Chapter Text
PART SIX
**
- Jack-
The next 24 hours were rough.
Jack barely slept, closing his eyes only when Mac did and waking with a start when Mac screamed himself aware. Gray returned to his room to catch a few hours of sleep, and Jack found he missed the other man when Mac arched his neck, his blue eyes opening wide and unseeing, words Jack didn’t recognize spilling from his lips as he trembled and shook in Jack’s arms.
Gray had become a sort of bedrock for Jack through this nightmare—a familiar landmark on an unfamiliar map.
After the first eighteen hours, Gray convinced Jack to grab some shut eye in the other room, leaving Gray to sit by Mac’s side. Jack was reluctant to leave, but he knew if he didn’t get some rest, he wasn’t going to be any good to Mac.
He meant to only sleep a short while. When he woke ten hours later, he charged down the hall in a panic, pausing just outside of Mac’s room to catch his breath. He could hear Gray’s voice murmuring low and Mac’s panicked gasps punching the air.
“Just breathe, Mac,” Gray was saying. “That’s it…c’mon, name three things you can see.”
Jack eased the door open, pausing when Mac didn’t reply.
“Nazovi tri veshchi, kotoryye ty mozhesh' uvidet',” Gray tried.
“K-krovat',” Mac managed.
“Bed,” Gray repeated, reaffirming the words for Mac in English.
“Okno.”
“Window.”
“Korobka.”
“Box. Good, now three things you can hear.”
“Dozhd'.”
“Rain.”
“Golosa.”
“Voices.”
“Jack….” Mac’s voice cracked across his name.
Gray looked over his shoulder as Jack stepped through the privacy curtains. Looking back at Mac, he nodded.
“Three things you can touch,” Gray continued.
“Blanket,” Mac whispered. “Skin. Bars.”
Jack heard the smile in Gray’s voice as he nodded. “That’s real good Mac. You’re not shaking anymore.”
Mac held up one of his hands, nodding when he saw that it was steady. He looked up at Jack, a hesitant smile on his face.
“Hey, bud,” Jack greeted. “Good to see you.”
Mac opened his mouth, then closed it immediately, uncertainty shining in his blue eyes. Jack held up a hand.
“It’s all good. One thought at a time.”
Mac nodded, the smile he gave Jack at once fragile and full of hope.
“Feel like getting up?” Gray asked, surprising Jack. Gray looked over at Jack. “He’s been up twice since you left, but not for long. Just enough to hit the head and climb back in bed.”
Jack looked at Mac. “What do you think, Hoss? Want to stretch your legs?”
Mac reached up and rubbed at his hair, his lips parting as though he wanted to reply, but then closing his mouth once more. He glanced at Gray.
“It’s okay,” Gray nodded. “Say what you need to.”
“Dush?” Mac asked, glancing almost apologetically at Jack.
“He wants to shower,” Gray translated.
Jack nodded. “I’ll get the doc to unhook you from all this stuff. Matty brought you some clothes.”
Mac’s eyes lit up at the mention of Matty and Jack smiled. “You remember Matty?”
Mac nodded. “Ph…Phoenix.”
“That’s right, kid,” Jack grinned. “We’ll be heading back there soon enough.”
It took a bit to cap off the IV line and detach Mac from the monitors, but soon he was standing in the shower, stab wound taped up to protect it from the water, the bathroom door propped open, steam rolling out into the cooler room.
“How’d you know what to do?” Jack asked as Gray stood in front of the window, eyes on the overcast sky. “When he was panicking before?”
Gray sighed softly. He’d removed the sling, the Velcro brace still supporting his arm. “’cause it used to work for me,” he replied. Glancing back at Jack briefly before returning his gaze to the grey landscape, he continued, “Remember when I said I had to infiltrate the Russian mob before?”
“You mean, before Petrov had you beaten and thrown into the gulag?”
Gray nodded. “Turns out that comes with some pretty nasty PTSD,” he revealed. “I had…dissociative tendencies.” He glanced at Jack. “Basically…I’d kind of check out and couldn’t…y’know. Anchor myself. Get back. There was a therapist at the VA center who used that coping mechanism with me. It worked, so I thought…y’know. Why not?”
Jack crossed his arms over his chest and dropped his head back against the wall. “Friend of mine—Freddie Tillerman, used to be a sniper back in the day, but he counsels vets now—he runs this group I used to take Mac to. Especially after Mexico,” he gave Gray a look the other man returned knowingly.
“It seemed to be working. He seemed more…balanced? I guess?” He shook his head. “This kid, man. I’ve never known him to have an easy time—there’s always been something…broken in him. It’s why I think he’s so focused on fixing things. Saving things. ‘Cause he can’t fix himself.”
“Sounds like Freddie rubbed off on you,” Gray commented, eyes on the rain.
“Yeah, maybe,” Jack huffed. “And…y’know, I’m not saying that we don’t all have our shit. I carry plenty of it with me. Too many wars, too much government, killing and saving and…y’know, it all just kind of rolls up into this crazy ball inside me.”
Gray nodded. “I hear that.”
“But this kid,” Jack shook his head. “When I met him, he already had walls built up high, and boxes stacked inside him, locking in things that hurt him. Keeping those lids on tight. And he was only nineteen freaking years old.”
“Sometimes walls and boxes are necessary,” Gray murmured, exhaling, and rubbing the top of his head with the flat of his hand. “But so are release valves.”
“Mac’s always used science for that, y’know?” Jack glanced quickly through the partially opened door and saw Mac’s silhouette through the shower curtain. He was leaning forward on the tiled wall, resting on his forearms, the water beating down on the back of his neck. “He puts all his energy into solving problems to distract himself from dealing with his own trauma.”
“I don’t think this is one he’s going to be able to science his way out of,” Gray said. “And…it might not be something you can help him with either, Jack.”
At the use of his name, Jack looked up. Gray was staring at him, blue eyes steady.
“You want to protect him, I get it,” Gray nodded, leaning a shoulder against the window frame. “But Mac’s gotta find his own way to deal with this…grief.”
“Grief?” Jack frowned.
“He lost something, man,” Gray pointed out. “He lost himself. And even if he gets it back, even if he finds that balance again…grief never comes straight at you. You’ve lost people; you know what I’m talking about. It’s…circular. It hits when you least expect it.”
Jack shook his head, gripping the back of his neck. “How do I…I mean…I can’t not try to help him, Isaac.”
Gray nodded, a small, sad smile playing at the corner of his mouth. “I didn’t say don’t try to help him…just find a way to accept that you might not be able to.”
The water shut off and they stopped talking. Gray moved to the chair across the room, dropping down and picking up a Tom Clancy paperback he’d appropriated from the lost and found earlier.
“You good, bud?” Jack called through the half-opened door.
“Yeah,” Mac replied.
Jack tried not to react, but felt his throat close up a bit hearing just that one word in English. He waited a few beats and was going to call to Mac once more when he heard his name.
“Jack?”
Mac pulled the door open, dressed in the Adidas joggers, t-shirt, and zip-up hoodie Matty had brought for him.
“Right here, kid,” Jack smiled at him.
Mac swallowed and held up the disposable razor.
“Want some help shaving?” Jack asked.
Mac nodded and held out his other hand. Jack saw it trembling.
“We got this, bud,” Jack nodded. “Have a seat there on the throne and let ol’ Jack get you fixed up.”
He opened the bathroom door fully to let out the steam and draped a towel around Mac’s shoulders once he’d lowered himself to the closed lid of the toilet. They didn’t have any shaving cream, so Jack lathered the soap up in the sink and used it instead.
“This isn’t the first time I’ve shaved this sorry excuse for a beard, y’know.”
“I know,” Mac whispered, his voice hesitant and stilted, as though testing the flavor of the words.
“Look up. There you go,” Jack kept his voice at the same cadence, running the blade slowly down Mac’s cheek to his jawline. “First time was downrange. You dislocated your shoulder. That was back when you still hated me, though.”
“Never hated you,” Mac protested.
“Well, you weren’t my biggest fan, I’ll say that,” Jack grinned. “But you came around. Can’t resist the Dalton charm for long. Though, I’m still not sure what it was that turned the tide…made you risk your neck for me.”
“You didn’t leave,” Mac replied, his eyes closed, hands out to the sides, bracing himself between the wall and the sink.
