A/N This takes place after the closing scene in Dead to Rights and just before the opening scene of Damned If You Do. Many thanks to everyone who's favorited, alerted and reviewed and a special thanks to PSU93Girl for doing the BETA honors. Strangely, I somehow still do not own Burn Notice.
For a spy, finding out you've been compromised, that someone has something on you is the ultimate nightmare. The worst part for someone who has spent a career training for every situation is knowing there is nothing you can do but grit your teeth and try to figure out exactly how bad the nightmare is going to be.
Michael Westen had never felt so cold in his entire life.
Russian winters had toppled empires; the armies of Napoleon and Hitler had been defeated by the bitter, brutal cold that he, as a covert operative, had experienced many times and yet, standing on a beach in the blazing summer heat that was Miami even at sunset, he had been frozen to the center of his soul. His mind had gone blank except for the words "The things that man gave us before he passed away." Michael had continued to stare at the footprints in the sand, long after the "last one" who had made them had gone.
Sometime during the exchange, Fiona had reached out and taken his hand. He'd never been one, by training and by temperament, for public displays of affection. But if she'd thought he was going to release his grasp on her and shake her off as he had in the past, she was mistaken. Her hand had been the only thing tethering him to his sanity at that moment.
So many emotions had coursed through him that he couldn't settle on one to attempt to deal with or just outright deny. There wasn't any more room left, any more places he could bury his feelings.
It had felt too much like growing up, which was exactly what Dr. Fullerton had intended. It wasn't the feeling of having unknown, faceless enemies. He had dealt with that on the streets, in the Army, and in the field. It was knowing whose pawn you were. Knowing that they knew they could violate your life, the lives of those close to you, at any time. Knowing someone powerful and ruthless held your life and theirs hostage and there wasn't a damned thing you could do about it. Anson had very intentionally and very effectively invoked the ghost of Frank Westen
Michael had slowly become aware, how long it had taken he could not say, of Fiona hanging her head and staring at her shoes. It felt like an alternate reality. A highly effective covert operative had been standing in the open, completely unaware of time or his surroundings, and a former IRA guerilla, who had taken a block of T-4 to his former mentor a little over twenty-four hours ago, had been standing there, swallowing convulsively and not speaking.
Early this morning, he'd made her a promise. The determination he'd felt had not diminished, but he was even less confident than ever that he had anything but a rough goal and a few tactical objectives. As she slowly raised her head and met his troubled gaze, he could tell something within her had broken. He saw it in the change of her posture, the set of her mouth, the jut of her chin.
Fiona Glenanne was ready to defy the world again.
Which was good, because he had never felt so directionless, so without a plan in his life. Not even when he was burned had he felt so out in the cold.
She had tugged on his hand and then pulled him along the beach, leading him back to the Charger. She'd opened the passenger door and he'd let her drive them back to the loft.
For a spy, the worst thing that can happen is to become someone else's asset.
Agent Pearce was staring at him, glaring actually, which is a neat trick if you're wearing sunglasses. But Michael didn't need to see her eyes to know. He felt the waves of disapproval and betrayal rolling off of her. She stood with her hands crossed tightly across her chest, her mood as dark as her business suit. He was standing at the side of a black operations van: no windows, jammed with electronics. There were agents from every level of government intelligence and law enforcement encircling them. He remembered it now. They had convinced Pearce to let him go and talk to Tavian Kortisa. Only, he wasn't being fitted for a wire. He was still in handcuffs. Something was wrong.
An agent in a gray suit and ubiquitous sunglasses walked Fiona towards him. The breeze was picking up and it wafted through her hair, blowing around the light gray tank top and loose pants she wore.
"They got you, too?" he asked, looking past her to see his friends, Sam in his golden Tommy Bahamas shirt and Jesse in his shirt and tie, come to stand alongside this CIA handler.
"I told them to pick me up at the loft," Fiona replied, drawing his attention back to her beautiful, but resigned face. "Then I asked if I could say goodbye." Her voice was laden with sadness.
Picked her up at the loft? But she had been at the bridge when they caught her...
Michael said what he'd said... He remembered it well, despite how much had happened since Tavian had thrown himself off the building. "An hour ago I was on my way to jail for the rest my life. How much worse is this really?"
Fiona draped her handcuffed arms around his neck and drew him in for a long kiss. When she pulled back, there were tears in her eyes.
"No, you're not going to jail for the rest of your life. I am. I confessed." The tears began spilling over onto her cheeks. "It was the only way to free you. I confessed to the bombing. Now Anson can't hold you anymore. You're free of him, Michael."
