Author's Note: Oh, what an opportunity missed. This is a whumpified version of the accident at the end of 2x04, X-Ray+Penny. Also, let's just say that when Murdoc attacked them they were closer to Phoenix and in a more remote location than in the episode. I don't want the paramedics getting there too fast, gives us more time to explore the whump.

So Close, and Yet So Very Far

Chapter One

Mac was only marginally aware of Murdoc's incessant taunting.

The warped metal frame of the transport vehicle twisted around his body like a python, crushing him as if it was trying to swallow him whole. His brain, which was usually ten steps ahead of everything else, was struggling to catch up. Smoke from the blown engine billowed mercilessly around him and he couldn't help the choking cough that ripped out of his sore chest.

Breathing hurt, thinking hurt…the rest of him was worryingly numb. He tried to twist away from the constricting metal but he couldn't move more than an inch, and that only caused his body to flare up in more pain. He felt strangely floaty, distant, a feeling he'd experienced before, usually while losing blood. That couldn't be good.

He tried to focus his attention on Murdoc as he pulled Henry Fletcher out of the back. He couldn't move his head enough to see but he could vaguely hear something about a new collective Murdoc was planning on starting, with Fletcher as his first recruit. Suddenly, Murdoc's face was there, in front of Mac's faltering vision, and he tried to jerk away. Murdoc only smiled smugly at Mac's poor excuse at an attempt to protect himself.

"I'll be seeing you real soon."

The words broke through the haze and sent an involuntary shiver down Mac's spine and then Murdoc was gone, whistling all the way. Mac wanted to stop him but that possibility flew out the door when he tried to pull himself free once more. The movement only seemed to awaken his previously numb body. He gasped as the first real wave of pain hit him hard in the gut. His vision flickered and black spots descended from the corners of his vision. He watched in strange fascination as his vision blacked out completely and his consciousness sputtered out.

Jack hated waking up in pain.

Unfortunately, in his line of work it was all too common but that didn't make it any more enjoyable. His head felt like someone had shoved a metal spike through it and he pressed his fingers into his eyes. As the headache slowly abated, he took stock of the rest of his body. The first thing he noticed was how twisted up his limbs felt. His legs were pretzeled around each other and his upper body was at a weird 45 degree angle with the floor that was going to leave him with a horrible crick in his back the next day. He just hoped Mac and Cage had had better luck than him.

Mac!

In an instant, Jack forgot his own pain and forced his eyes open, blinking against the harsh sunlight peeking in through the wreckage.

"Mac?" He could see the kid's still form a mere couple of inches from him. Somehow during the wreckage, Jack had gotten turned around because now he was facing the backseat while Mac was facing feet first toward the windshield. Jack had to blink the black dots out of his line of sight as he tried to raise his head a little to get a better view of Mac's pale face that was facing away from him. He let his eyes roam down Mac's lanky frame and winced. He looked well and truly pinned. There was a beam over his stomach and another across his ankles. One of his hands was trapped under yet another offensive piece of metal and the hand closest to Jack disappeared under his back at an awkward and uncomfortable looking angle.

Other than his head feeling like it wanted to explode, the only thing Jack could feel was warped metal wrapped around his hips. In fact, his whole lower body was trapped beneath various beams but they weren't really pressing down on him too hard, merely keeping him immobile. He hoped that was just the case for Mac as well.

"Jack?"

The voice that answered belonged to Cage, not Mac. Jack felt bad that he'd forgotten her but it was a well-known fact that to Jack, Mac came first – always.

"You okay, Cage?" Jack asked, he could just barely make out her horizontal body behind Mac's head. She was on her side, clutching at the frame that had bent around her.

"Part of the truck fell on my leg," she answered her accent thicker because of the pain she was desperately trying to conceal.

"Is it broken?" Jack asked and he could see her nod before she answered.