“Before that, though,” Jack carried on as if hearing Mac talking to him in English wasn’t causing his pulse to slam against his throat. “Before I came back, you’d changed your mind about me.”
Mac opened his eyes and tilted his head forward, causing Jack to pause his movements. “Everyone else…left,” Mac said, the words obviously a struggle as evidenced by the frantic bobbing motion of his Adam’s Apple. “Mom, Dad, Harry…. You…didn’t.”
Jack felt tears burn the backs of his eyes. It wasn’t that he’d come back…that he’d re-upped when his tour was over. It was simply that he hadn’t left Mac.
“I’m not going anywhere, Hoss,” he promised, tipping Mac’s head back again. “Now let’s get the rest of this peach fuzz offa you and try to catch some shut eye. I bet my Telly Savalas poster that shower wiped you out.”
“Da,” Mac whispered, and Jack winced at the shift back to Russian.
When he finished—with decidedly fewer nicks on Mac’s face than his own—he started to wipe the soap from Mac’s skin with a clean, hot towel, thinking to soothe his skin by placing it completely over Mac’s face.
The reaction was instantaneous.
Mac surged forward, nearly cracking Jack’s nose with his forehead, dislodging the towel and sending Jack stumbling backwards as he launched himself out of the small bathroom area to the larger room.
“Whoa, whoa, hey—” Jack started, moving to follow Mac’s panicked exodus.
Gray was on his feet, the surprise in his expression evident from across the room. Mac staggered to the wall opposite the bathroom door, pressing himself flat against it, his hands splayed out for balance on either side of him. He was breathing hard, his eyes darting around the room as though he were looking at something horrific rather than the interior of the hospital room.
Jack held out his hand to keep Gray away, then carefully approached Mac’s trembling form.
“Easy, bud,” he said softly, the way he might calm a frightened, cornered animal. “Easy…. You’re safe. Listen to my voice, Mac. You’re safe.”
“Pozhaluysta, ne nado….” Mac whispered, his voice breaking.
“Please, don’t,” Gray translated quietly without Jack having to ask.
“No one is gonna hurt you, Mac,” Jack continued, moving forward carefully.
The door to the room opened and Mac flinched violently. From the corner of his eye, Jack saw Gray turn to halt whoever it was entering the room, holding them off as Jack continued to try to calm Mac. He drew closer and Mac slid along the wall until he was in the corner by the window, his legs folding beneath him. He sank to the ground, his knees up like a protective shield.
Jack felt his heart break at the fear he saw etched on Mac’s face. He’d seen the kid in pain, seen him sad, angry, happy, but he’d never seen such stark terror stamped into those blue eyes before. Going to his knees, Jack reached out his hand slowly, gently grasping Mac’s forearm, feeling the tremors beneath his skin.
“God, kiddo, I’m so fucking sorry,” Jack whispered. “I’m so sorry I didn’t protect you from this.”
Mac simply shook under his hand, his gaze darting around the room, skimming over Jack as if he wasn’t even there.
“You’re safe, Mac,” Jack said softly, keeping his voice solid. “I promise.”
“Jack?” Mac’s voice cracked across his name, eyes sliding back toward him.
“Yeah, it’s me, Hoss,” Jack let himself smile, the motion gentling his tone. “I got you.”
Mac looked at him then, really looked, and Jack couldn’t hold back the rough gasp for air that caught at the back of his throat at the expression of anguish in those blue eyes.
“We’re out?”
Jack nodded. “We’re out,” he reassured him. “We got out, both of us.”
“They…they said…you died. They killed you.” Sweat beaded on Mac’s lip, gathering at his hairline. His eyes were dry and wide.
“I’m here, I promise, look,” he lifted Mac’s hand and pressed it against his sternum. “You feel that?”
Mac let out a harsh sob. “I shot you.”
“No, kid,” Jack shook his head. “You didn’t. I promise.”
“I can…I can see it….” Mac swallowed roughly. “I can see me…with a gun. I can…I can f-feel the gun…in my…in my hand….”
“You didn’t shoot me, Mac,” Jack slid closer until his knees were pressed against Mac’s hip. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
Shooting Alexi, bombing the lab, all of that would wait. Jack knew he might eventually remember, but right now, staring up at him with blue eyes full of fear, Mac needed reassurance, not reality.
“I can…I hear him…,” Mac stammered, his breath hitching and catching as though his lungs were made of barbed wire, “…like he’s…like he’s right here…like he’s right here y-yelling at me….”
Jack reached up and gripped the back of Mac’s neck, bringing his wandering eyes forward. “Don’t you listen to him, kid. You listen to me. My voice. You hear me?”
Mac nodded shakily.
“You just listen to me, okay? You are Angus MacGyver. From Mission City, California. Your best friend is a film nut named Wilt Bozer. You spend your life saving the fucking world, kid,” Jack tightened his grip when Mac’s eyes started to track away from him as if he were falling inside himself. “No, no, hey…don’t do that. Don’t fade on me, now. Mac? You with me?”
“’m…here.”
“You graduated high school early so you could go to MIT and then you left MIT to disarm IEDs in Afghanistan. That’s where you found me. That’s where you saved me, Mac. You remember saving me?”
Mac swallowed hard, and for a moment, Jack was worried he might be sick.
“I…remember.”
“And not just that pressure plate, kid. You gave me a purpose. You reminded me that there’s still good in this world. And it’s worth fighting for.”
Mac’s eyes filled with tears; he blinked and one tumbled free, sliding down his cheek and across Jack’s fingers where they braced his head.
“I tried, Jack,” he said in a choked whisper.
“I know you did, kid.”
“I t-tried…but I couldn’t…I couldn’t control my body. L-like I was there and…and n-not there. And it,” Mac groaned, closing his eyes tightly, “it hurt…God, it hurt so much. F-felt like I w-was coming apart….”
Jack felt his own tears slip down his heated cheeks. He wanted to pull Mac close, to stop the words from spilling out, to blank out what had happened—what he’d been unable to protect Mac from—but Mac was talking…he was speaking English and he was turning the release valve and Jack couldn’t stop him.
He couldn’t.
“I wanted to…to just stop. Just not…not breathe anymore. Not be…. If I wasn’t alive, they couldn’t use me—”
“Hey, hey,” Jack framed Mac’s face with both hands. “No, no, hey. You survived, kid. You didn’t let them win. They couldn’t use that remarkable mind of yours against you. You didn’t let them.”
“But…I…I hurt Isaac. I remember. I can s-see it, and I’m…I’m so sorry…I’m so sorry.” Mac sobbed then, a rough, broken sound that pierced Jack’s heart.
Unable to help himself, Jack pulled Mac close, wrapping his arms around the kid’s narrow shoulders, mindful of the wound on his side. Mac clung to him, his fingers curling into fists against Jack’s shirt as he broke apart in Jack’s arms. Jack could hear him murmuring something in Russian, and even without Gray translating he figured it was an apology.
“You got nothing to be sorry for, kid,” Jack murmured against his hair. “You did everything you could to resist something that…hell, Angus, I don’t know if anyone could resist as long as you did. Not against that. And you made it, man. You made it.”
Mac’s breath hitched as his tears ran dry. He didn’t pull away from Jack and after a moment, Jack felt his weight increase against him. Looking down, Jack saw that the younger man had passed out once more, his body slack, lips parted, tear tracks staining his cheeks.
“Gray?”
“Right here,” the other man said, much closer than Jack realized.
“Give me a hand?”
Between the two of them, they were able to get Mac off the floor and back into the bed, the younger man curling up on his side as Jack brought the blanket up. He looked over toward the doorway, surprised to see Matty standing there instead of the doctor.
“I thought you’d left?” Jack said softly.
“Not yet,” Matty shook her head, her dark eyes on Mac’s sleeping form. “Wanted to make sure you got away okay.”
“Think we’ll be doing that anytime soon?” Jack asked, rubbing at the top of his head.
“According to the doctor, if Mac takes it easy, he can get out of here tomorrow,” Matty reported. “And…from what I can see…he needs to. Get out, I mean.”
“Still think that doc at NYU is the way to go?” Jack asked.
Matty sighed. “He needs more help that we can offer at the Phoenix, Jack.”
Jack nodded. “Well, he’ll get it.”
“How about you get some rest,” Gray suggested. “I’ll sit with him.”
Jack felt his brows pull together. “Kind of afraid to leave him,” he confessed. “Never thought hearing him speak English would sound so good and…so terrible at the same time.”