Reluctantly, she released her hold around his neck. Another agent joined the first one and together they grabbed Fiona roughly by her upper arms and began to drag her away.
"No!" he protested. Michael tried to stop them, but as he attempted to move, to even raise his hands, he realized that he was longer just handcuffed, he was now shackled.
Suddenly, his friends were right in front of him. He had seen Jesse look at him like that before, cold hatred, but he had never seen the murderously angry expression on Sam's face directed at him before.
"Why'd you let her do that, Mike?" Sam accused. "She's got too many enemies. You know she's not going to make it out of jail alive!"
"Sam, no, I -"
"Why'd you do it, man?" Jesse demanded. "That girl was ready to die for you and you're gonna let her take the fall on this?
"No, no. I never wanted-" Michael protested vehemently.
Instantly, Sam and Jesse were gone and his captor was inches from his face.
"What you want is irrelevant, what you have chosen is at hand," she informed him coldly. Agent Pearce slowly took off the sunglasses and her eyes bore into his.
"Why, Michael? Why did you lie to me? Again?" the dark haired woman challenged. "Why couldn't you trust me this time? I could have stopped this. I could have helped you, all of you." Her expression turned from anger to sorrow. She shook her head and turned away as two extremely large operatives in black battle garb closed in on him from either side.
"Now you two can go to prison together," she declared without looking back.
The scene shifted. He was sitting on the floor of a prison cell in an orange jumpsuit, his face leaning against the side of the steel cage. He was holding someone's hands through the cold metal bars. He raised his eyes and met hers, which were trying to express misery and joy simultaneously. Fiona was gaunt, her hair lank, her face bruised. She was wearing the same jumpsuit, only hers had discolored from dirt and wear.
"At least we're together, Michael."
You do anything you can to avoid it, making sure there's nothing people can grab onto and use as leverage.
Michael gasped and shook himself awake. He was still clutching Fiona's hands. But instead of reaching between two interrogation cells at Guantanamo, they were lying side by side in their own bed; their clasped hands between them. Her eyelids were closed tight too, as if against the images behind them instead of reposing in sleep. He held her two small, but deadly hands between one of his and reached out with the other to run his fingertips lightly over her tense forehead. She moaned and then awoke slowly, now encircling his calloused hand with both of hers, pressing it to her lips briefly as he continued to brush his fingers lightly over her face.
She gazed at him in the dim light. "You, too?" she guessed.
Sleep was a rare commodity in the loft these days. He'd had his nightmares before and she hers after Armand's visit, but now they were both struggling with their own nocturnal private hells, which ironically centered on their fears for each other.
"Fi, you can't—"
"Shhh," she shushed him. His Irish lover knew what he was going say as well as he did. They'd had a protracted discussion about how to handle Anson's hold over their lives all the way until bedtime.
"Please. Don't," Michael whispered miserably, feeling more vulnerable than he ever had and hating every second of it.
Fiona sighed deeply and closed her eyes. She ran her right hand gently up his arm onto his neck and then pulled him with her as she rolled onto her back, pressing his cheek against her chest. After a moment of shifting around, adjusting his position, he lay against her, his larger form incongruously cradled against her smaller frame.
Though she'd clearly meant it to console him, it was Fiona who went to sleep. Michael stared out at the moon for a moment, visible through the windows behind the kitchen area, then closed his own eyes and concentrated on nothing but the sound and the feel of her: her heartbeat echoing in his ear, the faint pulse of it vibrating against his face, the light rush of her breath in and out of her lungs, the slight rise and fall of her chest, the warmth of her skin next to his….
You move through life unattached, keeping the world at a distance.
He was running, his heart pounding in his ears; running harder than he could ever remember. The features of the street, the cars, the buildings, and the people were all a blur. He tapped the Bluetooth in his ear and tried to suck in enough air to pose his question.
"Location, Sam?"
"Jesse's triangulating the signal now. We'll have her in a minute."
A minute; an eternity.
Michael ran.
The Bluetooth rang. "Where, Sam?"
"Don't try to stop me."
Her voice was a cornucopia of emotion, but above all determination and devotion.
"Fi, no. Not this way."
"It's the only way."
Michael had to slow down to get enough breath to argue with her.
"It won't solve it, Fi. You know he's got the evidence on a fail-safe. You'll still go to jail." He had to keep her talking, give Jesse time to find her.
"That doesn't matter. He won't be around to hurt you anymore, Michael. That'll be over. I took out Carla; I can take him out, too."
"Please, Fi," he begged. "Don't do this."
"See you in Stockholm."
"Fiona!"
She terminated the connection.
He tapped the earpiece and growled "Sam?"