"I think so," she said and Jack winced for her. He knew how incredibly painful broken bones could be, especially broken legs. This situation was getting worse and worse. "It seems like a clean break, though. Once we get out of here it should be fine. Is Mac okay?"

Jack's focused immediately snapped back to the still figure of his best friend and brother who had still yet to make any indication that he was all right. That worried Jack more than anything. Mac was always the first one back up and checking on everyone else. If he was still down…

Jack reached forward and clamped a hand on Mac's arm that was buried underneath his body. He shook him very, very gently to try to get a response while still conscious of any hidden injuries he may have sustained.

"Hey Mac, bud, wake up for me, okay." Jack tried but his attempts were met with the same eerie silence.

"Come on, kid. How about this – if you wake up right now and stop worrying your ol' friend Jack, I'll forgive you for Paris right now. You won't owe me anything, not even warm beers."

The promise seemed to work because almost immediately Mac shifted ever so slightly and winced. Jack couldn't help but smile as Mac's head turned toward Jack's voice.

"That's it, buddy. Nice and slow." Jack let his voice fall into the naturally soothing tone it always took when Mac was hurt or sick. It was the same one he used with Riley only luckily he didn't have to use it as much with her. The most recent time was when he pulled her out of the trunk on her first solo mission and he never wanted to have to use it with either of his kids again.

Jack rubbed his thumb up and down Mac's arm as he slowly came to and saw Cage reach through the wreckage and place a hand on his shoulder when Mac groaned slightly. Jack would have smiled if he wasn't so goddamn worried. Mac had a tendency to make you want to be near him. Seeing Mac hurt was like seeing a puppy get kicked.

"Jack?" Mac's voice was small as his eyes blinked open slowly. Jack watched them intently, the blue was too bright and they looked sort of glassy but his pupils were equal. At least that was one less thing to have to worry about.

"The one and only," Jack answered brightly, hoping Mac would roll his eyes or go into a long spiel about how their were actually over half a million people in the US alone named Jack, but Mac didn't take the bait.

"You okay?" He asked quietly, picking his head up a fraction to get a better look at Jack. Then he seemed to notice the hand on his shoulder because he let his head fall back and tilted it to check on Cage.

"We're just fine, Mac." Cage answered with a comforting smile.

"Yeah, bud, don't worry about us. How are you feeling? It took a while for you to wake up." Mac's head rolled back toward Jack.

"I'm fine." He answered easily as the foggy look in his eyes cleared. That made Jack feel a little bit better but there was no one better at hiding an injury than Angus MacGyver and Jack had an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. "Where are we?"

"About twenty klicks south of Phoenix, bud." Jack said. Mac's face fell at that. Everyone in the truck knew what that meant. The Phoenix Foundation was as covert as they come. Even though people thought it was just a think tank, the government couldn't take any chances when it came to security. That meant the building chosen when DXS turned into Phoenix was picked for its unassuming façade, and its location well away from civilization. Being about twelve miles away from Phoenix meant they were at least thirty miles away from anything else. That meant no one was going to be passing them anytime soon to offer assistance. They were on their own.

"What about your cell phone?" Mac asked. Jack and Cage immediately began searching their pockets for their devices. Jack found his first and pulled it out of his pocket. The screen was completely smashed and it wouldn't turn on.

"That's not my fault this time." Mac said with a weak smile.

"Ha ha ha, very funny. What about yours?"

"Battery died before we left."

"What do you mean your battery died? Aren't you always prepared for everything?"

"I was kidnapped today, and I didn't think it was important to run home to charge it before going after Fletcher."

"Touché, kid." Jack said and a sharp hiss from the backseat caused both of them to turn as much as they could.

"You okay back there, Cage?" Jack asked.

"I just shifted wrong, moved my leg." She explained. "And I can't find my phone anywhere. It must have gotten lost during the crash."

"What's wrong with your leg?" Mac asked.

"It's broken," Cage explained. "But it'll be fine."

