Chapter Text
I finally, finally make it off the dance floor, meandering my way towards the fence. I lean over it, looking over the park, over the mountains, all the way up to the Hollywood sign in the distance as the few stars I can see twinkle in the darkness.
A hand lightly touches my back. I don’t flinch this time as I turn to look, seeing Mac, a tiny bit disheveled, his tie undone and hanging around his neck. I pull it off, shoving it into his pocket unceremoniously, as he looks over me like he has been all night.
“The Eta Aquarids,” I whisper. “They’re supposed to peak at what, two a.m.?”
He nods, turning around and leaning on it, pointing to the southeast. “Should be out that way.”
I look over my shoulder, but I focus on him. “Wanna sober up, head out to Templin Highway, see if we can spot any later?”
He gives me a look I never used to know. One I never used to see. I’m sure it’s a look that he gave sheets of paper a thousand times, and now, with the rings on our fingers, I get to see it every time.
“I… yes,” he breathes. “I would love that.”
“You look nice,” I whisper. I don’t know why I’m whispering. I don’t have to. “You… you look happy.”
“I am happy,” he says, pulling himself off of the fencerow and turning around to look where I’m looking. “I don’t remember the last time I was this happy.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever been this happy,” I admit to the wind. His hand rests against my back once more. I feel his fingertips grazing my skin, somehow both rough and soft. That was the draw of Angus MacGyver, wasn’t it? So many contradicting things, all at once.
“You… you look beautiful,” he whispers, and his voice chokes up a bit. I look, and the tears are back in his eyes.
“Mac?” I breathe, and he reaches up, touching the flower in my hair.
“For Jill?”
“Bozer brought it to me,” I admit. “I thought it was a nice touch.”
We both grow quiet for a moment. The music plays behind us, but for the first time in the long night, we’re alone, and we’re together.
“So,” I ask him, looking him over like we did so long ago, like we both did, here, after finding the impossible letters that would always lead us back to this place. “What’s next?”
He turns back to me, brushing back the littlest bit of hair that has fallen out of my bun behind my ear. It’s so gentle, my heart jumps.
“I’ve never thought about what’s next, honestly. We’ve always dreamed, and we never really… you know. Got serious.”
“I mean, we did a little,” I tease, holding up my hand. “I mean, Phoenix, we’re going hunting for his gold. Matty and I already discussed putting some of the paramilitary funding into the lab. We… we don’t need as much firepower anymore, and I figure you can start working on some of those projects you’ve always wanted to do. You know. Actual think tank work.”
He stares at me in disbelief. “Really? Lab work?”
“Yeah, Mac. Go all Mythbusters . If you need help, let me know. I would love to see how you get all… you know.”
“MIT?” He says with a smile.
“Yeah, MIT,” I say. “Me? Matty wants me to start making some rounds. Doing more recruiting. Lobbying. She wants to send me to D.C. soon. I’m sure if I ask nicely, you can come, too.”
“I’d love to see the National Cathedral with the Space Window,” he says excitedly.
“Yeah, we can hit the Spy Museum and make fun of the whole thing,” I chuckle. “Oh, you know what I’ve always wanted to see?”
“The Capitol Stones,” he finishes. And he’s right. He’s totally right. I look back down at my hands. “I wanna really try, you know. To… I want kids. I want them soon. I mean, I don’t… if we’re gonna do this, we need to start now.”
He wraps his arm around me, pulling me into his warmth. “I thought we already did,” he whispers conspiratorially.
“Eh, well, it’s us. It’s gonna take a while to… you know, take.”
I let out a heavy sigh as I lean into him, my heart just pounding, that overwhelming need to be close to him just… hitting me one more time. So I lean my head on his shoulder, exhaling heavily, exhaling like all the pain of the universe leaves.
Because it does.
“Thank you,” I whisper. “Thank you for coming for me in Siberia. I have never thanked you enough for that. If I died… if you didn’t? None of this could have ever happened.”
He sighs, growing quiet, his hand still wrapped around me. “When we talked about chaos theory at MIT a million years ago, I think I mentioned… patterns and feedback loops.”
“You did. I remember.”
“Sure, Edward Lorenz said that chaos is ‘when the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future’ meant predictability was… nearly impossible, there is the fact that in chaos theory there are patterns. And feedback loops. And repetition. After a while, a situation will… it will start to resolve itself. And as it continues to feedback upon itself, it starts to become more predictable, and you can finally just…”
He trails off, and instead, I distract him by holding up his left hand, running my fingers over the ring.
