Who Wants to Live Forever?, a 24 fanfic

A/N: My heart nearly broke when Michelle broke down after Tony's death was faked by Mandy. The idea of her doing something drastic didn't occur to me until I went back and watched other seasons - and realized that her devotion to Tony was stronger than anything else. This songfic looks to explore that mindset. So please, when you're done, do me a huge favor and click the review button. Let me know how I did - Good? Too dark? OOC? Perfectly worded? I'd like your input.

Note #2: Special thanks to Little. Latina for song suggestions and for being such a wonderful supporter of my work, as well as an awesome person to talk to. And thank you to Iwait4theRain for being a great unofficial beta and BFF. I love you so much, Kat!

Disclaimer: I do not own 24. If I did, you could stake your savings on the fact that Tony and Michelle would be alive and happily married with their young son. And I do not own the song, either - Queen deserves that acknowledgment. Freddie Mercury will live forever.

There's no time for us

There's no place for us

What is this thing that builds our dreams

Yet slips away from us?

Who wants to live forever?

Today has been unbelievable; a roller coaster of highs and lows. It's been a day of anguish, sorrow, angst, tears… and love. True, pure love which no one can separate. Tony is mine for loving, and I am his. We are going to make up for the last six months in which we each sulked and cried tears of grief in our respective apartments. We're going to try to… well, not quite start over, but to wash away the pain that lived in the last year of our first marriage. I just have one thing left to do: and that's to save my Tony's life from the assassin who has taken him hostage.

I stand in the middle of the bullpen, my silver Razr waiting for the call that will give me more directions from this female hostile. This is the woman who asked me to commit treason for the man I am in love with, just as he did for me. A kind of mutual martyrdom, it seems to be. And I would have done it in a heartbeat. I had planned it out; I was going to do it, get Tony, and either get the hell out of there or accept the consequences and go to jail. Then, Bill Buchanan walked into my office, and everything went downhill from there.

When she calls, I go through all the motions, acting as if I haven't told everyone that works under me about the situation which, if it goes badly, could completely destroy me. Then, suddenly, the field teams screw up, and the tone of the situation changes. "You lied to me, you bitch!" the hostile says. "You are not gonna take me alive, okay?"

Then, the surveillance footage shows an explosion, right in the vicinity of the two of them. It burns them. It scorches them. It kills them.

Tony's been burned. My Tony has been scorched. Tony is dead.

No.

Suddenly, the sights and sounds of the world around me are narrowed down to one thing. I can hear a person screaming and moaning in agony, their voice cracking. "No, NO! No…" The person coughs, phlegm and grief clogging up their throat. Only when Bill puts a hand on my shoulder and I feel the floor scraping my knees do I realize, eyes widened, that the crier is, in fact, me.

There's no chance for us

It's all decided for us

This world has only one sweet moment

Set aside for us

As I walk into the pouring rain and unlock my car, tears stream down my face, with no control and no conviction. How fitting, I think to myself as I slump in the front seat. Heaving sobs rack my body and constrict my breathing.

Why is it that the best things, the most important things in life, aren't fully appreciated until they're gone? Why is it that fate separated me from my husband, partner, and best friend?

We were going to start over. We were going to leave CTU. We were going to be a family again, be one again. And now? Now, there is nothing.

We had one year of dating and two years of marriage that were absolutely perfect, from the late-night coffee runs to Tony cooking breakfast every morning to having heart-to-hearts on the couch or in bed. Neither of us wanted for love, confidence in each other, happiness, warmth, or a best friend. Everything was more beautiful, more profound, and more enjoyable when he was there to share it with me.

Then, he went to prison. He committed treason to save my life. He put my life above the millions of innocent people that could have been killed if Stephen Saunders had succeeded in completing the trade, if Jack hadn't stopped him and brought in backup. Once, I resented him for it. I hated the fact that he was willing to put so many lives at risk for me. Didn't that say something about his character.

I have been completely and utterly idiotic. Now I only wish that I had had the strength and the bravery to do for him what he did for me. Sure, CTU would have really had their hands full finding the female hostile. She might have met up with Habib Marwan, creating a huge nuclear disaster. So, sure, I probably would have gone to prison for years. Maybe I would have even gotten the death penalty, as Tony was once threatened with. But I would have done it all if it meant not losing him. He was mine, and I killed him. I killed the man I am completely in love with, the one person who means everything to me. I killed my husband, the one person who understands me completely. I killed Tony.

I killed him.

Who wants to live forever?

Who dares to love forever

When love must die?

My priorities during the last six months have been completely skewed. I believed, naively enough, that if I just kept working, kept doing my job, got promoted steadily through the ranks, that my heart would eventually catch up with my accomplishments. I fiercely wanted to believe that I could move on and shut out the pain of not having Tony by my side, because if I couldn't, I'd live in a vicious cycle of depression and despair.

Well, it turns out that the numbness only lasts so long before the pain and loss set in. Before reality shows you that there's really nothing left to live for if your life is gone. Because his life and mine are intertwined; if he's gone, I'm gone, too. I'm sure that he felt the same way, too, although not to as great an extent as I do.

Now he's gone, and suddenly I'm the grieving wife, left to pick up the pieces of what used to be a whole, beating, loving heart. But there are no pieces of my heart left to pick up. The minute that car exploded, so did my heart and the majority of my normally-functioning brain, leaving nothing but radioactive, self-destructive ash.