"That's seems to be the theme of this post-crash party, everyone's fine." Jack bemused, still not one hundred percent sure it was true for Mac. The kid's face was frighteningly pale and there was a tightness to his expression that screamed PAIN to Jack. Mac was incredibly good at hiding it but Jack could always tell.

"I've had a broken leg before, Jack, and it was worse than this one and still turned out fine." Cage said pointedly and Jack believed her. He didn't know much about Cage's past, none of them did, but he knew enough about her to believe that she could tell how serious an injury was and wouldn't lie about it to her team.

"If you say so," Jack said. "What about comms?"

"Took them out when the mission was done," Mac reminded him.

"Right, don't suppose any of you see them just lying around somewhere?"

"Unfortunately, no." Cage said.

"Mac?" Jack asked when he didn't get a response from him. The kids eyes were clenched tightly shut and Jack reached over to grab onto the kids arm again.

"Hey, tell me what's going on?" Jack said. Mac pried one eye open and shot an alarmed look at Jack. His breathing picked up and he pulled his arm out from underneath his back and pushed against the metal holding him down. "Don't panic, now, just breathe. You're alright."

Mac closed his eyes again and his face lost some of its tension. The new stillness freaked Jack out more than the obvious signs of distress.

"You better open your eyes, Hoss, or I'm going to assume the worst." Jack tried to keep his voice level but panic was threatening to bubble up.

Mac breathed deeply once and then did as he was told. He was pale again and the exhale was shakier than Jack was comfortable with.

"Tell me what's going on, and don't tell me you're fine because that was not fine, brother. How bad is it?"

Mac glanced away for a second but Jack nudged his leg until he looked back at him. He could tell Mac was trying desperately hard to hide whatever it was he had been hiding but Jack could be a stubborn son of a bitch and he wasn't going to let it go until Mac came clean. The kid was hurt; Jack had known it since he got his first glimpse of him, now he just needed to know how bad it was. If the pain got so overwhelming Mac wasn't able to hide it at all for a few seconds, it had to be serious.

"Bad." Mac said slowly and with one word he shattered Jack's entire world. If Mac was willing to admit that, it had to be life or death.

"No kidding, man, care to elaborate."

"Something's wrong." Mac stated truthfully. Yes, he wanted Mac to be honest but the fact that he actually was being honest was freaking him out more than anything else.

"Okay." Jack said, he glanced back at Cage who was leaning forward as far as she could. Her fingers found the pulse point in Mac's neck. The look of heightened concern at her reading did nothing to quell that anxiety. Shit. This was bad with a capital B.

"Hurts to breathe," Mac said. "Side's killing me."

Jack let the choice of words slide because he wasn't one hundred percent sure Mac wasn't being serious. He gripped Mac's wrist and felt the pulse there for himself. It was thready and weaker than Jack was comfortable with, the dull thud signifying a system overloaded by an unknown stressor. Mac's skin was cold and clammy so Jack added shock to the list of growing concerns.

"Which side?" Cage asked.

"Hmm?" Mac asked with an exhausted sigh.

"Is it your left side, under your ribs?"

Mac nodded.

That was seriously no bueno. Under the ribs meant spleen. Pain like that meant internal injuries and bleeding. There was no way to put pressure on that kind of wound to stop him from bleeding out. If the injury wasn't that severe, sometimes the bleeding could stop on its own and the patient would be fine, but Jack didn't think Mac was that lucky.

"Jack," Cage started but Jack cut her off with a single, hard look. He didn't need her saying it any more than Mac needed to hear it. All they could do now was focus on getting Mac out and to the help he needed.

"I'll be fine," Mac blinked slowly, every time they closed it was harder and harder to open them.

"Of course you will, bud. We just have to get out of here."

"You guys okay?"

"We already went over this, man, Cage has a broken leg and I have a concussion. We're both a little stuck but it's you we're worried about."

"Concussion?" Mac asked sleepily, his bright blue eyes taking in the cut Jack could feel on the side of his head still leaking blood.

