt whole again.
“Mason made the bombs to get to my dad,” Mac said, sniffing. He dragged a hand down his face, trying to banish the tears. “He blamed him for his son’s death—his son was killed in an op where an intelligence asset was prioritized over the men in his son’s unit.”
Mac was quiet for long enough the truth slipped through the silence.
“Son of a bitch,” Jack murmured. “Let me guess…you were that asset.”
“And my dad, he…when I was trying to figure out a way to…,” Mac flopped a hand in his lap, seeing the elevator in front of him, Charlie behind the glass. He rolled his neck, the memory a hand at his throat. “To stop the bomb, my dad told me that sometimes, you have to pick between bad and worse.”
“One man or a thousand,” Jack nodded.
“But, see, he didn’t make that same choice,” Mac huffed. “He chose me. He told me it was the only decision he could make.”
“Gotta say, I understand where he’s coming from there,” Jack sighed.
“He chose me, and because of it, Charlie’s dead.” Mac felt the rage seeping from him leaving in its wake a hollow sadness that he wasn’t sure he’d ever get past. “And I don’t know where to put that. Inside me. I feel like I need to…to burn it out somehow.”
Jack sighed, letting Mac’s words settle between them for a bit. When he spoke up, it was with a voice older and heavier than Mac had ever heard coming from his friend.
“Mac…the last few weeks I’ve been living with guys who’ve given up listening to the better angels of their nature and the devil on their shoulders is their very best friend.”
Mac couldn’t see Jack’s face the way they were sitting, but he felt the older man’s muscles shift as he took more of Mac’s weary weight against him.
“They got like that because they stopped caring. They let life turn them mean. They focus on the job, the mission, seeing it through. Nothing else matters to them.”
Mac waited, sensing a fragile stillness between them, as though once broken, it would never be whole again.
“They walk around…heavy, y’know? Like gravity has a different effect on them. Pulls on them stronger, somehow.”
Jack shifted again and this time Mac moved slightly away, looking at Jack, his friend’s face blurred in the mix of star and city lights. Jack’s eyes were like twin coals burning in the dark, staring at him with intensity he’d rarely seen in the man.
“That’s the road you’re fixin’ to walk down right now,” Jack said. “You pick up this…this vengeance and you’ll never set it down.”
“Charlie deserves justice, Jack,” Mac argued, the fact that he was staring at his friend again after all this time rather surreal.
“Justice ain’t the same as revenge, kid,” Jack said quietly. “You got this way about you—I never really understood it, but I always respected it. You see the good in people, even the assholes of the world, and there are plenty of those out there. I don’t want you to lose that…not for anything. Or anyone.”
Mac glanced down, then back up to Jack, waiting.
“You compartmentalize better than any person I ever met—you find a box and you shove your pain inside, and you close that lid tight,” Jack continued. “But one of these days, that box is going to get too full and all that pain is going to spill out.”
“So…what are you saying?” Mac frowned.
“I’m saying you feel it, man.” Jack pressed a closed fist against his sternum. “I’m saying you feel what Charlie meant to you—you feel the times he saved your ass…our asses. You feel what a good guy he was and how much you miss him.”
Mac felt his eyes burning again as Jack spoke, tears balancing on his lashes for a moment before he blinked them down his face.
“You feel it all and you let it drive you forward. You let it shape you into a man who puts guys like Mason behind bars,” Jack tilted his chin down, staring hard at Mac, “not into guys like Mason.”
Mac blinked. “And what about my dad?”
Unspoken words swam beneath the surface of Jack’s expression. For the briefest of moments, Mac couldn’t help but wonder about the things Jack was busy not saying. Whole paragraphs of feeling were often held in the man’s eyes, waiting for an avenue to reach the surface, but before they could escape, Jack deflected with a quip or a quote or a pop-culture reference.
A wall of misdirection shielding a depth only a few ever glimpsed.
But Mac saw it now and knew that Jack’s next words were the ones he felt Mac needed to hear, not the ones he wanted to say.
“Your dad didn’t know what would happen as a result of his decision that day,” Jack sighed. “All he could do was save you. I’ve been there, bud. I would choose you over the world any day, you know that. You and I’ve both had to make hard decisions—life and death decisions—and we don’t know what might still be waiting out in there in the world for us because of them.”
Mac looked down. He wasn’t so sure his dad hadn’t known.
“All we can do is our best with the information we have, bud.”
“You’ve turned into a philosopher,” Mac said quietly.
“Guess you rubbed off on me,” Jack teased, bumping him gently with his shoulder.
Mac chuffed. “Desi said something like that earlier.”
Jack took a slow breath. “She didn’t give you up, you know,” he said. “She was just worried that this one you wouldn’t be able to handle on your own.”
