Chapter Text
The trunk swung open, ushering blinding sunlight directly into Mac’s eyes. After spending all night crammed into the dark, cramped trunk of El Noche’s getaway car, the unforgiving rays bearing down on him were both a welcome sight and an omen of death. His frantic pulse echoed in his ears as two sets of rough hands reached into the trunk and dragged him, kicking and squirming, out into the light. Whatever was coming next, he knew without a doubt that it would not be good. He could only pray that someone had seen his message and gotten in contact with Jack.
For his own sanity, he pretended like he didn’t know how unlikely his plan was to succeed. He’d never executed an idea that relied so heavily on luck, and considering Mac didn’t even believe in luck, he was off to a very rocky start.
A swift punch to the gut drove everything but pain from his mind. He wheezed, desperate for air, and through the haze of agony he felt himself being dragged across the dusty ground and up the front stairs into El Noche’s compound. A wave of desperation lapped at his feet; mind swimming, still struggling to breathe after that vicious hit, Mac stopped fighting and went limp, his toes dragging on the floor as his captors half-carried him into the middle of a high-ceilinged, sparsely furnished room.
Mac offered little resistance as he was spun around and shoved into a tall-backed, cushioned wooden chair in the center of the room. He felt someone pat his cheek none-too-gently, and as El Noche approached, slowly and like a predator, MacGyver’s mind and vision began to clear in earnest. His heart thrummed dangerously fast and his breath hitched as he saw what El Noche, who had donned protective gloves, held loosely in his hands – a coil of barbed wire.
He could feel the fingers of El Noche’s goons meshed into his bright orange jumpsuit, holding him back and pinning him to the chair as El Noche crouched down in front of his victim. He chuckled when he noticed Mac’s eyes flick unconsciously down to the coil of brutal wire in his grip. “I’m a bit like you, amigo” he said by way of greeting, his dark eyes glittering with a cruel humor beneath bushy black brows. “I like to be creative, think outside of the box, sometimes. Especially when it involves convincing someone to talk.”
Mac tore his gaze away from the wire and locked eyes with his tormentor, jaw set in defiance. “Creativity will only get you so far,” he deadpanned.
Snorting, El Noche slowly, deliberately began to unwind the wire. “True. But the same could be said of a smart mouth.”
Touche. Mac allowed himself a smirk that he hoped radiated a confidence he didn’t feel. In reality, he thought that he probably looked queasy. He certainly felt it.
El Noche continued, and his voice held the same energy as the eye of a storm, too still, heavy with anticipation – and offered the same promises of destruction. “What I have planned for you will be very unpleasant on its own, but I find that I get my way much quicker if I give some extra… incentive.”
Fear spiked again as the men holding him shifted their grip to his lower arms, pinning them to the arms of the chair. Mac realized what El Noche had planned a second before the man began winding the barbed wire around MacGyver’s wrists, looping under the arm of the chair and back around, again and again, until Mac’s right wrist was secured to the chair. El Noche hadn’t wrapped it tightly enough to puncture his captive’s skin, but Mac could feel the tips of the barbs brushing his wrists and he knew that if he moved too suddenly – possibly at all – he would feel the cold slice of metal digging into his wrists. If it had been rope, or even normal wire, Mac could have easily worked his way out of the bindings, but any attempt to escape this nest of slicing metal would end very poorly.
El Noche snipped off the barbed wire with wire cutters, leaning so close as he worked that Mac could feel his breath – warm and stale, like the air around them, and it was very obvious that it had been a while since he’d had the luxury of mouthwash. The fingers of Mac’s right hand clutched desperately at the end of the chair arm in an effort to keep his own arm completely still. His muscles already screamed at him from how tensely he held himself, but he knew that if he allowed himself to relax, even for a second, he could slip up and feel the barbed wire slicing into his flesh. It would be much harder to escape with mangled wrists and blood loss.
El Noche had moved to the other side, and Mac barely dared to breathe as he felt the chill of the metal, the threatening prick of the barbs, brush against his wrist. Once Mac had been secured to the chair, the barbed wire preventing him from even considering struggling, El Noche stepped back and admired his handiwork. Mac focused on breathing and keeping his arms as still as possible. He ignored the pulsing ache of his fingers that begged him to ease his grip on the arms of the chair.
And then, like they were garnishing a particularly grotesque meal, El Noche's goons proceeded to secure the barbed wire with duct tape. It was overkill to a ridiculous degree, but Mac’s stomach had twisted into so many knots at this point, he didn’t comment for fear that if he did, he’d be sick.