“You were exactly what he needed, Jack,” Matty reassured him. “And now we just…gotta get him home.”
**
The ride to the small Romanian airport where the Phoenix jet was parked was a quiet affair. After his initial dam burst confession, Mac stopped talking once again, pulling into himself and not meeting anyone’s eyes. The doctor had provided pain meds and antibiotics for them to take on their journey, and had shared instructions regarding wound care, which Gray had simply nodded at politely.
Matty had a car with two guards take them to the airport. During the entire ride, Mac sat slumped against the window, his eyes aimed at nothing except the exterior of the car, his body a clear indication that he’d erected some serious walls between himself and the two men in his company. Jack allowed it, unsure how to climb to the other side without rattling something loose Mac wasn’t strong enough to handle.
When they boarded the plane, Gray took a seat toward the front of the plane, leaving Mac and Jack across the aisle from each other in the back. Mac settled into the seat, curled up and immediately closed his eyes. Jack knew he wasn’t quite asleep; he’s spent too many days next to that kid in the trenches not to recognize the rhythm of his breathing when he was truly asleep. But he honored the unspoken request none-the-less.
It was a ten-hour flight to New York. If nothing else, Jack figured he could use the time to catch up on his emails, now that he had cell service. He was scrolling through a few messages from Riley, catching him up on the goings-ons he’d missed while trapped in Undronovitch’s version of the Hunger Games, when he heard a low groan from Mac’s seat.
Looking over, he saw the line of pain bisecting the kid’s brow and realized that at some point he had fallen asleep and was now trapped in a nightmare. Jack started to rise and shake Mac awake when Mac’s voice stopped him.
“Please,” he whimpered.
Mac had never really been what Jack would call chatty—he didn’t ramble about unimportant things. He’d talk Jack’s ear off about a science experiment or the history of a location on a mission as he worked his way through the solution, but in general, everything he said had a purpose. When Riley was a kid, Jack remembered, she’d tell him in animated tones about every single aspect of her day, but something told him Mac had never felt that kind of freedom.
Even so, there was a true sense of loss when Mac wasn’t speaking—a feeling that Jack was missing out on an entire world of wonder.
“Let go, please,” Mac groaned, pulling Jack from his frozen reverie.
He saw that Gray had turned in his seat and was looking back at them. Unbuckling, he stood and crossed the aisle, crouching in front of Mac and carefully gripping his shoulder.
“Hey, kid,” he said softly. “Go ahead and wake up, now.”
“Don’t…,” Mac moaned, his head shifting restlessly against the back of the seat. “Please, don’t….”
“Mac,” Jack said louder. “Hey, you’re just dreaming.”
“Ngghhh—” Mac arched his neck and surged forward, his blue eyes opening wide and frantic, his hands out as though to ward off a blow.
Jack caught his hands, grabbing his attention with the touch.
“Easy, kiddo,” he crooned. “You’re okay. You’re safe.”
“U nikh byl ya…,” Mac gasped, his eyes wide, searching Jack’s face. “Oni zabrali menya ot tebya i oni…tam byla voda….”
Jack shot a look back at Gray.
“Uh…he’s saying they had me, they took me away from you and something about water,” Gray murmured. “Just dream stuff, man.”
Jack looked back at Mac. “Hey, you know where you are?”
Mac just gasped for air, his hands shaking in Jack’s grasp, eyes wild.
“Mac, hey,” Jack tightened his grip. “Look at me. Look at me, just me. Right here.”
Mac obeyed the order with such immediacy it made Jack flinch. He looked like he was bracing for a strike. Jack kept his hands still, not reaching up toward Mac’s face, just holding his hands in a gentle grip.
“You’re safe,” he said softly. “You’re not there anymore.”
Mac simply stared at him, breath hammering between parted lips, and Jack remembered Gray’s trick from the hospital room.
“Tell me three things you can see.”
Mac blinked, started to speak, then closed his eyes, pressing his lips tight before opening them again.
“W-window,” he said. “Seat. Isaac.”
“Good,” Jack smiled encouragingly at him. “Three things you can hear.”
“Engine, th-the lights buzzing, your voice.”
“Three things you can touch.”
“Your hands,” Mac started, looking down to where Jack’s hands wrapped around his slim fingers and his breath caught. “They hit you…so hard, and there was so much blood…I thought…I thought they’d killed you…because your…your hands were so still. But…but you woke up and you…when they put the needle in me, you held me, and I could…I could feel your hands on my back…I could feel you hanging on to me. I could…you didn’t let go…you…,” he looked up, tears turning his blue eyes neon in the dimly lit plane’s interior, “you didn’t let go.”
Jack shook his head. “You go kaboom, I go kaboom,” he said, managing to keep his own tears at bay. “That’s our deal, kid. Always will be.”
Mac sat still for a long moment, steadying his breathing, looking back down at Jack’s hands wrapped around his own.
“I didn’t go kaboom,” he finally said.
Jack blinked. “Did you just crack a joke…?”
Mac looked up and there was a light in his eyes that Jack hadn’t seen since before this op started.
“Would you look at that,” Jack sat back on his heels, releasing Mac’s hands, and resting his own on his knees. “I’ve missed you, kid.”
“Missed you, too,” Mac whispered, wrapping one arm around his middle, covering the bandage at his side with the flat of his hand.
“I got something for you,” Jack reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew the small box of paperclips. “I asked one of the guards in the hospital to get these for me. Was thinking maybe it might help distract you, but…you weren’t really ready to be distracted.”
Mac took the box from Jack’s hand carefully, as if it were made of blown glass.
“Thank you,” he said softly.
“You’re welcome, kid,” Jack murmured. He pushed himself to his feet, stomping his boots a bit to get the blood flowing again and banish the pins-and-needles sensation. “Hey, Mac,” he said, drawing Mac’s eyes. “It’s gonna get better.”
“Yeah,” Mac replied, rattling the paperclips in the box.
“It is,” Gray chimed in, surprising both.
Jack balanced himself with one hand on the overhead compartment, watching as Gray approached. He sank down into the chair next to where Jack stood, across from Mac, and leaned his elbows on his knees, looking down at where his left hand folded over the brace on his right.
“I mean, not right away,” Gray amended. “And some days…you are going to feel pretty shitty. And you’ll need to be reminded who you are. Where you are. And you won’t believe that it’ll get better because the world will feel so fucking dark…you’ll forget there’s light out there at all.” He looked up and Jack caught his breath at the truth burning in his blue eyes—so like Mac’s. “But then one day…you’ll realize that it’s been days since you’ve had a nightmare. Weeks since you’ve been in pain. You’ll realize that you’ve laughed more than you’ve cried. You’ll look forward to stupid little things like…coffee at Starbucks or lacing up new running shoes.”
He smiled and Jack found himself echoing the expression, feeling every word the man said reverberate inside him.
“And it’ll be better,” he straightened up and dug something out of his pocket, tossing it to Mac, who caught it against his chest.
To Jack’s surprise, he realized it was a red Swiss Army Knife. He had no idea if it was the one that had been taken from Mac or one Gray had found along the way, but it didn’t matter. The look of gratitude and relief on Mac’s face mattered. The sure and confident way his nimble fingers turned the knife over in his grip mattered. The way he nodded in agreement mattered.
“All you gotta do is keep going,” Gray said, sinking back against the seat. “You just…you keep going and you leave the nightmares behind.”
“You told me once,” Mac said softly, his eyes on the knife in his hand, “not to run from my demons. To use them.”
Gray nodded. “Yeah, I remember.”
Mac looked up at him and Jack felt his gut tighten. “I don’t know how to…use these.”
“You’ll figure it out,” Jack told him. “It’s like…defusing a bomb. You don’t know what you’re going to be dealing with until you start pulling it apart, but you always figure it out.”
Mac nodded, curling his fingers around the knife, and leaning back against the seat. Jack eased down into the seat across the aisle, turned sideways so he could keep an eye on Mac.
“Conservation of energy,” Mac said softly.
“What’s that?” Jack frowned.
“There’s a…a law. In physics. Called the conservation of energy,” Mac elaborated, his eyes drifting to the window, his voice becoming a low murmur of sound, the cadence as close to his old self as he’d sounded since he and Jack were trapped in that awful room with the metal chairs. “It means energy can’t be created or destroyed…just transformed. Into something else.”