“She was right,” Mac sniffed, rubbing at his gritty eyes. “I should’ve called you a long time ago.”
“You called me when you needed me,” Jack shrugged.
Mac sighed. Only he hadn’t. He’d needed Jack so many times before…this was just a keyhole view. A thought suddenly occurred to him.
“Jack…how’d you get here so fast?”
“I was in the neighborhood,” Jack replied, a sly grin in his voice.
“Bullshit,” Mac called his bluff.
“It’s true…if you consider the northern hemisphere a neighborhood.”
“Someone called you before me, didn’t they?” Mac asked, eyes darting in thought. “Couldn’t have just been Desi, there wasn’t enough time.”
“She caught me mid-flight,” he confessed. “Probably thought I was a lunatic, way I wouldn’t let her get a word in.”
“Matty,” Mac surmised. “She was the one to give me the card…she had to—”
“Wasn’t Matty, kid,” Jack said, bumping his shoulder. “Ain’t it enough that I’m here?”
It probably should have been, but it wasn’t. He’d needed Jack, but he was expecting a phone call, the anchor of his voice. Not this. Not actual flesh-and-blood contact. In fact, the only one he could think that would have been able to get through to Jack fast enough to tell him about Charlie was—
“Holy shit,” Mac breathed. “My dad.”
Jack let the silence be his answer.
“When?”
“About…eighteen hours ago now,” Jack revealed.
Mac calculated quickly. That was before Mason escaped. Before he’d told Mac the truth. James had to have called Jack when he was still inside the safe room.
“How’d he know?” Mac breathed. “He’s never stepped in before, not once. Why now?”
“Kid, the man has been watching you for over fifteen years,” Jack reminded him. “You don’t watch someone that closely for that long and not know when they’re spiraling…and how to catch them.”
He wanted to hate the man. He wanted to lay the full, unmitigated blame for Charlie’s death at his father’s feet. He wanted to use this to walk away from him this time. To be justified in his abandonment.
But he couldn’t do that. Not now. He didn’t honestly know if he would have ever been able to.
“When do you have to leave?” Mac asked as the quiet yawned once more.
Jack huffed. “I shoulda already left,” he chuckled. “I’m technically not here.”
“I figured.” Mac let himself sink against Jack’s shoulder, feeling the world pull him down.
“Just rest a minute, kid,” Jack said softly. “No one’s gonna come after me just yet.”
“I’m glad I called,” Mac admitted, his eyelids growing heavy from exhaustion and grief. “I’m glad he called.”
“Me too,” Jack said, hooking an arm around Mac’s shoulders and pulling his head down, his fingers resting in Mac’s hair.
Neither spoke. It was as though all their words had been used up. And in the silence that surrounded them, Mac felt a timid sense of peace slide beneath his skin.
He closed his eyes, hovering in the space between dreaming and waking, warm against Jack’s side. At one point he felt a blanket drop across them and heard Bozer’s voice whispering in the dark but didn’t stir or open his eyes.
“It’s good to see you, Jack.”
“Hey, Boze.”
“I’m guessing you won’t be here in the morning.”
Mac felt Jack nod.
“I don’t know how you pulled this off, but I’m glad you did,” Bozer confessed. “He’s needed you. He just refused to admit it.”
“He’ll get there,” Jack said softly, his low voice a rumble against the side of Mac’s face.
“Yeah, well. He’s not been the same without you. I’m glad you showed.”
“I was never here,” Jack whispered.
“Right.”
Mac resisted smiling, letting the peace pervade and sink into the darkness inside of him, pulling him low enough he no longer heard the hum of traffic, or smelled the cotton and diesel-fuel scents from Jack’s shirt, or felt the steady thrum thrum thrum of his friend’s heartbeat.
He was adrift, his mind finally, blessedly quiet.
When he woke, he was alone.
His body was stiff, his hand asleep from where it rested beneath his head, the blanket Bozer had brought outside wrapped securely around him. He sat up, rolling his neck, and looked over toward the hills. The sun stretched lazy arms at the edge of the horizon, turning the world below into a valley of diamonds as the light glinted off street signs and rooftops. Traffic went from a hum to a roar, and the last of the stars winked out in the west.
Pulling himself to his feet, Mac wrapped the blanket around his shoulders, casting about for any sign that Jack had actually been there, that he hadn’t dreamed the whole thing. Pinned beneath his discarded phone, was a card.
Frowning, Mac picked it up, realizing that it was the same one from before, only this time, something was written on the back.
You just keep thinking, Butch. That’s what you’re good at. When you need me, you know what to do.
Mac smiled. “You have vision and the rest of the world wears bifocals,” he said softly, slipping Jack’s card into his pocket, then turned and headed inside to face the day.
END