"Should be a large parking structure on your left, do you see—"
He was running flat out again. As the floors flew by, it reminded him vaguely of his run to meet Cowan. Then the ending to that scenario stopped him cold as he reached on the top floor. He heard the rifle crack before he located Fiona's sniper nest.
Time seemed to stop and then telescope painfully. He couldn't get to her. He felt as if he was trying to run through a sand dune.
This didn't make sense. Anson had to know that the moment Fiona died he was a dead man himself. The only thing keeping Michael from snapping the scheming bastard's neck with his bare hands was their lives, her life—it didn't make sense that he would kill her.
Michael's relief at spotting her quickly turned to horror as the red bloomed sickeningly against the white of her shirt. Then he was with her in an instant, gathering the motionless woman into his arms.
As a covert operative, he'd seen that wound too many times before. She only had minutes. There was nothing he could do.
"Stay with me, Fi," he whispered nonetheless, placing a gentle kiss on her lips.
His heart felt as shredded as hers surely was, albeit with a different kind of shrapnel.
"You can't kiss it better," she told him, crimson starting to color her mouth.
"Fiona," he pressed his face to the wound over her heart, the agony of it washing over him as surely as her blood did.
She made a gurgling sound deep in her throat and laid her hand limply on the back of his head.
"No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no..." he chanted brokenly.
The weight of his grief threatened to crush him. It felt like the night he thought she'd died in the fire, but exponentially worse. This time he was holding the proof of her death in his own stained hands.
Except -her heart shouldn't be beating like that—it shouldn't be beating at all….
"Michael."
There was an odd quality to her voice. It was getting stronger, not weaker.
"Michael."
It was a complaint, soft and sleepy, but a complaint nonetheless.
It slowly penetrated his brain that her heart was beating steadily. They weren't lying huddled on a concrete roof deck; they were lying in their bed, although most of his weight now was on her upper body. The liquid on his face wasn't her blood; it was actually some combination of drool, sweat and... tears?
"Michael, please…"
It was a testament to how exhausted they both were that when she pleaded with him, he knew it was because she wanted to go back to sleep.
"Sorry, Fi," he murmured, shuffling off of her. He lay on his stomach next to her, shoulder to shoulder, not wanting to put any more distance between them than absolutely necessary, and tried to steady his breathing.
"S'okay," she slurred. Fiona used the sheet to dab the moisture off her chest. "Laundry tomorrow," she muttered before drifting off again.
Laundry?
Michael almost laughed.
His feelings were more of a tangled mess than the sheets. He wished he could just wash away the entire mess his life was enmeshed in as easily. Michael controlled the urge to embrace her again and contented himself with watching her sleep, feeling her next to him, taking in the scent that was uniquely Fiona Glenanne.
The CIA's newest asset was in that most hated place: too tired to get up, too keyed up to sleep. The security review tomorrow-no, today, it was already AM instead of PM- was weighing heavily on his mind. He'd just dodged the proverbial bullet- again- by being cleared of Max's murder only to find himself-again!- under someone's thumb. Perversely, Michael found himself wishing they would revoke his current clearance so Anson couldn't use it.
He thought about what his agency contact had said in his dream. Fiona had argued, surprisingly, that they should trust Pearce and let her help them. That was the least objectionable of the plans she had proposed. Tactical analysis was one of his strong suits, but the possibilities of what Anson could want were endless and the probabilities of what he would demand all seemed guaranteed to leverage the ex-spy's hard-won standing with the agency. There just seemed to be no good options.
His emotions, something he had worked on controlling all his life, were getting the better of him. The erosion of that control was irritating enough in and of itself, but the loss of sleep was exacerbating the problem. Michael knew from recent experience that his subconscious wasn't going to give him a break just because he needed the rest. He rose up on one elbow and watched Fiona sleep, peacefully it seemed.
Having his supportive partner here, he thought with affection, was so much better than the alternatives. He certainly had been deeply shaken by the two he'd just dreamed. Michael pressed his lips softly to her temple and then lay back down on his side. He knew he was going to have to get up and get ready for his meeting with Pearce shortly, but he couldn't resist the lure of lying beside her just a little longer.
It's a hard way to live, but there's a cold logic to it.
Michael was almost to the office in downtown Miami for his security review when he got the phone call.
"Yeah, Sam?"
"Hey, brother, where're you at?" Sam's voice sounded funny, strained maybe?
"I've got a meeting with Pearce. Is there a problem?"
"Not really sure, Mike. I stopped by the loft a little while ago to talk to Fi. You know, see if I could mend some fences, let her know I wasn't …"
"And how did that go?" Michael prompted.