Jack half smiled. “Y’know, I don’t always understand where you’re going with things, but it’s sure nice to hear you rambling about science again.”
“Just…thinking about how…sometimes you have this part of you that you…you build your life around. It’s your foundation,” Mac glanced away from the window briefly, his eyes taking them both in before looking outside once more. “Like…my mind. My…my thoughts. But if that foundation is taken from you…it can feel like everything is over.”
Looking down at the box of paperclips and Swiss Army Knife in his hands, Mac took a breath. “But…like in physics, what we think is destroyed is still there…it’s just been…transformed into something else.”
Jack felt a smile tug at the corner of his mouth. “What we lose in the fire, we find in the ashes.”
Mac glanced his way in surprise. “Where’d you hear that?”
Jack jutted his chin toward Gray. “Our friend the philosopher over there.”
“You’re not wrong,” Gray said, his voice suspiciously tight. “From the time I met you two, I thought it was fitting you worked for something called the Phoenix Foundation. I’ve seen you burn bright, climbing up from ashes more than once. You are the Phoenix, kid. The firebird.”
“I hope so,” Mac breathed, pocketing the knife, and plucking at the paperclips. “’cause I’m real tired of burning down.”
**
The first visit to the specialist at NYU came the day after they arrived in New York.
Gray left them to head to his mother’s apartment in Manhattan and Jack and Mac crashed in the hotel room—Mac sleeping almost five hours before being wracked with bad dreams. Jack had no idea what to expect from a neurology specialist, but the team was very efficient, and very thorough.
He was told to leave and come back in a few hours as they wanted to run a battery of tests on Mac, but Jack had nowhere he wanted to go on his own. He dug out the Tom Clancy book Gray had absconded with from Romania and sat in the waiting room, staring at the dark font on ivory paper until the shape of the letters looked surreal and practically three-dimensional. When the pager he’d been given buzzed, he realized nearly five hours had passed.
He stood up stiffly, making his way to the nurse’s station and followed the directions to a little side room for a private meeting with the doctor. He felt almost claustrophobic in the room, unable to sit, pacing restlessly until the door opened and a man he’d never met before stepped into the room. He had a friendly, non-descript face, wore a sweatshirt and jeans, and looked nothing like what Jack pictured a neurologic specialist would look like.
“Mr. Dalton? I’m John Carver,” the man held out his hand which Jack took automatically. “Matty Webber is a good friend of mine.”
“Same,” Jack nodded. “Thanks for helping us out.”
“I’m glad she called,” Carver said, sitting down in one of the curve-backed chairs and indicating with his hand for Jack to join him. “I owe her a lot. It’s good to be able to pay her back in some small way.”
Jack smiled tightly, sitting stiffly across from the doctor. “So, you’ve seen Mac?”
Carver nodded, leaning back, and folding his hands across his chest. “Remarkable young man,” he said. “Matty sent over a preliminary report of what he’d been through—and the chemical compounds they were able to discern from the serum he was injected with. I have to say, when he walked in here on his own steam, looking more or less intact, I was…well, I was shocked, after what I’d read.”
“He’s tough,” Jack nodded, the fist in his stomach tightening.
“That he is,” Carver nodded again, then leaned forward, keeping his hands folded across him. “From what we’ve been able to tell, the trauma is repairable,” he reported, glancing up as Jack exhaled. “There are no signs of dementia present—though we can never rule out eventualities down the road, but that is true for many of us. He has some scar tissue in his brain that may cause some glitches in memory—accessing them, not making new ones. This is something we often see in victims of intense trauma, and not necessarily directly related to the physiological reprogramming he experienced.”
“So…you’re saying he’s okay?” Jack frowned, trying to follow the man’s report.
“I’m saying that with time—and therapy—he will very likely return to the…what did Matty call him? Brilliant burst of human sunshine?”
Jack huffed a weak laugh. “Yeah, that’s about right.” He rubbed at the back of his head. “So, therapy.”
Carver nodded. “I have some names of colleagues I’ll send home with you. They have practices in Los Angeles. And…,” he tilted his head, brown eyes narrowed as if examining Jack in a glance. “It wouldn’t hurt to have a support group. For yourself as well.”
“Mac and I both go to my friend Freddie’s VA group off and on,” Jack reported. “I never really thought I needed it, but…it seemed to help Mac.”
“I’d wager it helped you more than you think,” Carver mused, dropping his hands to his knees. “I recommend you definitely keep that up.”
“Is Mac good to leave?” Jack asked as Carver stood up.
“As soon as he’s cleaned up from the last of the tests, yes,” Carver nodded. “I’ll have them bring him to you.”
Jack made his way back to the waiting room, staring blankly at the muted TV until he heard his name once more. Head snapping up, he smiled at Mac standing in the doorway, looking a bit like a kid on his first day of school.
“Hey, bud!” He stood and joined Mac in the doorway. “How you feeling?”
“Like a pincushion,” he muttered. “I’m starving and exhausted. I can’t decide which one to deal with first.”
Jack wasn’t sure he was ever going to take hearing Mac speak with such natural ease for granted ever again.
“How about we grab a pizza on our way back to the hotel?”
Mac nodded. They picked up the prescriptions Carver had suggested to help with the sleep and nightmare issues, ordered the pizza and headed back to the hotel once it was ready, where Mac ate a slice and a half before passing out cold on his bed, pizza slice still in his hand. Jack chuckled, plucking the food from Mac’s loose fingers and covering him up with the edge of the comforter, then headed out to the balcony overlooking the busy city street, sipping a beer.
It felt good to hear the energy of the city below him. The honking taxis, the blaring music from bars as the doors were opened to let patrons in, the thrumming voices of pedestrians. It was life, the messy chaos of it, surrounding him. Seeping into his pours.
The feel of it made him forget for a moment how hard he’d tried to stop the madness that took Mac from him—scooped out the heart and soul of the kid and scrambled them up before reinserting them back into the shell. Jack knew there were heroes—like Alexander Devin, like Isaac Gray, like Angus MacGyver—who stood up against the darkness and stared into it, unflinchingly radiating light…and yet, all he could see was himself, standing to the side, unable to do anything but watch.
The glass door connecting the balcony to the small living room in their suite slide open, drawing a lazy glance from Jack.
“Hey, Hoss,” he greeted, his voice rough from the lateness of the hour. He didn’t know how long he’d been sitting out there, but he’d wager it was past midnight based on the quiet energy from the city below.
Mac stepped out onto the balcony gingerly, his blond hair sleep tousled, a seam running down the side of his face from his pillowcase. He wrapped his arms around himself, the sleeves of his shirt pulled over the heels of his hands, his feet bare beneath the long legs of the gray sweatpants.
“Bad dream?” Jack asked, frowning as he didn’t recall hearing Mac scream himself awake.
Mac shook his head, keeping his back close to the wall of the hotel, staying well away from the edge of solid balcony railing. They were only six floors up, but Jack knew that with Mac’s fear of heights, it may as well be six hundred floors. He used the toe of his boot and shoved one of the empty chairs toward Mac, plucking a beer from the cooler he’d set outside next to him and handing it to the younger man.
Gratefully taking the beer, Mac sank into the chair, staring at the bottle sweating in his hand.
“It’s a twist-off,” Jack prompted.
“Thanks,” Mac muttered, but didn’t move to open the bottle.
Jack looked away, back toward the city, taking a long drink. “You can tell me ‘bout the dreams, Mac,” he reminded him softly. “It’s good to talk about them.”
“I didn’t have a nightmare this time,” Mac said, shifting the chair until he was facing the same direction as Jack, their proximity allowing him to lean his shoulder against the older man’s a bit. “Just…kinda wanted to talk.”
“Well, hell,” Jack grinned, gently bumping Mac with his shoulder, watching the clouds chase each other over a waning moon. “I’m never going to say no to that.”
“I’ve been…remembering some things,” Mac started, and Jack saw him start to peel back the beer label with the edge of his thumbnail. “Things from…before.”
“Like, with…,” Jack was still hesitant to say either names of the men responsible for their captivity and torture.
Mac shook his head. “Not back at the, uh…the compound, but…before before. Phoenix. Afghanistan.”
“That so?” Jack tried to keep his voice casual, but even he heard the slight tremor there. “What kind of things are you remembering?”
