#Mac needs to see oversight for some reason and it’s dad and that complicates things so much more

[lailuhhh]

Okay so the basis is still the same; Mac unwillingly and unknowingly signs up for the army upon turning 17/18 because of school and scholarship stuff James signs off on everything so it’s said and done and Mac is Doomed for the army

James doesn’t pay any attention after that. He’s just waiting for Mac to come home a perfect little soldier and help him with his Spy Stuff or Evil Stuff with Walsh. Maybe he checks up the first few months just to see training but after that it’s just nothing

So based on what we know, Mac was captured in Pakistan I think and held prisoner for five years, but he honestly just wished he was killed with the other guys because he didn’t want to be in the army in the first place, but the guys are holding him for whatever reason— as a hostage for leverage at the very least— because Mac is still very much a New Recruit and doesn’t have the information they want, like maybe he knows about IEDs and knows how they work and disarmed a handful but that’s pretty much it

Enter Jack pretty much the exact time Mac and his faction get captured. He’s still a Delta and his team gets assigned to the rescue. They take a few days to go over everything— all the people MIA and their roles and stuff and formulate a plan to get them back

So based on everything they have, it should be relatively simple to get everyone out but what if the information is bad and that leads them on a chase that does actually last years and they’ve very slowly been rescuing guys that were captured, but after a while the trail goes cold and Mac and whatever guys were left are presumed dead

But Jack goes off the logic of no body, not dead like many people in the fandom and he and his team keep looking and do eventually find Mac and bring him home and it continues however the pilot went

BUT what if the one providing the information in the first place was James?

What if he knew that Mac wouldn’t comply with typical army stuff so he had to take a more dramatic route and set up the whole thing?

James has seen POWs and seen how the react and how they break and are completely different people when and if they return and he wanted Mac to be one of those that came back and just Did As They Were Told, because Mac’s brilliant and he’s exactly what James and Walsh need to complete the drug? And that’s why James never bothered to check on his progress or truly lose it when someone came to his door and said his son had been captured

But Mac doesn’t break and is basically just more closed off and reserved and just hates the world completely for what he went through. He was more or less interrogated by his own people for everything that happened in those five years but he really didn’t care what happened to him after and didn’t want to say anything because he didn’t want to be there in the first place, and more or less became a prisoner once again until he talked

And what if Mac didn’t trust anyone because the one thing he did know was that his captures were being fed information by someone in the army, so I’m not saying anything he was actually trying to protect everyone else??

Let’s say Jack and his team are the first he sees so he does trust them just a slight bit more than anyone else but still doesn’t want to talk because they could be apart of everything, but also how they rescued him was completely wrong from what they heard and that compelled him to trust them

Mac does want to talk to them about what happened but everywhere has cameras and microphones and he doesn’t want to risk the information falling into the wrong hands, so eventually Mac gives somewhat true information and is finally granted with going home but he requested Jack escort him home because Jack was the First Friendly Face he was in five years so that just sticks

So Jack escorts Mac with going home and that’s when Mac takes a risk and opens up and tells him the basis of what happened and how his captors always seemed to know when a rescue was going to be attempted and how he thought there was a mole, and then Jack said he suspected that too because their information always seemed to just be hours too late so they deliberately gave a false plan of attack and did their own thing when they did rescue him

And that’s the moment when they like click and start their weird friendship to try to get to the bottom of everything

And then when Jack completes his tour he meets back up with Mac and it’s basically he and Bozer are living in grandpas house but it’s not the happy-go-lucky we know, but Mac is doing better so Jack feels awful for asking but says he wants to get back at whoever was making everything horrible and Mac agrees because he’s Angry and Needs Retribution

Yadda yadda they go to DXS and use those resources to try and figure everything out but everything is dead ends and then it molds into the show but Mac is more snarky and a darker personality but is still basically the boy we know and love

Where is James in all this you ask? Business Trip. Basically show canon but he didn’t dip out on Mac and was gone for weeks and months at a time for Walsh and DXS but still went home for maybe a week to act like a father and keep up the facade but after Mac got rescued he was gone from the face of the earth

So he’s still oversight and is doing everything in his power to stop Mac and Jack from figuring out the truth about everything and makes the job just so much more difficult on that aspect alone

Hey hey @bold-and-nosy , remember this ask?

What if that but it happens with the unaired pilot?