Jack sighed at Mac's worried frown. It was just like him to be more worried about everyone else even though he was clearly the more injured party.

"Looks worse than it is, homie." Jack placated. "You just focus on staying awake and let Cage and I figure out how to get out of here."

"Kay," Mac said and Jack squeezed his wrist reassuringly.

Cage still had a comforting hand on Mac's shoulder. That was the second time today, too. The first was when she was running Mac through his memories of his kidnapping and he had a bad reaction to one of them. Jack had filed that little moment under 'Things to Bring up When the Kid isn't Drugged or Bleeding Internally'.

It amazed Jack that aloof, private Cage who never told anyone a single detail about herself was so openly touchy and comforting with Mac. Even Jack himself who was more of a punch first and ask questions later kind of guy had changed significantly since meeting Mac. The kid had an unbelievable way of breaking through tough exteriors and making everyone super protective of him.

He didn't need protecting very often, the kid was wiry yet stronger than Teflon, but when he went down it hit everyone like a punch to the gut.

"Any ideas?" Cage asked. Jack took a second to glance around the ruined truck but he didn't see the world the way Mac did.

"We could use the horn. I think I can reach the steering wheel, maybe someone will hear us." Jack said.

"Yes," Mac said and tried to pull himself forward. The move only served to tighten the metal banded around his torso and Mac let out a hoarse shout of pain. His face paled rapidly and he fell back, clutching his stomach with his one free arm.

"Mac!" Jack exclaimed. "Just breathe, you're okay. Just breathe." He didn't know if it was true but the mantra seemed to help. Mac's breath shuddered out of him as he opened his eyes to stare blankly at the ceiling, or floor, or whatever part of the damn vehicle was right above them.

"You with me?" Jack asked. "Talk to me. Yes, what, use the horn?"

"No…" Mac stuttered.

"Don't use the horn?" Jack asked. He wanted to understand but he wasn't sure if Mac actually had something or if he was just slipping dangerously farther into shock.

"Yes," Mac said. "Hear you."

"What do you mean, man? You're not making any sense."

"Hmp," Mac groaned, squeezing his eyes shut as his whole body flinched. Jack felt completely useless. He was Mac's bodyguard. He was supposed to stop him from getting hurt, and would jump in front of a bullet for the kid if he needed to, but there was nothing he could do to stop the pain coming from the wounds inside of him. He had failed so many times in just that one day and Jack feared this one might be the final mistake. He couldn't sit here and watch Mac slowly bleed out and die in that kind of agony.

Mac had an idea. He always had an idea. Jack just needed to figure out what it was.

"Stay with me," Jack begged. "Stay with me and tell me what I have to do."

"Hmp..vice. Steering."

"Vice? What kind of vice, how will that help us? And I don't think fixing the steering is going to do anything."

"No," Cage said. "Improvise."

"Of course, Mac, what can we improvise? Is there something at the steering wheel we can use?"

Mac nodded and blinked hard a few times, a lone tear escaped down the side of his cheek and Jack felt his own tears threaten. He had to hold it together, though. Mac was counting on him. Mac groaned as another wave of pain hit and his finger began tapping against the metal. Jack tried to ignore the sound but he began to recognize the pattern. Morse Code. It was a trick Jack had taught him years ago on another mission that went bad, if the pain was too much and you couldn't talk, just tap out what you needed to say in Morse Code.

"I hear you, bud." Jack said as Mac continued to tap out his message.

TELEGRAPH RILEY HELP

"We're going to make a wireless telegraph," Cage said with an impressed smile, listening in on the message herself. "Send out an SOS and hope Riley can pick it up."

The message changed.

YES

"Sounds like a plan but how exactly are we going to build a telegraph machine in this hunk of junk." Jack asked. Mac opened his eyes and smiled slightly.

"Not junk." Mac said simply. "Parts."