“Mostly just…it’s like…watching a movie, only sped up real fast,” Mac sighed, sinking deeper into the chair, his shoulder heavy against Jack’s. “Missions and bombs and…sand. Lots of sand. And a…sarcophagus—”
“Dude,” Jack held up a hand. “We promised never to speak of that.”
Mac offered him a half-grin. “Right, sorry.”
“I’ll give you a pass this once,” Jack mock-saluted him with the neck of his beer bottle. “You gonna drink that thing or turn it into origami?”
“I remember shooting…th-that man,” Mac said softly, staring at the bottle in his hand as if it were the reason for his nightmares. “I can…I remember how the gun…,” he swallowed, “kicked in my hand. I remember the sound of it. How it…how it smelled different.”
Jack sat quietly, not wanting to interrupt Mac for fear he would close up once more.
“But more than that, I…remember you,” Mac exhaled. “You’re in all of these memories, Jack. I can barely remember my mom, and my dad is this mixed-up mess of images and emotions that just…make my heart feel like it’s twisting in my chest.” He cleared his throat, reaching up to wipe at his eye and Jack was surprised to realize there were tears in his voice. “And Harry…I mean, he’s always there, too, but just…like, not for a long time. But you…you’re…steadfast. And I realized I needed you to know something.”
Jack shifted in his seat. “Listen, Mac, you don’t—"
“No, wait. This…it’s important,” Mac protested, turning slightly to face Jack. “I…need to know I’ve said this to you, okay? So just…just shut up and listen a minute.”
Jack huffed out a surprised laugh at the outburst, then sat back, tipping his head in an indication Mac should continue.
“I know you see this…this darkness. Around me,” Mac began. “I can tell because your eyes get a kind of…flinch around them. Like you’re scared for me.”
Jack blinked, fighting to keep his breathing steady as Mac tore through every firewall he’d ever built with a few words. The world around him suddenly felt a bit sharper, more tactile, edges appearing on the exhales of their breath. Something shifted in the air; Jack’s perception was primed like a fuse and he felt a strange sort of energy swarm up around him.
“I’ve been trying my whole life to push it back. But back at that…the compound, they…. I used it. They used it, I guess. And…it scares me,” Mac confessed, his eyes going distant, sliding away from Jack’s face to the bottle in his hand. “I don’t even want to…to look at it because the longer I look, the darker it gets, and I feel like one day it could just….”
“Swallow you up,” Jack whispered.
“Yeah,” Mac nodded. “But…that’s where you come in.”
Jack lifted his brow slightly. “Is that right?”
“You’re like a shield,” Mac said softly. “Between me and all that dark.”
“That’s me, human vibranium,” Jack teased.
Mac blinked. “That’s…actually pretty accurate.”
“Listen, kid,” Jack said, setting his nearly empty bottle on top of the cooler at his feet, then turning so he faced Mac. “I get what you’re saying, I do. And don’t think I don’t appreciate it. I’ve been your Overwatch since you were nineteen years old. And after eight years…I’ve learned a few things myself.”
Mac swallowed, watching Jack and the older man could swear he was bracing himself.
“Like the fact that this darkness you see? It’s not yours,” Jack shook his head. “It’s like…like the balance to all the good you do in the world.”
Mac tilted his head. “So, what, it’s not mine, but…I create it?”
Jack looked at his hands. “No, that’s not…,” he took a breath and looked back at Mac. “Kid, I’ve seen darkness. Like, the complete absence of light inside a person. Before I met you, man, there were times when the only thing that kept me going was darkness. Like this…this rage, y’know?”
Mac nodded helplessly; his gaze held prisoner by Jack’s words.
“I know what it’s like to have…to have nothing but hate keeping you alive. Not hope, not love. Hate.” He shook his head in a gesture of helplessness. “But then I met you and…shit, kid, you changed me. The world changed for me. Because of you. Bud, the world can’t really handle all your light.”
Mac shook his head, looking down. Jack could see he was resisting.
“Mac, look at me. Hey, eyes up,” Jack snapped, waiting until Mac did as he requested. “You are a freaking human…supernova. I’m not keeping darkness away from you. I’m just…,” Jack sighed. “Man, I’m just staying close, just hoping some of that light of yours reflects on me.”
He saw Mac’s eyes fill, and watched him swallow, waiting him out.
“Thanks, Jack,” he whispered, lifting his chin and with one breath, pulling in all the emotion Jack had seen just moments before back inside, into the deep well he knew Mac kept inside. “Not just for…for saying that, but…y’know. For staying.”
“You’re never going to get rid of me, dude,” Jack smiled. “Your kids are gonna be asking you why Uncle Jack’s always hanging around.”
Mac’s grin was tinged with a bit of sadness. He twisted open the cap on his beer and shifted again until they were once more shoulder to shoulder. Jack knew they should probably go inside, get some rest, but it seemed that neither of them was in a hurry to do so. They sat quietly, listening to the city breathe around them until dawn scraped the edge of the horizon, pushing the last of the clouds west and south, the usual sound of birds that greeted the sun accompanied by an increase in traffic noise.
Gray texted Jack in the early morning hours as Mac was showering, and Jack was finishing his third cup of coffee. He wanted them to meet him in Manhattan at the 9/11 Memorial. Jack wondered at the location—but didn’t push back as they collected their things and headed down to the taxi stand at the front of the hotel.
Jack had tried to push breakfast on Mac but had only really been successful in forcing him to bring a piece of toast with him as he downed a take-away cup of coffee.
“You’re lucky we’re in the Big Apple,” Jack muttered as they climbed into the cab. “If I’da had my way, we’d be hanging out in Texas and my mom would be smothering you with carbs galore.”
Mac chuckled. “I’m fine, I promise. Just never really been a breakfast person.”
“You’re too damn skinny is what you are, Hoss. You get a pass this morning, but we’re getting ourselves the biggest burger in New York after we find Gray.”
“Where’re we meeting him?” Mac asked, eyes on the city streets as they crawled through stop-and-go traffic.
Jack shot him a quick glance, realizing he must not have been really listening when Jack told the cab driver. “The 9/11 Memorial,” he said.
Mac glanced over at him. “Huh…wonder why.”
“Yeah, same,” Jack murmured. “I still remember that day so clearly. I was…, uh,” he glanced up at the plastic divider between them and the driver and adjusted his musing a bit, “overseas and like a month after it all went down, new recruits started surging in country. It was a bit surreal. I was 26. Thought I was some big, bad Delta Force, and suddenly…shit got real.”
“I was eleven,” Mac said softly.
Jack felt his heart lurch as it always did when he was reminded of how truly young Mac was. Jack had been roughly his age now when the Towers fell. Talk about surreal.
“My dad had just left the year before and I was still trying to figure out where I lived.” Mac turned from the window and glanced askance at Jack. “I was kinda bouncing between living with Harry and living with the Bozers for a while.”
“I remember you saying that,” Jack nodded.
Mac turned his eyes back to the city. “Honestly…it kinda didn’t feel real to me. Not back then…when it happened, I mean. Felt like…I was watching something from a movie.”
“I know what you mean.”
“Kinda like now,” Mac looked down at his hands and Jack suddenly realized the kid had been twisting paperclips the entire cab ride.
It made him want to smile a bit, seeing Mac’s hands in motion, the slim, sure fingers moving as if autonomous from the rest of his body. But Mac’s words stopped him.
“What are you saying, Hoss?”
Mac looked up, almost startled, as if he hadn’t truly registered speaking aloud. He blinked rapidly, looking for all the world as though the words he needed had just turned to dust before his eyes. Before Jack could press further, the taxi stopped, and the driver pointed to their fare. Jack paid the man as they exited the cab and Jack checked his phone.
“Gray wants us to meet him at the South Pool by the first responder names,” Jack said, showing their digital tickets to the gate agent, and leading the way.
They walked slowly through the Memorial Glade; there weren’t many people present at this time of the morning and Jack felt almost as if they had the place to themselves.
“What did you mean earlier?” Jack prompted, glancing over at the shape Mac was still forming with the paperclips. “You can talk to me, you know.”
“I know,” Mac said softly. “I just…don’t always know…well, what words to say. Sometimes my thoughts are like…I don’t know,” he lifted a shoulder in a half-shrug, “impressions. Not…not words. Does that make sense?”
Jack nodded slowly. “Kinda like walking through a room full of spider webs.”
“Huh, yeah,” Mac huffed in what sounded like surprise. “And each time I brush one away, another one comes back. But not for long enough to know how to…turn them into words.
