This chapter continues from after the last one, taking place between "Long Way Back" and "A Dark Road" (Season 3, Episodes 9 and 10)

Fiona woke up to a sight she was starting to hate: the satin white wall of the Coral Gables safe house where she'd been holed up for four long days. The unwelcome sight of the wall was followed by something she hated even more: the throb in her shoulder that preceded a tide of nausea. As she'd done every morning for the past four days, she shuffled to the edge of the bed and fumbled for the glass of water on the nightstand. She took two quick sips to banish the imaginary taste of food and another to swallow two white ovals of Percocet. The pills wouldn't help her nausea; that meant she'd have to force herself to eat something.

With a groan, she shucked the white sheets off her body and kicked her feet over the side of the bed. She had to check the clock to know the time; the second story bedroom had an ocean view, but she'd been sleeping in the main floor bedroom, whose only window faced the house's own garage. When Michael had suggested the room, she'd protested loudly, declaring that if she had to be laid up and hiding out, she'd risk getting hit by a trick shot from the world's greatest sniper to wake up looking at the sun and turquoise waves. She'd backed down after Michael had threatened to enlist Sam's help to patrol the grounds while she slept. It may have been an idle threat, but Fiona hadn't been willing to take the chance; with a killer stare and an angry huff, she'd gathered up her duffel bag with her good arm and marched into the room she currently occupied.

The digital clock by the bed said it was 7:18 pm. As usual of late, she'd slept away much of the day. Not that it mattered; when she was awake, she was bored, and when she wasn't bored, she was frustrated. Fiona had always hated being hurt. She hated the idleness and the constant reminders of her weakness; the stitches in her shoulder and the lingering effects of her concussion made everything difficult, from getting out of bed to making coffee and taking a shower. She also hated taking painkillers; even small doses peppered her sleep with strange dreams and made the waking world dull and lifeless, as though she were swaddled in the too-soft layers of a protective cocoon.

Michael was just as bad at feeling weak, but better at being hurt and deprived. Michael could survive for weeks in a hole in the ground with nothing but field rations and a magazine, and still be grateful for the magazine. Fiona had done similar things when she'd had to, back when she'd been an aspiring guerilla fighter learning the ropes from her older brothers and cousins. But that had been a long time ago. Now, she liked to think she was above such things—that she'd earned the right to practice a more refined vigilantism, in which she sometimes had to lie in muddy sniper's perches and skitter through the dirt wiring bombs to greasy engines, but was able to retire to a multi-jet shower, a Japanese silk robe, and something better than beer or homemade whisky. Michael would claim he'd never grown accustomed to such comforts, but Fiona didn't believe him. Michael might live in an illegal, un-air-conditioned industrial loft, but it was the cleanest industrial loft she'd ever seen. It also had a closet full of designer suits and a bathroom stocked with a carefully curated selection of grooming products, only some of which related to various covers.

During the past four days, Michael's belief that he was fine with less had been making her at turns angry and nearly crazy. Since the morning five days ago when he'd invited her into his childhood bedroom and held her until long after the sunrise, Michael hadn't touched or even looked at her with anything resembling desire. For four nights, he'd been sleeping on the couch rather than joining her in the bedroom, and had only lain his hands on her body to change the dressing on her stitches. Then, though his tone and his touch had been gentle, that was all they'd been; as she'd sat on the counter of the bathroom sink with her thighs spread open and her shoulders thrust back, Michael had only had eyes for her wound and the various disinfectants, tapes, and bandages that he'd used to clean and wrap it. The only other time they'd regularly interacted had been over food. Michael had been doing all the cooking, making her more meals during the past four days than he had during the past two years. As she tested her arm and examined the darkening sky above the garage through the bedroom's only small window, Fiona could tell he was at it again; she could hear the echo of pans in the kitchen and smell something that would have intrigued her if she'd felt at all like eating. Michael was good almost everything he put his mind to, and cooking was no exception. But his skills had been lost on her while she healed; besides her nausea, even her tongue felt dull, unable to enjoy the things she usually liked and unenthusiastic about everything else.