“Now,” said El Noche, his tone crisp and businesslike. “Let us talk.” He regarded Mac for several long moments, a thoughtful expression on his rugged face. Distantly, Mac could only imagine what he looked like to this drug lord and murderer. Pitiful, probably. Weak. After the week he’d had, Mac was inclined to feel the same. But he knew differently, and despite the barbed wire encasing his wrists, despite the promise of upcoming torture, he remained outwardly calm and defiant. Perhaps that shone in his eyes, defiant of his slight form made even scrawnier from his time in prison, his disheveled hair, his bruises and scrapes, because as El Noche considered him, an expression that could almost be mistaken for respect surfaced, if only for a moment.
When he spoke again, his voice was almost amiable. “You seem like an extremely useful gringo. It would… be a shame to kill you. I actually like you. But we have a problem.” Mac’s fingernails dug into the wood of the chair, his eyes set forward, on El Noche’s face, on the guards, the windows, praying for the sound of approaching choppers. Anywhere but his wrists.
El Noche continued, “You see, I have a lot of friends. Friends who warn me when someone is coming for me: Federales. DEA. FBI.” He enunciated each syllable slowly. As he talked, his guards began to shuffle around the room. Mac watched them as they worked, wheeling in a canister of nitrogen. One of them carried an oxygen mask. A horrible, sinking fear settled deep within MacGyver’s gut. El Noche’s intentions were making themselves painfully clear, and Mac found it increasingly difficult to maintain his outward appearance of composure. Inside, the flood of panic rose and it took everything in him to remain perfectly still when all he wanted was to thrash his way out of his bonds. He didn’t want this, he didn’t–
He was jarred out of his spiralling dread when a series of sharp pricks lit up his wrists. El Noche leaned over him once more, his gloved hands resting over the duct tape that held the barbed wire in place. He’d tightened his fingers, ever so slightly, just enough to cause Mac pain without any real damage. Mac didn’t even think the barbs had broken the skin, but their pricks were promises of much worse pain to come. His captor was saying something, and it took Mac far longer than it should have to register the man’s words; it was like his voice was out of sync with his mouth. “I need to know who you work for and who you are,” El Noche hissed, “or I will show you just how long I can make a minute last.”
Mac took a shaky breath. “Look,” he managed, and he took not throwing up as a win, “too much time behind those walls has made you paranoid. There’s nobody hunting you.” He flinched slightly as El Noche released his grip. “I mean,” (if there was a slight hitch to his voice, no one acknowledged it), “we had a deal.”
Even as he said it, he knew that nothing was going to change El Noche’s mind. And so, as he spoke, Mac began to mentally prepare for the torture he knew was awaiting him. He only hoped his training and stubborn nature that Jack so often griped about would be enough to keep him sane until help arrived. If help arrived. He suppressed a shudder.
He watched in fearful anticipation as El Noche’s men began to prepare the nitrogen canister. The torturer himself seemed very content to fill the echoing room with his own voice. It was a tactic, Mac knew, to build up fear in his victim. Just because Mac recognized it for what it was didn’t mean that it wasn’t effective, though. The worst part about El Noche’s monologue was the conversational tone he held, like he was discussing the latest fútbol match or the forecast for tomorrow.
“You know, I got the idea of this technique from an article I read about you Americans and your love of waterboarding. You see, inhaling pure nitrogen won’t kill you right away. It’ll poison you slowly. I’m told it feels like drowning – very uncomfortable.” Again, every syllable was deliberately voiced, every consonant pronounced, as if he were savoring the word and wanted Mac to taste it, too. “So,” he continued, “after a little of this, you’ll be begging me to tell me even your darkest secrets.”
He nodded to someone behind his prisoner, and Mac’s heart rate soared to new, dangerous heights as he realized this was happening, it was all too fast, too soon, where was Jack, he was alone, Jack wasn’t coming, oh hell, he was going to die here –
His frantic thoughts snapped into inarticulate horror as he felt a strong, rough hand mesh into his hair and yank his head back. His first instinct was to struggle, but at the last minute he remembered his arms, his wrists, the wire, and he understood all over again just how evil of a man El Noche was.
He signaled to the man gripping Mac’s hair, and the oxygen mask was shoved over his nose and mouth. As another guard leaned over to release the valve on the canister, Mac took and held a deep breath, knowing it was futile but refusing to go down without a fight. Sure enough, as soon as he saw that Mac wasn’t breathing, El Noche jabbed out sharply with his fist, catching Mac in the abdomen and forcing every bit of breath out of his lungs. Mac’s fingers gripped painfully onto the arms of the chair as he reeled from the punch. Instinctively, his body reacted and pulled at the air for relief, but what hit his lungs was worse than anything that MacGyver had ever felt before. He couldn’t breathe, he was drowning, he needed to get away, to escape, but his wrists – don’t move! – he was dying, choking, the air was poisoned, his chest spasmed – don’t struggle! – he was going to die!