“Look,” Jack paused next to the Survivor Tree—a Callery pear tree that survived the terror attacks on 9/11—and put his hand on Mac’s shoulder, causing him to pause and face Jack. “I know you realize that disassociation is a symptom of the trauma you experienced.”
“PTSD,” Mac muttered. “Freddie’s said that before, too.”
Jack half-grinned. “You remember Freddie?”
Mac nodded. “Mostly. I mean, I remember his name, and the feeling I get when I think his name is a good feeling. I can’t picture what he looks like, though.”
“That’s okay,” Jack waved a hand. “It’ll come back to you. But…what was it he said?”
Mac sighed, looking at the paperclip shape held loosely in his fingers. Jack couldn’t see exactly what it was but could tell it was one of his more elaborate pieces—looked like at least three paperclips in the mix.
“Just that…trauma isn’t the same for everyone. Same with how we react to it. And that…y’know, there’s only so many places I can put things in the boxes in my head until I run out of room.”
Jack ducked his chin, trying to catch Mac’s eyes. “You think you’re running out of room?”
Mac glanced up at him through his lashes, then back down to his hands. “I think…it’s crowded.”
“Crowded?” Jack’s eyebrows bounced up.
Mac shrugged, then turned to look at the tree as if facing Jack was just this side of too much. “Just…a lot of voices. Y’know? Memories are…noisy.”
Jack huffed a soft laugh. “Only in your ginormous brain, kid,” he rested a hand on his shoulder, looking at the Survivor Tree. “You’ll find room for all those memories again, Mac. You survived, man.”
Mac pulled his bottom lip in and caught it between his teeth. “My dad said once…never trust a survivor until you find out what they did to stay alive.”
Jack blinked in surprise, but before he could comment further, they heard a sharp whistle and turned to see Isaac Gray standing near one of the two Pools. Jack bumped Mac with his elbow, and they headed over to meet their friend.
“Thanks for meeting me here,” Gray said as they joined him. “It’s only a few blocks from my mom’s new place and I thought maybe you guys would like to see it.”
“No problem. Don’t you clean up nice,” Jack grinned at the other man, noting his trimmed hair and the basic five-o’clock shadow framing his jaw where before he’d had a full beard.
Gray laughed, rubbing at his chin with his right hand, the brace now absent. “Yeah, my mom isn’t a big fan of the beard, so…this is my compromise.”
“How was it, seeing your mom?” Mac asked, his blue eyes bright, his body tense.
Gray turned to walk toward where Jack could hear the waterfall spilling deep into the earth where once a 110-story building had stood.
“It was…strange,” he glanced over his shoulder at them. “Good. But strange.”
“You tell her about P…er, your father?” Jack said, skirting the edge of speaking that name out loud. Mac didn’t seem to notice, his attention focused still on Gray.
Gray nodded. “I did,” he said, exhaling and settling back into his heels, hands in the pockets of the black hoodie he wore over a white T-shirt sporting the words Vampire Weekend, which Jack didn’t recognize.
Decked out in jeans and Converse, Jack would have thought Isaac Gray to be more Mac’s generation than his, even though he knew the man had lived one hell of a storied life in the last four decades.
“My mom…she’s a tough lady. Tougher than I ever gave her credit for. All I ever really knew of her was from growing up in the Bronx,” Gray lifted his shoulder, his gaze drifting over the names along the edge of the Pool. “Turns out she actually knew Undronovitch. Not just his name, but knew the guy, back in Russia, when they were yo—”
“Mac?” Jack interrupted, suddenly realizing that Mac’s tense posture had shifted to a visible tremble.
Mac’s eyes were blown wide, black almost eating up all the blue. His breath was rapid and rough, and he was so pale he was almost colorless. The paperclip figure fell from his fingers as though his hands had gone numb, and he wasn’t looking back at Jack when the other man stepped into his line of sight.
He wasn’t really looking at anything.
“Hey, kid,” Jack waved a hand in front of his face, then reached out to grip his bicep when he saw Mac swaying.
Mac startled at Jack’s touch, gasping harshly, and flinched in Jack’s grip, nearly toppling as his eyes went distant. Jack released his arm as if he’d been burned, holding his hands up and away from Mac’s body.
“Sorry, kid,” Jack breathed. “I shouldn’t have touched you. Easy, you’re okay.”
But Mac didn’t look okay—far from it. He looked like he was two seconds from coming apart. His hands pressed against the sides of his head as if trying to collapse his skull and Jack was viciously reminded of their last moments together in the cinderblock room and the sound of Mac’s scream of agony.
He couldn’t bear to hear that scream again.
“Jack, over here,” Gray said quietly, his voice tight.
Jack registered Gray bending over to pick up what Mac had dropped and then he basically herded Mac in front of him, Jack at his side, to where a bench was positioned nearby in the shade of one of the glade trees. Mac didn’t resist, moving with Gray’s guidance, but didn’t appear to be connected to what was happening around him. He allowed himself to be eased down onto the bench, neither man directly touching him quite yet, his eyes not losing their disconnected gaze.
“Mac?” Jack called again, carefully, very carefully, reaching up to rest a hand on Mac’s arm. Mac flinched again, but not quite as violently, his shoulders heaving with the force of his breaths. “Hey, you with me?”
“Net,” Mac practically moaned, the palms of his hands flat against his temples. He closed his eyes tight, his lips moving rapidly as he repeated, “Net, net, net….”
Jack glanced quickly at Gray. “I got that one,” he said.
Hearing Mac plead no in Russian turned his heart inside out. It didn’t appear to be in response to anything Jack was saying, instead, it seemed those voices crowding in his head just got a whole lot louder. Jack kept his hand on Mac’s arm, just offering the weight, the support, until Mac dropped his hands from his head, his fingers curling against his palms as they lay in his lap.
“I’m sorry, man,” Gray muttered. “I didn’t even think…just said that name….”
Jack shook his head. “Don’t—it’s not your fault. He was okay.” He pushed Mac’s hair away from his face, moving the hand on Mac’s arm to the back of his neck and gripping gently. “He was basically himself again, I—”
Mac took a sudden deep breath, his eyes blinking wide as his back straightened and he careened to the back of the bench, Jack holding onto him for balance.
“Whoa, whoa, hey,” Jack shifted his hips, tucking a finger under Mac’s chin and turning his face toward him. “Hey, Mac, can you look at me?”
Blue eyes sharpened, tracking the sound of his voice.
“Trees…,” Mac whispered.
Jack frowned. “Trees?”
“W-water,” Mac said, his ragged breath making the word skip. “People.”
Jack’s brows were pulled low across the bridge of his nose, his heartbeat rapid at the base of his throat as he watched Mac’s eyes shift and skid around them.
“Three things,” Gray breathed. “Good job, kid.”
And then Jack understood: Mac was pulling himself out of it. Jack smiled, nodding encouragingly as Mac dragged in a shaking breath.
“Three things you can touch,” Jack encouraged.
“Bench,” Mac whispered. “Pants. Skin.”
A shaking hand came up and grasped Jack’s arm. His breath was still rough, skittering through parted lips.
“I have you,” Jack smiled at him, flexing his fingers so Mac would feel the weight of his hand. “Watch me, breathe with me,” Jack filled his lungs, exhaling slowly, watching as Mac worked to match him.
Mac’s breathing started to even out slightly as he visibly fought to focus on Jack, his trembling muscles clenching as one hand gripped the edge of the bench in a bid for control. Jack nodded encouragingly.
“That’s it, kid,” he said softly. “One easy breath. There you go.” When Mac’s eyes eventually cleared, Jack smiled at him. “You back?”
“Y-yeah, I think so,” Mac rasped, his voice sounding like a smoker on a bender.
“I’m sorry, man,” Gray said from his other side.
Mac turned so he could look at the other man. “Isaac?”
Gray smiled at him.
“What are you sorry for?” Mac asked, confusion pulling his brows low.
Gray shook his head. “I forgot about…y’know, triggers. I wasn’t thinking.”
Mac blinked, looking down at his empty hands as Jack loosened the hold he had on Mac’s neck. “Am I…am I speaking English…or Russian?” he asked softly.
“English,” Gray answered while Jack tried to remember how to inflate his own lungs.
Mac closed his eyes and swallowed hard. “Good.” He took a few slow, deep breaths. “That was…rough.”