On its own, though, Michael's cooking was a nice gesture, and a nice break from his otherwise determined asceticism. As was the house, which was a step up from the safe houses they sometimes used. The house was fully furnished in a contemporary style, with all the standard features of a multi-million-dollar Miami property—five bedrooms, four baths, a state-of-the-art home theater, and a secluded backyard pool. Michael had scammed it from a newbie real estate agent by suggesting the name of a privacy-obsessed minor celebrity who wanted to try before buying. For both Michael and the non-existent celebrity, privacy was a major selling point; the house was one of four foreclosures on the block, meaning that most of the nearby properties were empty. Though Michael had kept her away from both the pool and the ocean-view bedrooms, Fiona had been making good use of the home theater, catching up on hours of the soap operas and reality shows she didn't usually have the time or inclination to watch. She was now well-versed in the ongoing love affairs and betrayals of both the English and Spanish-language soaps, and had developed opinions about who should win Tough Enough and Hell's Kitchen. Michael had rarely joined her in the spacious living room. Most of the time, he'd been not-so-subtly avoiding her. In the morning, he'd make sure she was set for breakfast and then leave for a long run that doubled as surveillance. And in the evening, he'd typically make small talk over dinner before retiring to a seemingly endless array of minor projects; Fiona was sure that Michael's favorite guns had never been cleaner, and that the Charger had never run smoother.

Fiona wasn't entirely certain how Michael had become her sole caregiver, or how long the arrangement was scheduled to last. For their first night in the safe house, they'd been joined by Sam and Sean. Sean had left the following day, insisting, against all evidence to the contrary, that he was fit enough to be crammed into the belly of a cigarette boat headed for the Bahamas, where he'd be able to board a plane bound for Ireland via Newfoundland. There'd been some discussion of Sam staying on after Sean left, but since then, Fiona had only seen Michael. Michael's was the first and only face she saw when she woke up in the morning and the last one she saw before going to bed; for three days, they'd only had each other, with no interruptions or visitors, no crises or desperate clients banging down their door. There'd been times when Fiona had dreamed of such things—when she'd fantasized about all the fun and trouble she might get into with Michael all to herself for days on end in a house with at least five mattresses and many more tables, chairs, showers, and baths. So far, though, the reality had been laughably unlike the fantasy.

Michael's distance would have been grating under any circumstances, but Fiona had rarely needed to feel grounded in Michael's body as badly as she'd needed it during the four days he'd been so determinedly denying it. Fiona was used to dealing with uncertainty, in her relationship with Michael and in general. Yet even for her, the present accumulation of uncertainties was nearly overwhelming. Fully a third of her personal effects had already been shipped to a country where she was no longer welcome; the rest of her things were in boxes that could still stay or go. Even though she'd been cut off from Ireland, most of the rest of the world remained open to her; she had plenty of old contacts in New York and Western Europe, and plenty of new contacts in South America and the Caribbean. Michael's current plans were similarly unclear; although the deaths of Strickler and Diego spelled a major setback in his quest to resolve his burn notice, Fiona didn't know if that setback would discourage him or motivate him—whether it would make him more cautious or propel him into even more dangerous deals with even worse people. In the midst of it all, there was the small matter of the fact she and Sean had almost died. There was also the less discussed fact that Michael had almost died, too.

Watching multiple bullets rip through Sean's body had been bad enough. But in the space of the same thirty seconds, Fiona had also seen a vision of Michael's death. In the fuzzy moments before waking, her semi-conscious mind had been replaying the scene; more than once, she'd been jolted awake by a pounding heartbeat remembering the sight of Michael's body going rigid with shock before collapsing against a marble pillar and crumpling into a helpless pile. For hours after those awful moments, Fiona had endured O'Neill's taunts and fists without knowing if Sean and Michael were alive or dead. For a while, she'd had faith. She knew both men well enough to know what they were capable of, including what they were capable of surviving. But when O'Neill's men had started loading her onto the boat that would take her to Ireland and a prime spot on the auction block, that faith had wavered. As she'd stood on the dock and looked toward the shore, she hadn't seen Michael racing to her rescue. In that moment, Fiona had realized that she'd expected Michael to try and save her, and that she didn't know how she'd survive if he didn't, because that would either mean that he didn't love her, or that he was dead. A moment later, Michael had saved her, with more than a little help, as usual, from her own recklessness. But the memory of her doubt and dependence remained to haunt her Percocet dreams.

Suddenly hungry for movement if not food, Fiona turned away from the window and left the bedroom, heading for the bathroom down the hall. In the bathroom, she relieved herself and then washed her hands and face at the sink. As she raised her wet face to the mirror and wiped it dry, she inspected her pale skin and stringy hair, which was tied back in the same messy ponytail she'd slept in. She hadn't had a shower since the day before, and she felt it; her skin seemed stale, as though she'd taken on the texture of the bed sheets. Though she'd certainly looked better, she'd also looked much worse—like during her guerilla days, when she'd often gone for days and even weeks without ready access to indoor plumbing.

