A/N: This story was originally intended to be a oneshot but a number of reviewers have suggested that Michael's New Zealand adventures continue, so I've decided to give it a second shot. Thanks guys.


Charlie Westen was unusually quiet at dinner that night. Not that he was that much of a talker usually but he was rarely silent.

One of the perks of being a cook was that you got to take some of your work home with you. The Westens almost always had leftovers from Michael's shift for dinner. Not that Fiona was a Westen – since officially, she and Michael had yet to marry but she was at heart, just as much a Westen as the boys, despite not having the name.

"Something you want to talk about, Charlie?" Fiona asked.

"Was he right?" Charlie asked, turning to Michael.

"You talking about Finlay?" Michael looked up from his pasta.

"Yes." Charlie nodded.

"If you're referring to his remark about us being different then no. We're not that different from anybody else." said Fiona.

"Come on Fi," Michael laughed. "You know that's bending the truth a bit."

"So what did you do?" asked Charlie.

Michael paused, taking a sip of his soda before continuing. "How much of your time in Miami do you remember, Charlie?"

"I remember grandma's house. I remember preschool. I remember seeing Fiona a lot and you would be away a lot. Grandma said you were at work but she didn't tell me what you did." Charlie recounted.

Even though it had been almost a decade since they left Miami, Michael would still flinch at the mention of Madeline. He never forgave himself for her death and he didn't think that he ever would.

"Yes about my job. I worked for the US government." Michael tried to explain.

"I wouldn't call it work when they were holding your friends and family to ransom." Fiona replied bitterly.

Once upon a time, Michael would have just come straight out and said that he was a spy and been proud. But that was a long time ago. If he had been reluctant to tell his family about his work when he was in Miami; here in Christchurch, he was even more reluctant to talk about his past.

But he knew that he would eventually have to explain what he did to Charlie and he promised himself that he would not try to sugar coat it. He just hoped that Charlie wouldn't hate him once he learned that all his relatives had been killed because of Michael's job, including the death of his grandfather more than twenty years earlier.

"But why were you away all the time?" Charlie asked.

Based on what he could remember of his early years, Uncle Mike would often disappear and pop up again once in a blue moon and no one ever explained why.

Michael sighed, pondering how to explain what was going on in child's speak. "Charlie, my job required that I hang out with some very bad people. To protect you guys from those people, I had to make sure that I didn't hang out with my family too much."

"Did you miss us?" asked Charlie.

"If he did he never told us," said Fiona.

"Fi, come on. That's not fair." Michael protested.

"Why did the government want you to hang out with bad people?" Charlie asked, helping himself to more lasagne.

"Because they wanted to stop them from doing bad things. My job was to work with the bad guys so that when they do something bad, I will know and I can stop them." Michael tried to explain.

"Isn't that dangerous?" Said Charlie.

"Very." Fiona agreed. "But Michael liked it."

"Oh I don't know Fi," Michael smiled. "You were pretty impartial to violence and danger yourself."

"What did you do, Fiona?" Charlie turned to his aunt.

"I helped the cops to catch bad guys," said Fiona using kid's speak for bounty hunter.

"If you helped the government and Fiona helped the police, why did we leave America?" Charlie asked in his normal accent, which was not American, but kiwi.

All three spoke with a different accent now. Fi spoke with her native Irish accent while Michael kept his American accent. Charlie spoke with a kiwi accent because that was what he was taught at school and that was how he spoke with his friends.

"Because the government and the cops aren't always good people," Michael explained. "And we had to get away from them."

"Only took you seven years to learn that," Fiona pointed out.

"Yeah okay, so it was a learning curve for me." Michael muttered.

"What were the names of your jobs?" asked Charlie. "I can't imagine you would introduce yourself as the guy that helps the government."

Michael pointed, first to Fiona then to himself. "Bounty hunter, spy."

"Spy? Like James Bond?" Charlie asked, his lips twitching as he was trying not to laugh. Not because the idea of spies was particularly hilarious but because of the way that Michael had been trying to avoid talking about it.

"No, more like Jason Bourne," said Michael. "But you get the idea."

"What's a bounty hunter?" asked Charlie.

"They catch fugitives and bail jumpers for reward money." Fiona explained.

"Wow. That's really different." Charlie smiled.

"Not you too." Michael groaned. He'd had enough of Finlay calling them different earlier in the day.

"Your jobs are so ordinary now, compared with what you did before." Charlie observed.

"Charlie, Fiona and I wanted that. If we wanted to be different, as you and Finlay like to remind us, we would have stayed in Miami." said Michael.

"It was a good thing that you left." Charlie smiled. "I like it here in New Zealand."

As a spy, Michael should have known better than to let his guard down but relief can do that to you. Charlie had taken the truth a lot better than Michael had anticipated. So of course the police would choose this moment to ring them.

Fiona answered the phone. She gave a puzzled look before turning to her adopted son.

"Charlie, did you contact the police?" She asked.

"No I didn't. Finlay did." Charlie replied.

"Fi, give me the phone." Michael held out his hand.

"Is that Mr Westen?" Said the voice on the line.

"Who's asking?" Michael replied.

"This is Constable Stephen Te Wera from the Papanui Police Station. Five days ago your boy, Charlie, reported a missing persons case." The constable explained.

"He didn't tell me about it." Michael glanced at his nephew.

"The reported missing person, Anne Richards, has been found." The constable informed Michael.

Ms Richards was a teacher at Charlie's school. Michael was aware that she hadn't been showing up to work the whole week but he didn't know that Finlay had apparently filed a missing persons report in Charlie's name.

"That's great news," Michael smiled at the teacher's sighting.

"She's dead," said the constable. "We need Charlie to come in and identity the body for us."

"I can do that. She was his teacher. I knew her quite well." Michael was not keen on Charlie having to see a dead body up close, especially not when it was someone he knew.

"Yes please do come with him, Sir. But we still need to speak with the boy because he was the one who originally reported the case." Said Constable Te Wera.

Michael considered his options. Finlay knew something that he was not telling. He was scared of the consequences of that something and so committed a felony by lying about his identity to the police. Michael having been implicated in said felony could not walk away from the case. He liked it much better when people who needed help from him came to him directly and did not involve the police.