“You can predict the outcome,” I say with finality.
“You can predict the outcome,” he repeats.
"So, you're saying that... after all these horrific, near fatal crashes with fate, it finally... it finally might... stop?"
"There's this thing in statistics," he continues. "Regression toward the mean. It means that if a sample point is an outlier or nearly an outlier, the future point will be likely closer to the average. If things so far out of the normal realm of possibility keep happening, at some point, things are going to have to even out. Eventually, everything does. It's not impossible."
I pull his hand up to my lips, kissing his knuckles. “We thrive on the impossible, Mac. We always have.”
“Always will,” he murmurs.
“Do you think…” I trail off. “Do you think we could plant some climbing yellow roses at the house?”
“Absolutely,” He says, smiling. No hesitation. Just yes .
He slips his hand across my cheek once more, pulling my lips to his, and I sigh. I kiss him like I always should have kissed him, right here, years ago.
But I can’t dwell on that now. If I think about all the time we lost, I’ll never appreciate the time we had.
When he pulls away, I can’t help but smile. I smile so much more with him, too.
“She would be proud,” he whispers. “They all would be proud. Because for once in our lives, we’re living. And we’re not looking back anymore. There’s nothing back there for us. It’s all ahead of us now. We have too much left to do.”
“I love you, Mac,” I say, blinking the tears from my eyes once more. “You’re…”
“You’re the only one who really knew me at all,” he whispers. “I love you too, Harps.”
He finally responds to the incessant yelling from Jack, letting his hand trail off my back as he runs back to the tent.
I look over the stars one more time. The sunset has turned to dark sky, the ceremony to dancing, to raucous laughter.
Leaning onto the fence, I just sigh, looking back to the group. They’re having a grand old time to the Salt-n-Pepa song that Jack dragged Mac over for—all of them just in a big dumb circle while Jack tries to rap.
I shake my head, grinning. We deserve happiness. We deserve peace. That’s what we’re trying to preserve. We’ve been out of that state of mind so long though how are we supposed to know what it feels like? So we have to find it. And grab onto it. And find whatever happiness and whatever peace we can find and never let it go.
Isn’t this what it’s all for? Isn’t this what we’re doing it for? For some sort of future. For a future for our kids, and their kids. We don’t do this for the money or the glory or anything else. We do it because we care. And because we want to help. Because in the end we are the most selfless of everyone. We devote ourselves to the greater good in the hope that someday it becomes the norm and not just a speckle of hope in a vast world.
I look down at the ring on my left hand. When I close it into a fist, I can feel it scraping against my skin.
I never thought this would ever happen. I never even expected this to happen. But like he said, everything led here.
Every little event, every choice, everything led… here. Whether it was when we missed the mark, made a misstep, or succumbed to hubris, whether we sought relief or just more time, each memory flashes before my eyes like a film reel.
It almost feels like a rambling dream, but I know this is reality.
This has always been my reality. Everything was coming to this point.
I look out over Los Angeles. This city has given and taken and given again.
I think back to my wish that I put into the fountain in Boston. Happiness. That’s all I asked for. When I look back over my shoulder, I see the crew. My friends. My family .
Riley hangs onto Bozer as she laughs, throwing her head back as Jack tries to do some sort of dance that falls flat. Matty and Russ stand to the side, holding their drinks, looking over Jack like they’re judging the hell out of him. Allie clutches onto Sam, looking like she’s about ready to bust into dance, but Sam just gives her a beaming smile. Dez and Evan sit at the nearest table, with Dez trying to cover her eyes from Jack’s chaos.
And I just hear Mac’s loud, loud laugh as he tries to convince Jack of something. Of what, I don’t know. All I know is, it’s not working.
My family.
The Greeks had many different names for love. Philia, or platonic love. Pragma, or long lasting love. Storge, or family love. Agape, or love of everyone.
I see all of that here. Platonic love between Riley and Bozer, Jack and Mac; long lasting love between Evan and Dez. Family love between all of us.
It’s all there. Every last bit of it.
I wished for happiness. It seemed like such an unattainable thing. Around this time two years ago, I thought that the next horrible event would come, that the next thing would happen. That next hit.