Thinking about those days made her think about Sean. She and her brother had been close back then. Among her brothers, Sean had always been the most like herself—aggressive with a romantic streak, quick to anger but also quick to forgive. Yet before he'd showed up at her door to announce that O'Neill had her address and an assault team en route, Fiona hadn't seen her favorite brother in more than three years. At first, she'd been glad to see him. That gladness had lessened, though, the longer Sean had stayed. Sean still thought she was the girl she'd been, the one who'd threatened to take on the whole British army to avenge her sister, and who'd once broken her leg jumping off the roof of the barn just to prove she wasn't afraid to fall. Parts of that girl were still with her, but were supplemented by other, newer parts that Sean hadn't had a chance to know. Working with her brother for the first time in nearly a decade, Fiona had been annoyed by his impulsiveness and suffocated by his superiority—by his insistence that he was right even when he was out of his depth. Though she'd endure many forms of torture before she'd admit it, Fiona had seen some similarities between her complaints about Sean and Michael's frequent complaints about her. Yet she'd also seen the ways she'd changed, especially since moving to Miami. While Sean didn't trust anyone besides himself who wasn't kin, Fiona had come to trust Michael and Sam more than she trusted many of her blood relatives, including Sean.

She couldn't think about Sean without thinking about Ireland. Fiona was surprised by her own apathy about the loss of her home. She knew that she should be angry, yet whatever anger she did feel was at war with a stronger sense of relief. Her recent interactions with Sean had confirmed something that she'd suspected for many years, even since the first time she'd knowingly lied to her mother about Michael's job and family for the sake of the greater good. As she'd said to Michael moments before O'Neill's team had smashed the window with a grenade, her friends and family in Ireland didn't know her anymore. And that meant that her home was no longer her home. Fiona wasn't sure if she had a new home to replace it, but she did know that the thought of not returning to Ireland hurt less than the prospect of leaving Miami had done.

Right up to the moment when she'd decided to leave, Fiona had prayed that Michael might do something—anything—to convince her to stay. At the time, he'd fallen short. But he'd done other things since. Though she didn't have all the details, Fiona knew that Michael had killed Strickler. She also knew that it was the first man Michael had killed in some time, and that killing meant more to Michael than it did to most men for whom killing was a part of life. Strickler had been a mess of Michael's own making, yet at the end of the day, Michael had come back for her, and had sacrificed part of himself to do it. Nearly a decade before and many times since, Michael had chosen his job over her; five days ago, he'd finally chosen her. That choice meant something, and was even humbling, enough that Fiona was almost willing to forgive all the mistakes leading up to it. But to do that, she needed Michael to reaffirm exactly what her own sacrifices were for. So far, he hadn't been willing or able to that, and time was running out; the longer he treated her like an invalid who was also a stranger, the more she doubted his actions had been motivated by anything other than guilt or obligation.

Before leaving the bathroom, Fiona contemplated showering, or at least heading back to the bedroom to change. She was wearing a version of the same outfit she'd been wearing for days: a thin tank top worn without a bra, accompanied by a pair of brief sleep shorts; her most striking accessory was the large-ish white bandage that covered the stitches on her left bicep. With a mental shrug, she decided against both the shower and a change of clothes. She was comfortable enough, and there was no point in trying to impress Michael, since the man who'd killed for her a few days before no longer seemed capable of noticing her skin or curves, regardless of hygiene or what she was wearing.

She followed the smell of cooking through the hall toward the kitchen. On the way, she passed a painting that evoked the ocean landscape she couldn't see from her bedroom window. The painting was abstract, but the model was clear, at least to Fiona; when she looked at the painting, Fiona immediately saw the final light of the day shining through a thickly textured bank of clouds above the waves of Miami Beach. Each of the places that Fiona had lived the longest had been on or near the same ocean. In each place, though, the ocean looked different. Off the southern coasts of Ireland, the ocean was dark, angry, and cold, while in New York, it was less angry, but just as dark. In Miami, the ocean was sometimes angry, but never truly dark, the deep ultramarine of night never more than a prelude to the turquoise of the day. When she'd been determined to leave Miami, Fiona had known that she'd miss that turquoise terribly, just as she'd miss the sound of the wind in the palm trees and even the sticky heat that she'd hated for a week before accepting it, realizing it was part of the texture of the place just like the rainy season was part of Ireland and every kind of weather was part of New York.