“You pulled yourself out of it, though,” Jack praised him, shifting his hand to the back of the bench, away from Mac.
Mac nodded shakily, eyes on the cement path at their feet. They sat for a few heartbeats in silence, then Gray spoke up.
“I’m glad I was right.”
Mac and Jack glanced at him with twin expressions of confusion.
“Right? About what?” Jack asked.
Gray smiled, the stretch of it hitting his eyes as he looked over at Mac. “I told those morons your mind doesn’t work like anyone else’s. They couldn’t just reprogram it.”
“That’s the truth,” Jack murmured, watching Mac as he pulled in a shaking breath, rubbing his hands along his cargo pants almost nervously. His eyes were focused again, and his breathing had evened out, but he was still too pale for Jack’s liking. “How you feeling, bud?”
“Untethered,” Mac replied softly. “Like…I lost my string and…I’m just gonna…float away.”
As if on cue, Jack and Gray reached up as one and dropped their hands on Mac’s shoulders. The younger man looked up in surprise, glancing first at Gray and then at Jack.
“You’re not going anywhere, kid,” Jack reassured him. “You got too many people ready to hang on tight to you.”
A small, fragile smile tipped up the edges of Mac’s lips. “Thanks,” he said softly.
“And just…maybe think about getting someone to talk to,” Gray offered, letting his hand fall back into his lap. “Someone who can work with you on those trigger points until all they’re just…notes in a file about a really, really shitty op.”
Mac chuffed and Jack patted his back pocket. “NYU doc gave me some names to check out when we get back to L.A.,” he told Gray. “We’ll get someone.”
He meant for Mac, but when Gray nodded with a look of relief in his blue eyes, Jack realized there was value in his seeking some guidance as well.
“Well, boys,” Gray cleared his throat. “I actually was going to let you know something.”
“You leaving us, Isaac?” Mac asked, his voice sounding so young, Jack felt his heart clench.
Before Gray could respond, Jack’s phone buzzed. He reached into his pocket and retrieved it, frowning as he looked at the screen.
“Text from Matty,” he said, sliding up the notification. “Says they’ve plugged the leak and it’s clear to return.” He exchanged a look with Mac. “You were right. There was a mole in the Phoenix.”
“Wait…she kept us away?” Mac asked, pulling his head back.
“Your boss is one clever lady,” Gray huffed an appreciative laugh.
Jack nodded in agreement. Had she told him to stay away for his protection so they could find the mole, he would have protested. But keeping him away for Mac to see a specialist? He was all over that.
“You’re not coming back to L.A. with us, are you?” Jack asked, sliding his phone back into his pocket.
Gray rolled his neck, turning to face forward and leaned his elbows on his knees. He lifted his eyes, gaze directed at the Pool, and sucked on his teeth, the tsk sound drawing a glance from Mac. Jack felt a bit like he was waiting for a storm to break.
“Jack, you remember how I told you I used to be an investment banker?”
Jack nodded, stretching his arm across the back of the bench. Mac curled his back a bit, resting his shoulders against Jack’s arm, but keeping the rest of his body close and tense.
“Yeah, you said you decided to be a medic because of a friend of yours saving your life in a car accident,” Jack recalled, hyper-aware of how intently Mac was listening.
Gray nodded. “The year before that happened, the man who helped my mom raise me died here. He was a first responder.”
It was on the tip of Jack’s tongue to offer condolences, but he sensed they’d land hollow, and it was clear Gray was working through his thoughts. It was exhausting, Jack knew, explaining yourself, exposing your heart through words, a voice. It bared you. Made you vulnerable.
“I called him my uncle—actually thought he was, until…y’know,” he glanced quickly to his right, not quite at Jack and Mac, but Jack nodded anyway. “We were still living in the Bronx, but I worked downtown Manhattan. I was…,” he huffed a weak laugh, dropping his eyes. “I was kind of an asshole, actually. Trying to, y’know,” he sat back and tilted his head, his hands waving expressively, the paperclip sculpture catching the morning light, “shake off the Bronx or something. You wouldn’t think so, but sometimes these five boroughs may as well be five different countries with all their…idiosyncrasies.”
“Until 9/11,” Jack mused.
“Exactly,” Gray exhaled. “That day sent so much sideways…and it’s kind of the reason my buddy and I got into the accident in the first place. I was your age,” he glanced at Mac, who simply looked back at him, his blue eyes intent and steady, “and I was…I was so lost.”
They sat quietly, all having at one time felt the weight of that word on their hearts.
“So,” Gray cleared his throat. “I joined up, became a medic, then got tapped by the CIA, and…got tangled up with the Russian mob. Sixteen years later and, man…I’m still lost.” He reached up and rubbed the back of his head. “Until now.”
“You’re found?” Mac asked softly, speaking up for the first time since Gray began his story.
Gray offered him a half smile. “Connecting with my mom, learning about this whole…history she’s experienced that I never knew…,” he shook his head. “The man who died here, he got her out of Russia. And then he just…stayed close. Never let on to me that he was anything other than a dude from the Bronx. And my Ma, y’know, she’s got a lot more stories to share.”
“In the end,” Mac murmured, looking at his hands curled in his lap, “that’s all we are. Stories.”
Jack found himself nodding as Gray chuffed. “You got that right.”
“So, you’re staying in New York?” Jack concluded.
“Your boss, Matty, she…,” Gray cleared his throat again. “She offered me a job. At the Phoenix.”
Mac brought his head up at that, and Jack tensed, waiting to see how he’d react, if he’d want Gray there as a sort of lifeline, as he’d been since they’d connected with him again. Understanding Mac in a way Jack hadn’t been able to for the first time in their friendship.
“No,” Mac shook his head. “That’s just one more way to get lost.”
Gray nodded. “Kinda what I thought, too,” he smiled. “I told her no this morning. Think I’m going to hang around here a bit. See what living in Manhattan is like after all this time.”
Jack sat quietly for a moment, thinking. “Y’know, there are pressures in this job no one would believe are possible to survive.” He registered both Mac and Gray nodded. “And then…there are things that make it more worthwhile than any other job I’ve had.” He glanced askance at Gray. “Like meeting friends like you, man.”
Gray grinned and shook his head. “C’mon, now. You’re gonna make me blush.”
“I’m serious,” Jack shifted sideways, drawing one knee up on the bench so he could face the other two. “When we first met you, I wanted to strangle you—”
“Well, I did manage to get you shot full of ketamine,” Gray acknowledged, tipping his hand to the side.
“True,” Jack allowed with a small grin. “But then…you saved Mac. And, brother, I can’t tell you…losing him would…,” Jack huffed, looking away, toward the Pool where the name of Gray’s uncle was etched, “it would kill me.”
“Jack…,” Mac protested softly.
“I’m being one hundred percent honest, bud,” Jack said, looking hard at Mac’s profile. “Why do you think I looked him up for help when I had to go haul your ass out of that freaky Mexican ghost carnival?”
“Ah, yes,” Gray grinned. “The cartel adventure.”
“Is that what the kids are calling it these days?” Jack teased.
“What made you think to go to him?” Mac asked suddenly, glancing over at Jack curiously.
Jack smiled. “I had a dream.”
“Oh, this should be good,” Gray chuckled.
“I dreamed about a blue-eyed wolf,” Jack continued. “Had Riley do her google-fu magic and found his number. Told him it was Little Wolf.”
“Malen'kiy volk,” Mac murmured, sending Jack’s heart into his throat for a moment until he continued, “that’s what the FSB agent called me.”
Jack dragged his hand across his mouth, banishing the sweat that had instantly appeared upon hearing Mac speak Russian. “Yep, so…I figured this guy would remember he owed you one.”
“I owed both of you,” Gray acknowledged. “I still do.”
Mac shook his head. “Not anymore,” he said softly. “Now you’re just…family. And family takes care of each other.”
Gray smiled. “Yeah, okay.”
They sat for another moment, listening to the low murmur of voices, the slightly muted roar of the man-made falls, the hum of traffic that was the backbeat of New York.
“I almost forgot,” Gray said and held out the paperclip sculpture. “You dropped this earlier.”
“Keep it,” Mac tilted his head. “I want you to.”
“What is it?” Jack asked and Gray handed it over to him. Reaching across Mac, Jack plucked it from the other man’s fingers. It was an impossibly intricate blend of curves and angles, amazing Jack that such exactness and flow had been created just with Mac’s hands. “A…Phoenix?”