"All right, I believe you. What do you need me to do?" Clearly the pain had backed off if Mac was able to talk again. Hopefully that would last long enough for Mac to explain whatever it was he had to do to make a telegraph machine out of a blown up truck.

"Get the panel out from underneath the steering column until you expose the wires underneath." First of all, Jack was impressed by Mac's cognitive abilities even in extensive pain and mortally injured, and second – that was something he could definitely do.

Luckily, since he landed backwards, he was still pretty close to the steering wheel. He only had to reach a little past the point of discomfort before he found the section of the steering column Mac was talking about. He tried to pop that part of the lower dash out but he didn't have a good enough grip.

"Use this." Mac said, handing him a lose piece of metal. Jack took it and pressed one end into the seam of the dash and pushed. It popped out with ease and Jack could see the wires.

"Pull out the wires carefully. We need three eight inch sections of wire and three four inch sections. The wire needs to be insulated but they all should be."

"All right, man. You're the boss." Jack had to pull the wires out with the metal before he was able to cut them into the appropriate sections. He didn't have a ruler and had to use his best judgement on the lengths. "Done."

When no new instructions followed, Jack jolted his attention back to his weakening partner. His eyes were closed and his head had fallen back, his arm loose around his abdomen.

"Mac! Stay with me, buddy. I still need you to walk me through this. What do I do with the wires?" He reached over and shook Mac roughly. He didn't want to worsen any of his already serious injuries but Mac passing out at that stage could be deadly. The shaking worked and soon Mac's eyes fluttered open once again. Jack let out a sigh of relief and felt some of the tension leave his body. "Keep him awake, Cage. What do I do next?"

"Strip half inch from each end of wires," Mac continued weakly and struggled to get his free hand to his trapped one. "Need battery." Cage took pity on his sad attempts and retrieved the watch from Mac's wrist.

"Woah, I thought we didn't break your personal property? Especially not your daddy's watch."

"Jack," Mac said and glanced back at Cage who nodded and pried open the watch. She popped the battery out and handed it to Jack.

"What now?"

'Take two of the longer wires and press part of the exposed side to the negative side of the battery, the bumpy side. Stick together."

"What can I use to stick them together."

"Here." Cage said and pulled a piece of gum out of her pocket. At Jack's confused expression she explained, "what, can't a girl like fresh breath."

Jack merely smirked and took the gum from her; he stuck the piece in his mouth and chewed for a few seconds before taking it out and sticking it to the ground next to him. Using some of the gum, he secured the wires to the battery.

"Done, now what?"

"Connect a smaller wire to the other side."

"Okay."

"Cut a piece of harness to use as the base and glue everything down, we need something small and metal." Jack smiled and pulled out a paper clip. When you worked with MacGyver long enough you tended to learn a thing or two about what would be useful to have on hand in a pinch. He pried the paper clip open and wiggled one end until it snapped off from the rest, then cut some of the harness with the sharp end of the metal and poked a hole through the material before inserting the broken bit of paperclip.

"Wrap one of the long wires around the paperclip."

"Keep going," Jack said.

"We need two LED lights, with little prongs."

"Got it," Cage said and passed forward the little lights.

"There is no way you had these on you already," Jack said. Cage merely pointed to where she pried open the lights on one of the doors and pulled out the bulbs.

"Attach the other end of the other long wire and wrap it around the shorter prong."

Mac continued to list off instructions and Jack continued to put together the small device. Pretty soon they were done and had a pretty shoddy but hopefully working wireless telegraph. Very primitive but if it got them home Jack would cherish it forever.

"Message to Riley," Mac said finally and Jack patted a comforting hand on the kids arm. He had done incredibly well, now it was Jack's turn.

Riley was still in the war room.

Henry Fletcher may have been caught but that didn't mean her job was over just yet. Mac, Jack, and Cage were on route to bring in the fifth grade teacher turned assassin, and Bozer was still tying up loose ends at Fletcher's house. In the meantime she was still trying to search every database she knew about, and she knew about them all, to find any sign of Murdoc.