"Something's up, Mikey. She was packing up some really heavy stuff: assault rifles, machine pistols, C-4, the works. I asked her if she was restocking her trunk, but I couldn't even get a rise out of her. She said she was going to have to lay low for now because of this Anson thing and she was sending it all to storage. But get this, when I offered to help her move it, she turned me down cold. I thought, you know, maybe she was still upset about sending me off on that wild goose chase with that sonuvabitch, but—"
"But what?"
Sam blew out a frustrated breath that whistled through the cell phone. "Fiona was packing a bag, and not her usual day bag either, and then she goes and gets all jumpy when I ask her what she's up to. I didn't mean it like that, like she was doing something, but, Jesus, I'm telling you, she sure took it that way. Then all of a sudden, she couldn't wait to have me deliver a bunch of these boxes to storage. I don't know…" the older man trailed off.
"Sam?"
"The thing is, Mike, when I'd loaded the last of the boxes into the Caddy, before she sends me off, Fiona tells me that I've been a good friend to her. I'm telling you, brother, this mess with Anson has really got her all shook up."
The Charger did a one-eighty in the middle of six-lane divided highway in a swirl of white smoke, burning rubber, squealing tires and protesting horns.
"Where are you?" Michael demanded. "Never mind. Just get back to the loft-and Sam,"
"Yeah, Mike?"
"Don't let her leave."
The engine roared as the black muscle car shot recklessly through the streets. He pushed it as fast as it would go without wrecking the damned thing, weaving through and around traffic. Michael prayed he wouldn't pick up a police escort on the way. Paxson would probably take care of it after the fact, but he didn't time to waste explaining anything to anybody.
"Ye don't fall in love with an asset. Did they not teach ye thot in spy school?" said a terribly familiar voice from the passenger seat.
"Fiona is not an asset," he contradicted harshly.
"Yer right, she's not. She's a bloody liability. Thot girl's nothin' but trouble looking fer a place t'explode."
Michael was really too busy watching the road, but he couldn't help but glance over to his right briefly.
"Wot's all the fuss then?" the apparition of Robin O'Dowd queried. "Are ye trying t'get yerself killed, man? Ye left her back in Dublin fer a reason, ya know."
Michael growled as he made a hairpin turn around a corner, nearly taking out the coupe and the pickup next to him.
"You don't get to have the girl and the job. She doesn't fit into your future," another voice with a distinctively nasal tone chided from the opposite seat. "So why don't you do yourself a favor and forget the past."
"Fiona is not my past!" he declared, turning to glare at the ghost of Tom Strickler.
As the words left Michael's mouth, two gunshot wounds appeared on the man's chest.
"You're bleeding on my upholstery."
"Well, you're the bastard who shot me."
The Charger screeched to a halt in front of the metal gate and Michael flung himself out of the car. He threw open the rusted barricade and stopped short on the other side.
Larry was standing there, where he had been-how many days ago?-except that Mr. Sizemore's suit and hair were smoldering. Michael could almost smell the smoke coming off his ex-partner.
"What's the rush, kid? Too busy to say hi to your old pal?"
"Uh, you're really dead this time and I'm really in a hurry," he said as he pushed past Larry towards the stairs.
"You're wasting your time. She's gone."
Michael froze and then turned back to face him. "Larry," and his tone carried a warning.
"Don't look at me, kid. I didn't do it. You know, you really should have kept her around," he chuckled. "She's got some real stones, that one; which is more than I can say for you these days."
"What do you mean?"
"Look at you; you're pathetic! At least Fiona had the guts to do what it took to take care of this."
Michael turned away from his former mentor and raced for the stairs. He knew what he would find.
"She's gone, man. She's off the grid and she's not coming back!" Larry called after him.
The heavy metal door banged open as he rushed inside. It was worse than he'd imagined.
Not only was she gone, it was like she had never been there at all.
The loft looked exactly as it had the day he'd moved in five years ago.
Sparse.
Bare.
Empty.
Meaningless...
He staggered to the cold bed and collapsed on it.
He knew he was dreaming, but that didn't make it hurt any less.
Love nothing and nothing you love can be used against you.
Michael Westen stood on the balcony, squinting out into the sunrise. Someone was probably taking his picture right now, but he didn't care.
He knew he was awake this time. When he'd finally forced himself out of that last nightmare, he couldn't resist the urge to gather Fiona up into his arms and cover her face, her hair, and her lips with tiny, gentle kisses until the position of the sun told him it was time to get up. She'd drifted back off to sleep again, sighing happily for the first time in what seemed like ages.
As he stood there, showered and dressed, staring out over the river and the city beyond it, his mind drifted into the past, dredging up all the images of their partings over the years.
