A/N: Welcome to Season Seven Songbook, where we find out if setting Season Seven to music helps make it less painful… Probably not possible, but I hope to help have it make more sense by filling in the gaps in and in between the episodes. A huge shout out to my fabulous writing partner, the incredible Purdy's Pal, for all her help with coming up with the backstories and explanations for everything Matt Nix left out of Season 7.
Speaking of Mr. Nix, this is all his utterly wonderful creation and I don't own any of it. This is strictly for entertainment and I hope you are all entertained. Thank you for helping to keep Burn Notice alive here on the pages of BN Fan Fiction. Likewise, I don't own "Drown in You" by the amazing Chris Daughtry.
This story is set before Michael sees Burke in the bar nine months after his capture. It is set after the events detailed in "While Fiona Sleeps" Chapters 9 and then 7 respectively. I know I wrote them out of order, tis what it is. Each chapter this coming week covers what our heroes were doing prior to S7 opener.
And so we begin with Michael one month before 7.01 "New Deal"…
"Drown In You"
He just can't stand it.
It's hot, it's humid, he's beat up all the time and nothing every really stops hurting despite the booze…
But really the worst part is it's too damned much like growing up in Miami.
As he took the money for the car he'd stolen so he could pay the rent on the wreck of an apartment he's hiding out in on the second story of that rundown building, all Michael Westen can think about all the cars he has stolen over the years before he ever became a spy: because his Dad taught him to, because his mom needed a ride when Dad was off on a bender, because he needed transportation… because he needed the money…because he just wanted to go for a joy ride… because he needed a place to sleep…
Shoving the crumpled bills into his cruddy jeans, he walked slowly back towards his bolt hole in the predawn darkness. He thought about the other things he'd done back in the day to have a place to sleep, which led to thinking about Jennifer, the first person who'd made him feel loved and the first girl he'd betrayed, followed by memories all the other females he'd taken to bed in his Miami days to kill the pain.
Then there's the woman he'd just had sex with… except he can't remember anything about her… and all he can recall is the feeling of desperation and need that had overcome him, feelings the alcohol couldn't numb, the want to just not ache anymore, even just for a few moments… and he'd gotten into her car…
So, now he'd come full circle, getting laid in the back of a car half dressed like he was a teenager again.
It makes him sick to think about it.
And he can't remember the last time he wanted a shower more than a drink…
The stairs seemed to get longer every time he climbed them, the room danker, his new life darker…
Gonna have to do laundry he decided as he stripped out of his clothes and let the tepid water run over his bruised and battered frame. Cracked ribs are finally healing…Lucky I didn't end up with a punctured lung and bleed out internally… or maybe that's what he deserved since he's torched his life….
~~There's a place where you can light the fire and watch it burn~~
Wrapped in a towel, he chewed on the cold tostones he'd picked up from a street vendor the day before and washed them down with the Macorix 8 Años he'd scored for winning a spectacularly fierce fight for one of the bar owners. He needed something on his stomach to soak up the liquor. It would be a shame to lose such fine booze and he wasn't really in the mood to sleep on the bathroom floor again.
~~Lay it down and lose it all~~
The sun was starting to stream into all the cracks in the blinds and he wanted nothing more than to get enough of the hot amber liquid down his throat so he might be able to get some sleep. His hair's still wet and he's half dressed, but he just can't shake feeling dirty, soiled by everything that's touched him.
~~It's taken me so far beyond the point of no return~~
He flopped down in the bed, the rickety old frame squeaking in protest, and he stared at the crumbling ceiling, raising his head only to drink from the fancy brown bottle. A deep cover job changes you in a way that's hard to describe. It creeps into your soul after a while. Another long pull that promises to make him comfortably numb slides down his throat. After more than twenty years in clandestine services, there were only two times he could think of where the job had gotten to him because of who he'd been with.
~~Gave all that I had when hope is gone
(Hope is gone)~~
But he refused to think about his angel right now because after what he'd just done, it hurt too damned much and that particular devil had been renting too much space in his head lately as the nightly fights are getting harder and more brutal. He hadn't had a choice not really; he did what he had to do to save her.
He closed his eyes, but it didn't help. All his regrets were waiting there behind his eyelids to torment him.
~~Is this real? Or is it just another crazy dream?
He'd learned to shut it all off as a kid, why couldn't he do that now? Maybe he'd find the answer at the bottom of the bottle. It's the only thing he's got to work with right now until time to go pound the hell outta someone… then when he's aching more on the outside than the inside, maybe it'll hurt a little less.
~~ That someday soon will fade away~~
"How's that working for ya, bro?"
"Nate…?" He doesn't bother to open his eyes. The longer he's been drinking in the DR, the more often his brother has been stopping by for visits. Not sure anymore if Nate really isn't there from the other side.
"I tried to tell ya, Mike. No one can make you stop—not until you're ready. And you weren't ready. Hey, I know, I get it. I tried to let the life go, but it don't always let go of you, does it, bro?"
And all his perfectly logical reasons, all his justifications, all his obsessions that brought him to this place crashed together in his besotted brain. But if Bly hadn't, if Card hadn't, if Anson hadn't, if Larry hadn't…
Oh, but if only he hadn't…
~~Feels just like I'm under water and can barely breathe
Dying in the bed that I have made~~
He swilled a little too much a little too fast and it choked him, making his ears, nose and throat burn, bringing tears to his bloodshot eyes, as if he needed another reason for the moisture to gather there.