The wings folded back with the head up, mouth open in a cry, the long tail curving with a flourish at the end. Mac nodded.
“When I was…not me,” he tilted his head, lifting a shoulder in a half-shrug, “I kept seeing it. When I’d close my eyes, it was just…there. And all I could think was zhar-ptitsa.”
“Firebird,” Gray translated, his voice soft with something like wonder.
“When you found me,” Mac looked over at Jack, “I remembered…Phoenix, but…I couldn’t remember why at first.” He looked down, a smile curving the edge of his mouth and crinkling his eyes just enough to make him look younger than his experiences. “Then you reminded me.” He held out his hand and Jack placed the paperclip Phoenix in his palm. “What we lose in the fire…,”
“We find in the ashes,” Gray murmured.
Jack rolled his lips against his teeth, thoughts ricocheting in his head as if his mind had turned into a pinball machine. When Mac handed the Phoenix back to Gray, one thought hit home.
“Y’know what your dad said,” Jack began, “about never trusting a survivor until you find out what they did to stay alive?”
Jack saw Gray straighten up in interest, and Mac looked over at him, the light in his blue eyes once more his own. His gaze was steady and clear, and Jack felt the impact of the gift it was to know Mac.
“You survived,” Jack said, dropping his chin and leveling his gaze on Mac in a way he knew had always compelled the kid to listen to him, “because the fire inside of you burned brighter than the fire around you.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” Gray murmured.
“Jack,” Mac colored, trying to look away, look down, resist.
But Jack shook his head once, holding the younger man’s attention prisoner until he’d said his piece. “Mac, you might not believe me right now…hell, you might never believe me,” he smiled, looking away for a moment. “That’s always been you. Not realizing how important you are, how much you’re worth to all of us.”
Mac did look down then, and Jack saw the blush spread from his cheeks to his neck.
“You were talking about darkness and light before—about me keeping you from it, yeah?”
Mac nodded, not looking up.
“Kid, there’s some guys who stand in front of that darkness and…stop it from becoming more powerful than the light,” Jack ducked his head, trying unsuccessfully to catch Mac’s eyes. “You’re that guy, Mac. For so many people. And that’s why that serum didn’t burn you up like the others. You survived, kid. You didn’t let the darkness win.”
Mac nodded again, and Jack saw him reach up to wipe at the corners of his eyes with the pad of this thumb, though he remained silent.
“He’s right, y’know,” Gray said suddenly. Jack looked over at him, though Mac didn’t raise his head. “I said as much when we were trying to get the hell outta Dodge. Not sure who thought up the name for the Phoenix Foundation, but it’s pretty damn fitting you work there.”
“Mac did,” Jack remembered, smiling softly.
Mac looked over quickly. “I did?”
Jack nodded. “Sitting around your fire on your back deck, once DXS was kaput. You came up with the name and we all instantly knew it was right.”
“Huh,” Mac frowned. “I don’t…I didn’t remember that.”
Jack shrugged, clapping him gently on the shoulder. “It’ll come back to you.”
A glint of light on metal caught Jack’s eye and he realized it was the sunlight hitting Mac’s paperclip Phoenix as Gray held it out before him.
“Kid, you remember that book I brought you, after Canada?” Gray asked suddenly.
Mac narrowed his eyes, thinking. He shifted so that he could look at Gray. “Yeah, I…uh…. You said you wanted me to…read something about a good Ivan.”
Gray smiled, his eyes softening as he regarded the paperclip Phoenix. “Did you read the story?”
“I…,” Mac glanced down. “I’m sure I did, but I….”
“In the story, the Grey Wolf rescues Ivan over and over, and once even brings him back to life,” Gray revealed.
“Is that right?” Jack mused.
“He promises that he’ll always be there to help him when he needs it…all Ivan has to do is think about him.”
Mac smiled, his eyes sad. “I’m gonna miss you, Isaac.”
Gray curled his hand into a fist and bounced it gently off Mac’s shoulder. “You guys feel like going over and finding my uncle’s name with me?”
“Absolutely, man,” Jack agreed, standing from the bench and waiting as the other two joined him.
Gray led the way, moving slowly along the edge of the Pool, his eyes on the 441 names of the first responders who died that day. Mac and Jack followed, waiting until Gray paused, his fingers ghosting over a name etched into the stone. No one spoke. It was as though all their words had been used up.
It was both comfort and camaraderie, three men so often standing on the same side of chaos, remembering, reflecting, both grateful and regretful at once. After several moments, Gray stepped away, and glanced over at the other two, his eyes suspiciously wet. He smiled and took a moment to wipe at his eyes before clearing his throat and approaching them.
“You know when you’re heading back?” he asked.
Jack glanced at Mac and saw the kid’s eyes were on the waterfall, his body relaxed for the first time all day.
“We’re not on a schedule,” he said. “What are you thinking?”
Gray glanced around the shaded glade. “That maybe you might feel like a homecooked meal?”
“You mean…your mom?” Mac asked.
“Can’t think of a better way to help you see there are a lot of good Russians out there then to have you meet her,” Gray half-smiled, moving away from the Pool and guiding them back toward the main road. “Don’t want you to judge us all by the mob.”
Mac’s eyebrows bounced as he matched Jack’s stride. “Well, the laws of probability put the ratio of good people like your mom to people in the Russian mob at like ten to one, so it stands to reason the good people are in the majority.”
Jack and Gray simply blinked at him for a moment.
“He means, he’d love to meet her,” Jack translated with a grin. “But…uh, we only got like one set of clothes, man. Probably need to go shopping or something.”
Gray waved him off. “Ma kept all my clothes from when I used to live here,” he said. “You can just take something from that.”
“Oh, so we can all look like Millennials instead of just you and Mac?” Jack scoffed good naturedly.
Gray slowed, unzipping his hoodie and looking down at his attire. “What? How is this Millennial? I’m wearing Chucks for Christ’s sake. Can’t get more Gen X than that.”
Jack twisted his face up in a mock scowl, feeling lighter than he had in days. He gestured to Gray’s T-shirt. “Whatever, Mr. Vampire Weekend. What the hell is that, anyway?”
Mac grinned, his eyes crinkling up at the corners. “Even I know who Vampire Weekend is, Jack,” he said. “And I have a swiss-cheesed brain right now.”
Jack wanted to laugh hearing Mac joke, but he kept with the flow. “So, what are they, some kind of Goth group? Buffy wannabes?”
“Buffy?” Mac frowned, his eyes dancing. “Who’s Buffy?”
Jack pressed a hand to his chest. “You wound me.”
“C’mon, man,” Gray chuckled. “They’re a New York band—from this century, even.”
“That explains why he doesn’t know them,” Mac teased.
Jack lightly punched Mac’s shoulder, careful to not get too caught up in their lightheartedness that he forgot to warn Mac before he touched him. He wasn’t sure yet if touch was a trigger, but he wanted to be cautious just the same.
“We gotta catch a cab?” Jack asked.
Gray shook his head. “Nah,” he waved at him. “I’m from the Bronx, remember? I’ll just hotwire something.”
Mac skidded to a halt, eyes wide and Jack side-eyed Gray for a half second before he chuckled.
“I’m kidding!” Gray said to Mac, waving him forward. “We can walk from here, if you don’t mind some fresh car fumes and the scent of onions from the hot dog carts on the way.”
“Sounds…invigorating,” Mac chuckled, following Gray down the sidewalk.
Jack matched his stride, senses on alert as they blended with the rest of the Manhattan population walking to their various destinations. He caught Mac’s eyes shifting to the curb edge, to the corner between the sidewalk and the buildings, to the base of the traffic lights, and he realized it was exactly what Mac used to do downrange, looking for IEDs.
Seeking out danger, alert, wary.
“Hey,” Jack bounced his shoulder against Mac’s. “Eyes on me, kid.”
Startled, Mac glanced over, and Jack watched as realization seeped across his expression, his shoulders lowering from their tense hold, his mouth relaxing in a shy smile. It would probably take more time than Jack wanted—more time than Mac realized—but he was going to be okay. Jack would make sure of it. And he would be there with him, every step of the way, until the nightmares were just a notation in a file of an op gone bad.
He’d been the kid’s Overwatch for eight years; he planned to keep the job until there weren’t any more reasons for Mac to seek out danger.
“Eyes on me,” he whispered, resting a hand on Mac’s shoulder.
THE END