And then the hard plastic rim of the mask lifted from his face, and the world was spinning, all swirling lights and splotches of discordant color, like he’d just disembarked from a merry-go-round from hell. Desperately, Mac tried to draw in breath but was met with nothing. It was as if someone had hit the ‘refresh’ button on his panic and the urge to struggle anew nearly overtook him. His head lolled about as he tried to focus on the men surrounding him, tried to bring his world back into some semblance of focus, and eventually – it could have been seconds or it could have been hours, time didn’t exist in this place – he realized that the tiniest pulls of air were making it into his lungs, and that somehow, miraculously, he had managed to hold still and keep the barbed wire from going any deeper into his skin.
“Are you ready to tell me?” El Noche demanded in a quiet, even voice. Mac found his eyes drawn to the most prominent feature in the room – his captor's great, bushy moustache. Perhaps it was the nitrogen poisoning or maybe he was giddy with fear, or maybe he was just too stubborn to know when to back down, but when Mac finally found his voice, breathless and labored, he gasped out something that he knew would only make the other man angrier: “I’m ready… to tell you…” El Noche crouched so that he was at eye level with MacGyver, expectant and triumphant. “...how much… I love… your moustache.”
El Noche’s face darkened in anger, and he stood up, any traces of humor, cruel or otherwise, wiped away with Mac’s retort. “Call me … when he’s feeling more talkative,” he growled. As he stood, Mac felt the hand in his hair again, and the hard plastic of the mask descended upon him, and this time he didn’t have a chance to breathe first…
He was in hell again. Mac’s fingers scrabbled for purchase on the wood of the chair, desperately searching for something to ground him, to remind him that he couldn’t struggle, that he couldn’t fight. But the mask stayed, and his vision blurred and his chest screamed and he was drowning on dry land and the pain –
He was so encased by the agony of drowning that he didn’t realize he’d lost the battle with his will until after the mask had been lifted. Even then, it wasn’t the pain that first greeted him, but instead a steady drip… drip… drip of something hitting the floor beside his chair. He didn’t have to look to know it was blood. His blood.
He couldn’t find it in him to care, though, not at first. His every effort was focused on the impossible task of drawing in breath, on trying to bring the world around him into some caricature of reality. And then, as his head fell back and hit the chair at the sound of helicopter blades – could it be? Finally? – he didn’t have time to loosen his chest or learn to breathe again or to truly realize what had become of his wrists. No, suddenly his focus was on immediate survival, because even in his altered state, he knew that if rescue was here (if Jack were here), then his captors would kill him rather than let him be recovered alive. And so somehow, while the guards were focused on the commotion outside, Mac managed to knock over the gas canister and kick off the valve, sending the heavy metal cylinder into a spiraling arc around the room. To his amazement, it hit every single one of the guards on its circuit, and it was only the way he was slumped in his chair that saved Mac from becoming a victim of his own improvisation.
He sagged, no longer trying to stay still or straight (why was he doing that in the first place?), and the plinking sound of liquid hitting the ground – did someone spill something? He couldn’t remember – was growing more consistent, and a sudden, spiking pain shot through his wrists, which he couldn’t be sure even belonged to him anymore.
Through blurred vision and pain and a chest much, much too tight, Mac realized distantly that he was going to die anyway. A man had appeared in the doorway, a gun raised in his outstretched hand, finger on the trigger. The realization that his torment was over almost came as a relief to Mac, his coherency shattered and pain his only companion.
But wait – he couldn’t die. Someone needed him.
Jack.
“J--k,” Mac muttered, barely choking the name out past his trembling lips, as if saying the name out loud would somehow manifest his partner just in time to save him.
A shot rang out. Mac’s eyes clenched shut. He waited for death.
I’m sorry, Jack.
“Hey, man.”
Mac’s eyes snapped open, and the world was grayer than it had been before they’d closed, but there, standing in the doorway over the prone body of the man who’d shot Mac – who had tried to shoot Mac – was Jack, an angel in black tactical gear holding a semi-automatic weapon, and at first, the expression on his face was that of relief. When his partner didn’t immediately respond to his quip about brushing up on his Morse Code, however, the relief melted into something a bit closer to concern.
“Geez, what they been giving you?”
Jack’s eyes – was he really here, surely not, Mac was hallucinating, you didn’t just wish for people and they appeared – traveled down to the ground beside Mac’s chair. Maybe imaginary-Jack was following the sound of the dripping water. Those eyes – full of relief seconds ago – filled with terror and rage, and Mac would have flinched back at the intensity in them if he had any control over his body at all.
“Shit!” Jack cursed, and then he lurched forward, but in slow motion, and the world turned and cascaded and Jack was kneeling beside him and there was a hand on his face, one hovering above his arm and someone was asking a question and damn he wished Jack was real.
Without warning, the world went dark, and the last thing he heard was not-actually-Jack frantically calling his name.