~~I don't wanna drown in you
I'm sinking, then I'm torn in two~~
"You were always just as addicted as the rest of us, Mike, admit it. You were as much an adrenaline junkie as Dad was a booze hound. You gave mom shit for smoking and popping pills, but you were just as bad, man. You loved living on the edge, loved the feel of your finger on a trigger. You had chances to let it go, but you couldn't. Now, you've made as big a mess of your life as I ever did mine, bro."
~~So when you see me come up for air
Don't try to hold me down, just save me now~~
"How's it feel, Mike? How's it feel to know you had it all and you let it get away cuz you couldn't let go?"
~~Don't let me drown in you
(Don't let me drown in you)~~
He doesn't answer his brother's voice in his head. There are no words for this… since the day he figured out that he had been played by the Company, that the CIA had sent him down here to die or be killed.
When you work in intelligence, the worst feeling in the world is knowing nothing -being caught up in something you don't begin to understand. Because it's not the enemy you see that gets you. It's the ones sitting behind desks making decisions based on greed or self-interest that kill with the stroke of a pen.
~~City pulls me in closer than I've ever been~~
He had been accustomed to either having a long leash or no leash at all once he had gotten clear of Larry and had left Ireland for the deserts of the Middle East. Having such a hands-on handler constantly second guessing him from the sidelines was bad enough, but Strong's grasp of the situation was tenuous at best.
~~There ain't no way I can escape~~
While the agent in charge had done a great job of making sure he wasn't going anywhere, he'd done a pretty lousy job of keeping track of his target. Based on the intel he'd seen at the black site prison, it seemed Burke was operating out of the DR. He had estimated six months to wrap this entire operation.
~~Without a doubt you know that I would tread the deepest end~~
~~A thousand years forever and a day~~
But he'd already been here six months, not including his time in CIA custody and on the freighter, without a sign of his target and Strong's threats to friends' lives as an attempt to motivate him regarding his lack of success had been an epic failure. Demanding and getting his hands on the all intel on the op had made him realize that his new handler was an equal failure. Burke had been coming and going from the DR, he wasn't operating out of it and everyone who had tried to get near Randall Burke had ended up dead.
~~But I don't wanna drown in you
I'm sinking and I'm torn in two~~
That's when he'd truly understood what was going on. Maybe he would get in with the terrorist network they were hunting, but more likely he would either get killed trying or he'd waste away in the Santa Domingo sun waiting for the man to take an interest. Any way it went down, he was no longer the CIA's problem and Agent Strong apparently had only one last chance to produce results, hence his offer to him.
~~So when you see me come up for air
Don't try to hold me down, just save me now
(Just save me now)
Don't let me drown in you~~
They'd burned him, thanks to a rogue organization in their own ranks, they'd reinstated him after he'd spent six months cleaning up their mess and then they sent a 'living legend' after him for killing a man who'd been a mentor to him, who turned out to be as dirty as they people who had gotten him burned…
"I know it's hard to leave your past behind, but it's for the best."
He took another long drink of the high dollar spirits as he remembered her pleading with him to let it go.
She's kissing him…But then her arms are around his neck, around that damned suit he'd put on to convince them he was back in of his own free will, and now she's crying into her hand, her whole body shaking…
All because he'd said the wrong thing when he'd been trying to save them to them, to protect her…
~~Did I bring this to myself? Can I get out alive?~~
A round of shoulda, coulda, woulda and suddenly the rum was almost gone. Why was the rum gone?
~~Yeah, I've given you the best of me, now you want the rest of me
What's it gonna take to survive?~~
Eventually, the question wouldn't be whether his cover ID would attract the target; it would be whether there would be enough of him left to complete the mission when it did. He'd given his life to the Company…
"You know I was once just like you Michael – lived for the job. Then I discovered that the job doesn't love you back. I was angry at first; then I found I didn't miss it. You might find the same thing, Michael.
~~There's a place where you can light the fire and watch it burn~~
He stared at the nearly empty bottle and he realized he had a choice to make. He had never wanted to be that man, the one who let the alcohol own him, but that's what he had become. The problem was, this time he wasn't playing a part, he was playing himself. The lines between Michael Westen, alcoholic ex-spy committing the occasional crime to pay the rent and rotting away in the Dominican Republic, and himself, who he really was at his core, had gotten so blurry, he almost didn't know who he was anymore.
~~I don't wanna drown in you
(Drown in you)
I'm sinking and I'm torn in two~~
His hand shook as he ran it over his sweating brow. How many times had he hated his father for using the booze and making all their lives miserable? He hadn't rolled over and played dead for Frank Westen. He'd survived Ranger School. He'd graduated at the head of Tom Card's class. He hadn't given up when they'd burned him. He'd taken every bad thing that had happened to him and used it as a tool to further his career, used it to help him save American lives, done something good with something truly bad.
~~So when you see me, come up for air
Don't try to hold me down, just save me now
(Just save me now)~~
He would do the same to save his friends. He didn't know when Randall Burke was going to show up. He didn't know how long this was going to take. But if he wasn't ready when Burke did, then all this was pain and misery was for nothing and just like it was with his childhood, he couldn't let it be for nothing.
~~Don't let me drown in you
Don't let me drown in you
(Drown in you)~~
He'd already failed Fiona more times than he cared to count. He'd blown the opportunity to let her know what was really going on. He had finally gotten her out of prison, but at terrible price. He remembers her thanking him for not giving up on her, was he giving up on her now? After the thousands of times she'd never given up on him, despite everything he'd done to her… Did he have one more last chance with her?
~~(Just save me now)~~
"Have you ever thought that you deserved better than this?"
~~Don't let me drown in you
(Drown in you)~~
As he stared down the bottle in his hand, taunting him, calling to him, he recalled her answer to his question and clung to that, dropping the heavy glass container to the floor.
He'd had enough to drink for tonight.