There were two phases in my life: with Tony and without. With Tony, I am strong, competent, capable, witty, sweet, caring, loving, giggly. I am human. Without him by my side, I am timid, empty, lonely, depressed; in other words, I am a shell. I don't even qualify to be referred to as a shadow of the person I was when he was in my life. Or rather, when he was my life.

Is there a solution to the pain I face right now? Is there a way to end the suffering, to bring myself to Tony's arms once again? Is there any escape out of the dark tunnel I walk through, the one which seems to be endless? Is there anything that will benefit everyone in both the short and long term?

Yes. Yes, there is. But will I be brave enough to do it?

But touch my tears with your lips

Touch my world with your fingertips

And we can have forever

And we can love forever

Forever is our today

Suicide.

God, the word sounds so ugly, so demeaning. There's always been a stigma surrounding it in my family – my father never understood my mother's severe depression, never got why she attempted to kill herself multiple times. Eventually, the last time she tried, she succeeded. Ever since, if you were a Dessler, if you suspected you had a mental illness or the "bizarre" need to self-injure… even if you didn't have these suspicions, worries, or urges…you just didn't talk about it. A part of me wonders if the depression in me now wasn't somehow implanted as a precursor in my DNA, as a kind of bizarre punishment to my dad. Kind of like a slap in the face, saying, "Your daughter is so dysfunctional that she had to be like her mother and find such an ultimate coping mechanism."

I love my family. I really do. And I know that I always will. But this is something that I need to do for myself, and for my own personal sanity. Not that I'm being so selfish. This is something I have to do, not just for me, or for Tony, but for us. That perfect, two letter word sums up more about my life and what made me happy than anything else. Us. Well, I suppose that I am being a little selfish.

I remember that day, a year and a half ago, when I called him up to tell him that I wasn't infected with the Cordilla virus, a relief since if I had, it would have meant certain death, something neither of us were prepared for. I remember him sobbing as he whispered into his cell phone, "I can't believe I almost lost you." I was just as out of breath as I whispered back how I almost lost him, too, how that would have been so hard for me.

That's what our weakness is. We are one and the same. Without him, I lose half of myself. Without me, he loses half of himself. We couldn't live without each other. Somehow, we did for a year and a half, but that wasn't living. It was more like a suspended half death, slow in coming and very good at bringing maximum pain.

And now? I'm coming home, Tony.

As the tears stream down my face once again, I reach into my bag and pull out a smooth piece of metal: my personal Glock.

Who wants to live forever?

Forever is our today

If there's one thing that I've realized in the five minutes that the gun has sat in my hand, it's that you can't make a life threatening – or life ending – decision without being completely calm, cool, and decisive. It's one thing to say that you're going to hold the barrel of your gun to your right temple and pull the trigger, your last thought being how you'll be in your loved one's arms once again. It's completely different to actually do the deed without your arm and torso shaking like leaves. And from my experience in the field, I know that it is completely impossible to fire a gun and experience the kickback when your hand is far too nervous to even pull the trigger correctly. It's almost like my arm has a mind of its own – like for some reason, it's not quite ready to let go of everything that I've experienced in my thirty five years.

Just do it! I berate myself mentally. You have nothing to lose anymore and everything to gain, if you just pull the damn trigger. You'll be with Tony again, if you lift the gun and move your pointer finger one inch. Do it!

Instead, I slink down in the driver's seat and start sobbing once again. However, this time, it's not quite as violent as before; I sound resigned, like I know what I'm going to do and I'm going to go through with it. And that's how I know that I've made the decision, once and for all, to leave the world with a single shot. I don't know how long it'll take, how many minutes I'll need to convince myself to pull the trigger, but sooner or later, everything will turn to black, and then I'll be in Tony's loving embrace.

In my life, I was often indecisive, unsure of which path to take, which network to secure, whether I was doing everything right. Was I making yet another person unhappy? Yet when it comes to Tony, I was always active and strong, unafraid of making my stance known. This action will be me, for the last time, being Michelle Dessler: the confident, brave woman who always stood by her decisions. In short? This will be me acting like myself for the first time in a year and a half – and the last.

Who waits forever anyway?

I observe myself starting to stop sobbing from outside my body. This is truly an out of body experience, I think to myself. The idea that you are going to take your own life, with nobody watching and certainly no one there to stop you? It's enough to make every cell in your body do a double-take and begin quaking violently.

My tear-stained face looks out at the Counter Terrorist Unit (aka government officials only) parking lot. It's dark, which makes sense, considering it's a rainy winter California morning, not even six in the morning. Right now, children and most adults are asleep, dreaming of happiness, and love, and understanding… things I will never get again. Workaholics might be waking up or even at work already, and it occurs to me that if I were not in this position, I might feel truly sorry for them. True, they may not have experienced even an inkling of the kind of loss that permeates everything in my life, but they have never experienced love, either. If hope had a place in my heart, I'd hope that they found love. It may be the end of you, but it can also be a saving grace, if you let it.

I slowly sit up in my seat and fold my hands in my lap. I'm sorry, Daddy, I think to myself. Forgive me. Tony, sweetheart, I'll be right there. Just give me a minute, and I'll be with you. Forever. I promise it.

My phone rings, shattering the suffocating, decisive silence in the car. I halfheartedly glare at it, wondering who could possibly be calling at a time like this.

The more intelligent part of me tells me to pull the damn trigger, to not let any distractions get in the way. The dumb part tells me to answer the phone. I suppose that I can allow myself one last act of stupidity.

"Hello?" I choke out as I flip open the phone.

"Michelle, it's Bill," a bass voice intones, gently but urgently. I all but hang up on him when he says two words that change everything.

"Tony's alive."