Leaving?
Uh, yeah.
You're good at that.
The hardest one had been Dublin and yet the way it went down was the only way he could have done it. He knew now he wouldn't have been able to do it if he'd had to face her. How could he have ever convinced himself that it was okay to leave her behind?
You ran away in the middle of the night for my benefit?
Believe it or not, Fi, yeah, it was for your benefit.
And yours.
Yes, Fi, and mine.
Later, in the Middle East, in Italy and in Germany, he'd told himself the lie. He'd see her again. They would meet again, it seemed they always did, and they would come together and part again. It was never meant to be anything permanent, just an island of happiness in their otherwise hectic, separate lives. That was the nature of their relationship.
He'd pushed her away, time after time, only to pull her back to him again. It's was a miracle Fiona didn't have whiplash from trying to keep up with his ever-changing moods where their relationship was concerned; that perpetual, almost tragic dance between want and duty, need and fear.
Covert operatives have a hard time dating. Even if you find someone who doesn't mind that you won't talk about your past or that you carry a concealed weapon, they usually want more than you're able to give.
It isn't that simple, Michael. You think you can let the job be who you are, all you are, and you can't. It's dangerous to think that you can.
He pushed her away; no matter how much he wanted her, because he was afraid. So afraid of so many things; so terribly afraid of the reality they were living right now for one.
But she knew him better than he knew himself. While he and Samantha had played games, enjoyed the lies, made no real or lasting connection, Fiona had seen right through him and his pretenses straight into his heart. Maybe that's why she kept coming back for more, no matter how many times he hurt her.
You left, Michael. You had a choice to make and you made it. I always thought, maybe, when it came down to it that- but you didn't.
What are you saying, Fi?
That I'll always care about you... Michael... and I'll still help you with your thing and you'll still help me with mine, but we can't be together.
I know. I said that for a long time.
Yes, you have.
Even when he had her believing the lie too, had her thinking that they were never meant to be, she'd still supported him, still backed him, still cared about him. He'd told her coldly that she should damned well want for him what he wanted for himself and she'd still offered to stay and help, despite the heartbreak in those expressive green eyes.
What a bastard he was.
And still she'd stayed with him until the day he'd pushed her too far.
This isn't about one fight, Michael. If you didn't see this coming, you weren't paying attention. You're too worried about your own future for there to be one for us.
Even then, when she'd left him, it was because of what he was doing to himself that ultimately drove her away.
You do what you have to do. I understand. I just can't stay here... in Miami... and watch.
She was right. He was a bastard, a cold hearted, self-centered bastard.
Or rather, he had been, until Fiona Glenanne had reached in and touched a part of him he thought was dead. He'd fought against that connection all these years, for practical reasons, for selfish reasons, for stupid reasons. He tried to honor that loyalty, in the end, when it looked like it was their last stand. He'd tried to push her away one last time in order to save her.
You said it yourself, Fiona. Maybe it's time you went your own way.
And yet, there she was, willing to die with him rather than live without him. She'd surprised him often in their relationship. But he was never more shocked by anything in his life than when Fiona had crashed through that opening in a hail of gunfire. She'd chosen certain death rather than leave him.
When it's time, we'll do this together.
Michael still couldn't grasp the magnitude of it. He hadn't had a lot of time to process what she'd done and the full meaning of it when he'd been swept away by the CIA for questioning. The burned spy had to shut that away and concentrate on what was happening for that first week they'd kept him in the dark, not knowing and only suspecting, what was going on.
But, over those six months he was gone, during the rare down times, he thought about what she'd done, what she was willing to do and how much he wanted -no, needed- her in his life.
And now, when it made the most tactical sense, when it made the most personal sense, when it would have been the right play for the wrong reasons or the wrong play for the right reasons, he couldn't do it.
He just couldn't let her go.
Violate that rule and make that connection with someone, you've handed your enemies the key to destroying you.
Former Agent Westen turned from the balcony railing and walked slowly back into the loft. She looked better rested, he noted as he sat on the edge of the bed. His added weight shifted the mattress and caused her to stir and awaken.
The Irishwoman looked up at him and her expression was one of sleepy contentment and trust. She believed in him, even when he didn't believe in himself. Perhaps that was why Fiona got so frustrated and angry with him. He returned the sweet smile and reached out to gently caress her cheek.
Michael regarded her tenderly for a moment, his heart swelling with love for this woman he'd tried so hard to keep at arms' length for so long. He was unable in that moment to remember how or why he had continued to put his job ahead of her all this time.
Then he rose and walked out of the loft without another word or a backward glance.
Michael knew what he had to do.