It had been a long day. First, Mac got kidnapped and Jack nearly lost it. She wanted to be the one to find Mac so badly; he was like a little brother to her.

Neither of them had had siblings growing up, or stable father figures, and Mac didn't even have a mom. Of course he had the Bozer family but it must have been so lonely. Riley knew Mac's grandfather had died a few years after his dad left. He started living with the Bozer family immediately and stayed with them until he left for MIT. He had MIT friends but when he left for the army that part of his life stayed behind. Between Alfred Pena's death and Nikki, and then Thornton's, betrayal, the only solid relationship Mac had had in his entire life was with the members of their little team.

They fell into their roles as a family easily. They joked about Jack being the crazy uncle nobody wanted around but really he was their dad. Matty, surprisingly enough became their mom. Bozer and Riley had become close siblings and Mac, well Mac was the baby brother. He was the youngest and although he was probably the most competent member of the team, he was the one they all felt the strongest urge to protect.

He'd been hurt so many times in his life and it was so unfair. Mac was the best person she knew and the fact that she couldn't help him more when Murdoc had taken him crushed her. Yes, she discovered the car that ultimately got them to the warehouse but Mac wasn't anywhere near the warehouse.

It was one hundred percent true – if Mac hadn't rescued himself they never would have found him.

As she typed her way through every kind of security that had ever exited, she kept thinking back to the look on his face when he was jolted out of his memories in the infirmary. Everyone ghosted past it pretty quickly, especially Mac, but she had seen the raw terror in his eyes, the tension in his body as he tried to calm down. She had no clue as to what he had remembered, and he breezed right by it when they continued, but Murdoc had scared him and he had been alone and that killed her inside.

A soft burst of static caught her attention first. She had many programs running on her rig at all times. One of them surfed through all available, non-functioning AM and FM radio waves. It was something she started doing when she began working with Mac long enough to know him. He was so unbelievably, impressively resourceful when it came to solving problems in the field and she wanted to be ready for anything.

This particular program, she lovingly called 'LocateMac', was designed to pick up signals that could be interpreted into messages from one of Mac's many improvised communication devices. When it detected something even remotely resembling Morse Code, it would begin broadcasting for her the possible message. That seemed to be what was happening now.

The bursts of static continued at two distinct lengths in a specific pattern over and over again. With a few keystrokes another program popped up and immediately translated the bursts.

SOS RILEY CRASH SOUTH 12M YOU

Riley's eyes widened and a horrible sinking feeling hit her so fast it felt like the room was spinning. She grabbed her cellphone and immediately dialed Matty's number.

"Director Webber," was the succinct greeting on the other end of the line.

"Matty, I just got a message from Mac, Jack, and Cage. They're in trouble." Riley said, her voice tight with anxiety.

"I'm on my way," Matty said and hung up.

It didn't take long, less than two minutes before Matty was back in the war room. Riley showed her the message playing over and over again.

"Okay, try them on their cells and through comms, clearly if they had to resort to Morse Code all other forms of communications are out of the question."

"I already did, I couldn't get ahold of any of them."

"Alright, send out a rescue team and have them ready for any injuries. We don't know how bad this is but knowing them it can't be good. If they're only twelve miles away, the team should be able to get to them in less than ten minutes."

"Should we go, too?" Riley asked, already sending out the bat signal.

"No, let's wait down in the infirmary for them. Hopefully this isn't as bad as it sounds, but either way they're going to have to get checked out." Matty said calmly but Riley could see the tension behind the cool exterior. This had been a long day for all of them but Matty was forever a consummate professional.

Riley nodded and followed Matty to the elevators. Matty pushed the button for the floor the infirmary was on and the doors slid shut. Riley watched as the numbers ticked down and silently prayed that her family was okay.

To Be Continued…

Author's Note: I hope you can forgive me for any inaccuracies, and I'm sure there are plenty of those, for I am but a simple dummy!