Lucky
After MacGyver leaves the war room, Matty starts to count. It takes exactly five minutes and seventeen seconds for Jack Dalton to burst in, red-faced and angry. He shuts the door behind him, activates the frosted glass windows, and turns to Matty with his arms crossed and fire like she's never seen before burning in his eyes.
"What the hell did you say to my boy?" Jack asks without preamble, and Matty nods to one of the chairs. Jack crosses the room and bypasses the seat entirely, choosing instead to stand as tall as he can right in front of Matty, forcing her to crane her neck to meet his eyes. "He came out of here looking like a puppy that's been kicked about a hundred times too many. What the hell did you do?"
"MacGyver and I made a deal," Matty says patiently, carefully. She's wary of this angry, protective side of Jack Dalton that she's never seen before, certainly never seen directed at her. Any doubts he may have had considering their previous relationship went out the window the second Matty infringed on MacGyver. Here Jack is, defending the blond, and he doesn't even know against what. "If his luck runs out," Matty continues, "he stops with the improv."
"If his luck... excuse me?!" Jack sputters, shaking his head. "You told him to stop improvising?"
"I told him that if he messes up, he has to start following the rules," Matty says, crossing her arms. "MacGyver's reputation precedes him, but one day his luck will run out, and I'll be the one who has to answer to Oversight." The anger drains from Jack's eyes all at once, and he sags a bit, sitting down on the side of the coffee table as what looks like understanding fills his gaze.
"Mac isn't lucky, Matty," Jack says with a patience Matty has never seen before, either. MacGyver seems to bring a lot of interesting emotions out of the soldier Matty once thought of as stoic. "He's a genius. The smartest person in every room he's ever stepped foot in. All that crazy stuff he does in the field, it isn't luck. It's his big, complicated brain working about a million times faster than anyone else's can, cooking up insane plans that always, and I mean always work." Jack pauses, leaning forward to look Matty right in the eye. "And I'm sure you're frustrated because Mac doesn't fit nicely into any of your little boxes, but that's because he's Mac. He's in a class all his own. And that 'luck' of his, that improvisation, that's his life. That's how he works, Matty, and it isn't something you can control, and it isn't something you can stop. If Mac has an idea, he's going to put it into motion, regardless of his orders, and he's probably going to save the day by doing it. If you try to stop him, if you try to keep him from being who he is, I guarantee you he'll sooner quit the Phoenix than follow those orders. And if he walks out those doors, I'm going to be right behind him."
"Calm down, Dalton," Matty says in a tone of voice far kinder than her usual. It's purposeful, and it works—Jack leans back a bit, relaxes a bit, looks like he's willing to listen to Matty's side of the story. Because she has a side. She always has a side.
Matty shakes her head, nodding to the bowl of paperclips behind Jack on the table.
"I'm not planning on clipping MacGyver's wings. My warning was just that, a warning. Some people aren't big fans of federal agents who don't follow orders, and one day Mac is probably going to have a run-in with one of them."
"So what, you just decided to scare him?" Jack asks, clearly irritated by the prospect.
"Call it a reality check, Jack." Matty corrects. "Patricia Thorton ran a loose ship. She let her agents get comfortable. When agents get comfortable, people die. And it's my job to keep that from happening. MacGyver needed a reminder that he isn't perfect. He needed a reminder that what he does is dangerous, and it can fail. Anyone can fail."
"There are a lot of ways to remind us that there are lives at stake, Matty, but calling Mac's skills into question shouldn't be one of them," Jack says, standing back up and crossing his arms. "That kid is either going to die saving the world or outlive both of us, Matty, and the more he doubts himself, the more likely it is to be the former." Jack leans forward and pokes Matty in the chest, fire flashing in his eyes once more. "You're putting that doubt in his head, Matilda, making him falter. If he fails, that's going to be the cause. Not his luck running out or him getting too comfortable or whatever other crap you've learned at the CIA. Phoenix isn't the CIA, Matty, and we aren't ordinary field agents. Mac is never going to be the person you want him to be, so I suggest that you learn to accept him for the one that he is." Jack pokes Matty in the chest once more, forcefully, before turning and striding from the room without another word. Matty watches him go, a ghost of a smile forming on her face.
She had heard that Jack had formed a strong bond with the skinny blond EOD technician he met in Afghanistan, but she never could have believed it had she not just seen it for herself.
If there's one thing Matty knows for certain, it's that this job is going to be very interesting.