I’m starting to realize that maybe that’s all past. I’ve been hit so many times, I can’t even count it anymore. Maybe that was it. Maybe I’ve hit that point where things only have to go up.
Things can only improve. And they are.
So I look back to the night sky over Los Angeles, the Hollywood sign lit up and bright against the hillside. The bright, twinkling lights of the city below. The laughs of my family behind me.
Maybe I’ve fought against the disorder for so long. Maybe that’s what took so long. If I had just leaned into it, maybe it would’ve been easier.
Last year, I thought fighting the chaos was the best. But what if that’s what I was doing all along? What if I had just… let it ride? What if I stopped fighting against the current and just… let it take me?
Stop fighting against the water and instead lean into the skid. Lean into the disarray. Lean into the chaos.
Leaning into the chaos got me here. Got us here.
Leaning into the chaos brought me home .
There’s more yelling from the dance floor, so I turn around to look at the group. They make incoherent noises as the song plays and Mac beams, trying to both dance and convince me to come back to the dance floor.
Look what you could run to , she told me. I've always run. Might as well run towards something.
I start laughing as I hike up my dress, running back to the group as they cheer. I touch the flower in my hair, making sure it’s still there, as Mac takes my hand, spinning me under his arm.
For a moment, I almost feel like I depersonalize, watching the scene from above. This time, it’s a good thing. This time, I don’t mind it. It slips into slow motion, and I watch us just dance, gleeful, and happy .
When I blink, I slip back, listening to Mac sing as Jack tries to basically yell.
“No I… I don’t mind!”
Mac pulls me into him, pulling me into some sort of modified dance hold, as he sings into the night sky.
“So take… take me home!”
I look up at him, beaming. He’s so happy. He’s so damn happy. And it’s about damn time. We broke through the chaos, and we won. Like I told him, we started writing our own story.
We made our own chaos, and this time, I embrace it. I embrace the chaos. And for the first time, I’m ready.
For years I searched for it. For years I didn’t think I had it. And as I look up to Mac, twelve years later, twelve long, hard fought years later, I know that I found it. I always had it. Whatever happens now, it happens because we’ve put this good into the universe. This happiness. This willingness to fight for everyone else. But we also had to learn to fight for ourselves. Because what’s the point to living if you don’t live?
It’s like Jill said.
All I need to do is live.
And for me to live, all I wanted to do was find home.
And I found it. I found home in the arms of the blond, distraught geek in the middle of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on the day I buried my father.
I found it in hundreds of letters, sent to the boy who joined up because I told him he could do more.
I found it in the young man who I mourned for years, his loss leaving a hole in my heart.
I found it in the man who kept protecting me, and rescuing me time and time again. The one who believes so wholeheartedly in me that he would sacrifice his own heart to make peace with me one more time. The one he came back to when nothing else mattered.
The one who broke down when he thought he finally truly lost me.
The one who sacrificed everything to make sure I got a second chance.
The one who took every single part I loved about Boston and turned it into his love letter for the city and for me.
The man I stand beside and home or abroad. The one I trust with my life. The one who trusts his life to me.
I found it in him.
I hear the tones of Phil Collins singing “take me home” as I slip my hands over his chin, drawing him into my kiss. He stops dancing, his hands wrapping around my waist, leaning into my lips happily.
I pull away enough to look at him. To take him in. To really see what happiness looks like on his face. I wrap my arms around his neck, swaying with him to the rock song as he just looks down at me, hazy and euphoric.
I just remember what Jack said on the plane after we got him back. When we headed back to LA.
“She’s home. She’ll always be your home. You always said she was the one who got away. And for the longest time, she was right in front of you. Hell, she came back. To you. Both a’y’all, you’ve been so hung up on each other for years. Too damn stubborn to figure that out. She’s always been the person you try to forget when you try to get with someone else. She’s always that voice in the back a’your head, Mac. She’s your home, brother. You can’t let somethin’ like that go.”
“So take, take me home,” he sings under his breath as he sways with me. This isn’t chaos anymore. The chaos is long gone. No, I’ve found something different, and it slips through me, almost forcing me to panic.
But the panic is gone. The fear is gone. The chaos is gone.
Because I’ve found the opposite.
I’ve found calm. I’ve found confidence.
I’ve found peace.
And above all, above everything, I’ve finally found home.