"So." Her eyes were fixed straight ahead, studying the shadows from the light streaming through the open balcony doors. "How long will we get?"

Michael swallowed, his eyes still fixed on the telephone in front of him.

"What do you mean Fi?"

"I mean how's this going to go down? I mean.. Jesse gets back in and they call him back to his office and give him back his little gold name plaque and his coffee cup." She stopped to swallow, her jaw tensing fiercely. "I mean do we get to say goodbye this time or does the black helicopter just sets down on the roof of the loft and take you away to far off lands while Sam and I cheerily wave like the munchkins in the Wizard of Oz?"

"I don't know, Fi." His voice is even, detached. Almost cool. She nods, swiping at her eyes. "What do you want me to say?"

"Why would I expect you to say anything?" She sniffed huffily. "You don't do sentiment. You don't do remorse." Her voice faltered just a little and she clambered to her feet and made her way towards the balcony. He kept his gaze down. "You run off into the night and let everyone else handle the messy details."

"I'm sorry Fi." He whispered almost sounding sorry. Strickler's voice sounded in his head.

You don't get to have the girl and the job.

"So am I." She breathed, walking forward and pressing her hands against the railing.

She doesn't fit into your future.

His future. Getting back in. I had been four long years. Four long years of his mother's incessant chatter. Four years of Sam's jovial enthusiasm roping him into easy job after easy job. Four years of Fiona. He finally lifted his eyes to the balcony. She had her arms wrapped tight around her self now. He wondered how someone so small could be such a force in the world. Such a force in his world.

He pushed back from the counter and made his way over to her, slipping his arms over her own. She stiffened and for a second he thought she was going to pull away. But it was only a second before her head dropped back and her fingers wove though his. His mind started and stopped a hundred different arguments. He'd never hid his intentions from her, never mislead her. He certainly didn't want to leave her behind, but Strickler was right about one thing: a 'gun dealing bomb-making girlfriend' wasn't something that went along with the job.

"You're mother told me I could stay at the house while she was gone." Fiona said softly.

"Gone?"

"Didn't she tell you? She's going to stay with Nate and Ruth for Christmas, probably until the baby comes." Fiona took a deep breath. "I'm guessing she doesn't come back."

Christmas. Fiona's family had sent cards, photos of her gangly Irish brother's and petite women with thick hips and and red headed children. If everything went according to plan he'd be leaving her just in time for her to spend Christmas alone. He bit back telling her she'd still have Sam.

"Maybe Sam and I will get together for eggnog." She whispered almost hatefully. He pressed his cheek against the side of her head and started to rock her unconsciously from side to side.

"I mean how long can you really stay in anyway? Ten, fifteen more years?" Her quiet voice rose a few octaves. "Seeing as we're apparently not fit to have children anyway.."

"What is your obsession with children these days?" He couldn't help but wonder aloud.

"It would be nice though Michael. The idea of it anyway. Having something to hold onto? Some part of you.. a family of my own." She mused. "Something for when I have nothing else."

He thought of Paul Anderson. The Ghost of Christmas Future, Sam had called him.

All you really have in the end is your stories.

His brain went off on a tangent after that, wandering on about how any enemy past present or future could use his child against him. He'd done it himself enough times to know that it could be done. He thought of Victor and the pictures of his family he'd had stuffed under a boat house mattress. His arms clamped a little tighter around Fiona.

"If I can come back.." He whispered softly, halfheartedly. He didn't really know if it was true, how he'd feel once he was really back, far from Miami and Fiona.

"Shut up Michael." She whispered, her voice finally betraying her with a short sob and she spun in his arms. He held her, fiercely, as if he could mold her into him, making it impossible to pry them apart. "Shut up and just make love to me before the damn helicopter comes." He kissed her, his hands moving quickly over as much of her skin as he could find. They fumbled with buttons and ties and straps until the bed was benieth them.

If you remember, I made you diner that night.

He had made her dinner, he'd also done this. A one-sided attempt to put everything he had into one last night. One last attempt to show her what he couldn't bring himself to tell her. Only this time it wasn't one sided. And this time his heart wouldn't accept that it was the last time. How many times had they said goodbye in the four years since he'd woken up to her foot up his ass in a Miami motel room? Four? Five? Maybe more. Maybe too many times for them to have desperate sex with the balcony doors wide open and the risk of Sam or Jesse or his mother or they company themselves to walk in and watch them.

But they did it anyway. Just in case. Fiona had said once. Once in one of the millions of times he'd been whisked or pulled or lured away by the idea of the job more than the job itself.

But this time. This was his best chance yet, and he clung to that as Fiona's slim nimble fingers encircled his tight shaft and pressed the pad of her thumb into the spot that made his knees feel week. He countered her move from his newly buckled position. V-ing the tip of his tongue against her sharpened nipple in long strokes, while palming the other breast carefully like a paper mache sculpture.

She groaned and he swapped sides as she desperately wiggled in an attempt to get him pinned onto the bed.

Aggressiveness was not usually something Fiona lacked during sex, but the looming sadness and prospected loneliness left her almost limp against him as he refused to be dropped to the mattress. Instead he lifted her hips to his flat abs, holding her back at the exaggerated arch and claiming her.

Michael couldn't see it any other way as she cried out her arms sliding down his like he'd killed her. He pressed her body closer to his catching her wild eyes before wrapping his hand around the base of her skull and forcing her body to mold into his. Her head dropped to his shoulder with a thud and just as quickly her teeth sunk mercilessly into the soft skin of where his neck and shoulder met. He clung to her, pumping into her in slow deliberate strokes. Her hands came back to life, her nails raking up his arms until the pads of her fingers left bruised circles against his shoulders

"Fiona.." It was half way between a grunt and a command. He wanted to say it. It sat there in the front of his brain waiting and wanting to be said. He wanted to say it almost as much as he knew he couldn't. Too cliché, too,,, mean. Besides, she knew.

As his name left her throat as a plea, a challenge, he wondered if she was fighting the same battle. He lifted them up, dropping her back against the mattress with a need to go deeper as she convulsed and came hard around him. It was a cry, a sob really as his body trembled and his arms buckled as he dropped to the bed tucking her into him as if to protect her from this.

"Tell me." She whimpered. "Please just tell me this won't be the last night." He shushed her, cooing breathlessly, letting his fingers play over her face, into her hair down the sides of her throat. "Please Michael tell me you'll find a way!"

She was desperate and angry and heartbroken and in the rare moments when she let him see this in her it melted some part of him that he had worked very hard to keep frozen.

"I promise you." He heard himself said before pulling away and clutching the side of her face. "I promise, I'll find it." He nodded his head at her fighting with the emotion he couldn't let go of. "I promise."

So do yourself a favor and just forget the past..

It shot across his mind just how it had shot out of his mouth when he'd killed Strickler.

Fiona is not my past. He kissed her forehead, pulling her tight against him.

"I'll find a way."