Paige smooths down the pencil skirt of her dress. She feels like she's playing an undercover role, but it's just her first day at her new job. She feels like a sellout, but she looks the part. Her hair is tied up in a neat bun, her nails are filed and painted with clear polish, she's toned down her bracelets to a simple wrist watch, and her blazer is appropriately fitted and dry cleaned. Originally she added some fake glasses, but then decided it looked like she was trying too hard.
She follows her obviously flustered boss, Daryl, down the hall as he points out where the copy machine is, describes daily life in the office and introduces her to people. She tries to look interested even as she is gripped by a rising panic at the thought of this monotony becoming her everyday life. It is so different then the life she had been living at Graceland where she never knew what the next hour might look like. Here the next twenty years look like they could be the same day on repeat.
Unfortunately Graceland wasn't an option anymore. Not since Jakes had run off with the money. Not since Charlie had snitched on Briggs which had led to him being investigated and arrested. Afterwards Charlie had taken an internal promotion she couldn't talk about. Johnny became a bouncer at a local club at night and picked up shifts when FBI needed extra guys. Until recently Paige spent most of her temporary sabbatical hanging out with Johnny at the club, drinking and wondering what the future held. Of course Mike was out the door and back in DC before the dust had even settled. That was Mike.
Paige nodded and smiled at Daryl as he got really excited about the toner in the fax machine, but her mind drifts to the last time she saw Mike before he left for DC...
"Hey." Paige knocks on Mike's door.
"Hey. How are you holding up?" Mike asks, seeing Paige standing in his doorway.
"Been better, but I can honestly say I've been worse. I'm not sure that's a good thing." Paige says with a dry laugh walking into his room.
"Yeah, I know what you mean. I still can't believe Jakes… Well. Hey, I never got a chance to ask, what happened today?" Mike asks, sitting down on his bed, and gesturing for her to have a seat.
"What had to happen. Is Gusti safe?" Paige responds, not wanting to get into the details of Ari's murder.
"Yeah. He hates me, but he's free." Mike sighs.
"You're a good man." Paige says quietly.
Mike gives her a questioning look, and she realizes she's never said this out loud to him. She truly believes it though. Mike was one of the good guys, no matter how hard it was to stay that way.
"I don't feel like a good man." Mike says, looking fifty years older than when he first came to Graceland.
"Why did you sign the report?" Paige asks curiously.
"The damage was already done. I can't fix the past. I can only look at the decision before me, and try to cause the least amount of damage." Mike responds. "Thanks for your support earlier today by the way. It really meant a lot."
"Of course. I meant it." Paige says, thinking about his words, "I trust you."
"Something else bothering you?" Mike asks when he realizes she's not leaving his room.
"I want to talk." Paige takes a deep breath and turns towards him on the bed.
"Okay…" Mike says nervously as he physically braces himself, and Paige can't suppose she blames him. None of their talks go well recently. "About what?"
"About that thing we never talk about." She says, determined not to lose her nerve.
"We don't talk much at all these days… You're going to have to be more specific." Mike says dryly.
"Well maybe we should." Paige looks at him, hoping he will take the lead on this conversation. She doesn't know exactly what she wants to say, only that she needs to say it.
"Can we just not? Look I've only got a few hours left and I don't want to spend them fighting." Mike groans, looking away from her intense stare.
"I don't want to fight. I just want to talk." Paige holds up her hands in peace.
"When I wanted to talk to you, you said no, why can't I?" Mike says a little more aggressively, reminding her of the days he came back from the hospital and chased her around trying to talk to him when she could barely make eye contact her guilt weighed so heavily on her conscious.
"Mike you're leaving and we may never... I need to-" Paige tries to force the words out, but she feels like her throat is closing up.
"We've been together every day for months and now you want to suddenly-" Mike cuts her off before she can finish her sentence.
"You don't have to get so defensive-" Paige argues back.
"Can you blame me?!" Mike demands.
"Whenever we talk nothing gets said! You tell me folksy stories of your grandfather or hint at something like I'm supposed to read your goddamn mind. We never talk about anything real! There's always this unspoken thing blocking-"
"Fine." Mike says angrily, unable to deny her anything. "What do you want to know?"
"Did you mean it?" Paige asks hopefully.
"Mean what?" Mike asks cautiously.
"That night. Before I got captured by Sulla. When you said, your heart was somewhere else." Paige asks, "What did you mean?"
"Come on. It was so long ago… It really doesn't matter now… Clearly you-" Mike blushes and shrugs it off.
"Answer the question, Mike." Paige orders, "Did you mean it?"
"Why do you think I stayed in Graceland?" Mike answers her question with another question, straightening up to look her dead in the eye. His tired lost look answers her question more completely than any words ever could.
"I just assumed you realized that DC was a bunch of circle jerking over hollow victories…" Paige begins, but Mike cuts her off.
"Jess offered me a promotion if I went back with her, but you had just gotten back in the house from Sulla's and you weren't speaking to me. I thought you'd eventually… I wanted to make sure you were okay. But then I just made everything worse. I don't know. Maybe I should have gone back to DC when I had the chance." Mike says brokenly, looking away from her and out his window.
"I'm glad you didn't." Paige says honestly, making him look back at her with a more vulnerable look than she's seen in a while.
"I keep going over every wrong choice I made. You told me to pick Bates. I was too jealous. Even then, I was so scared of any chance of losing you, and I went with Jakes instead-" Mike begins to explain.
"You didn't know…" Paige defends his actions.
"If Bates had been with you on that stakeout he never would have let… Hell, I should have been the one on that stakeout." Mike balls the shirt he's folding up into his fist.
"I didn't tell you I was going." Paige forgives him for this too.
"Yeah, and that was my fault too. You should have felt like you could have come to me, but I-" Mike laughs bitterly and runs a hand down his face, "I fucked that up too."
"We were fighting. It happens. You couldn't have known-" Paige knows there's plenty of times Mike screwed up, but hindsight is twenty-twenty, and she knows he's taking an unfair amount of the blame.
"Well, I should have told you about Jess. It just… honestly, it was over for me the moment I saw you again, and it didn't seem important. Then, I couldn't find a time to tell you before she just showed up and then it looked like I was hiding something…" Mike's tripping over his words now, "I tried to tell you how much you meant to me, Paige, but I was too late and… well, I guess it doesn't matter now."
"It matters to me… you matter to me, Mike." Paige admits, hoping he'll say more.
"Is there any chance… You'd want to go have a bonfire? I mean, I know Jakes is on the run, and who knows what's going to- I just really would like one last night." Mike asks.
"Sure, that sounds great. I'll text Johnny and Charlie, but I'm sure they-" Paige pulls out her phone but Mike's hand on her wrist makes her pause.
"Maybe just you and me to start?" Mike asks earnestly.
"Sounds perfect." Paige smiles at him.
All in all, considering everything they'd gone through, it was a very civil way to end things.
The bonfire had been small, just the two of them until Charlie and Johnny joined later and Mike had caught a flight for DC the next day.
It was the end of an era.