When she reached the kitchen, Michael was standing over the brushed steel stove with a red dish towel slung over his shoulder, peering under the lid of a large, steaming saucepan. He was wearing what had become his own typical outfit: black flip-flops, a pair of broken-in jeans, and what looked like a brand new, long-sleeved white T-shirt. The jeans were loose but the shirt was tighter, hugging his chest and biceps as he lifted the pan off the heat and tossed the contents with a long-handled wooden spoon. He looked at home in the well-appointed kitchen, though of course that was one of his skills; Michael was able to fit in almost anywhere, as long as he was playing a role. Briefly, Fiona wondered if that's what he thought he was doing—playing the role of a too perfect caregiver as he'd once played the role of a too perfect boyfriend.

Michael glanced over his shoulder as she entered the room, his blue eyes giving her a quick once-over that, as usual, had little to do with lust. When he looked at her, his face bore the same expression he'd been wearing for days, and which had been infuriating her for almost as long—concerned and wary with an undercurrent of apology.

His voice was blankly innocent as he asked, "Did you have a good sleep?"

"I guess," Fiona offered, hauling herself up onto one of the grey suede bar stools at the shiny white kitchen island facing the stove.

"How's your arm?"

"Hurts like there's a hole in it."

Michael acknowledged her quip with a nod as he turned back toward the stove and began transferring the contents of the pan onto two white plates.

"What did you make?" she asked.

"Morasa Polow," he replied. "It's Iranian. A friend taught me how to make it a while back."

It wasn't lost on her that Michael had left out most of the details of where he'd learned to cook the dish, and from whom. Fiona knew that much of Michael's past would always be like that—vague when it wasn't completely secret. She could never quite decide, though, how much it mattered; she didn't mind Michael keeping a few secrets so long as she got to keep some of her own.

In a single fluid motion, Michael swept the plates off the counter by the stove and onto the kitchen island. The dish was already brilliantly multicolored, with sparkling white and golden-brown rice blended with carrots, nuts, and some sort of dried red berries. But Michael added additional color before sliding the plates toward her, sprinkling them with more nuts and juicy pomegranate seeds.

Fiona blinked at her plate before picking up her fork, surprised and a bit intimidated by the dish's unexpected intricacy, and worried her rebellious stomach wouldn't let her enjoy it.

"It looks good," she offered, trying and failing to sound as enthusiastic as she knew she should be.

If Michael heard her tepid enthusiasm, he pretended not to notice, wordlessly circling the island to take up the seat and the plate next hers.

Fiona took a deep breath, and forced herself to try a forkful of the dish. She was pleasantly surprised when the mix of tart and savory flavours cut through her tongue's dullness, enough to make her want a second forkful.

"The Heat are playing Cleveland tonight," Michael observed.

"Oh?"

"Do you wanna watch it?"

Fiona chewed slowly as she tried to guess Michael's angle. She'd rarely heard him express an interest in any type of sporting event, let alone a basketball game featuring the supposedly overrated Dwyane Wade.

"With you?" she asked.

"If you want," he replied, a little too nonchalant.

Fiona finished chewing, and then took her time swallowing.

"I guess," she said again, matching his studied nonchalance.

Michael gave another small nod of acknowledgement before returning his attention to his plate.

For a while, they both tried to concentrate on their food, though Fiona was more focused on trying not to hear the silence or the sound of her own chewing. She attempted to distract herself by letting her eyes survey the kitchen, but returned quickly to the conundrum of Michael, who'd somehow managed to cook an entire meal while keeping the sink and all the counters almost spotlessly clean. From the spotless kitchen, Fiona looked down at her beautiful meal and then across at the profile of the handsome man who'd made it for her, who was as oblivious as she'd predicted of her bra-less tank and brief shorts. She'd never really considered the possibility of she and Michael becoming bored with each other, yet at present, that boredom was palpable. The scene had all the drama of a too-comfortable marriage, but without the sunny comfort of the honeymoon period that should have preceded it.

As she continued to study Michael's profile, Fiona found her eyes drawn to the back of his neck, where she could see the tip of the yellow bruise from the impact of Thomas O'Neill's beanbag rounds. And suddenly, nothing made sense—not the spotless kitchen, or the delicious food, or the oblivious, handsome man sitting next to her, who was acting as though the world hadn't almost ended, and might still do so at any moment. Her heart began to thud as the silence she'd been trying not to hear became deafening, and then intolerable.

Fiona dropped her fork and declared, a little too loudly, "We don't live here."

Michael's eyes shot across to hers. He swallowed carefully as he lowered his own fork.

"I know," he said.

"And I don't need you to babysit me."

Her cheeks darkened with embarrassment at her protest, which sounded childish and petty even to her own ears. She maintained her gaze by reminding herself that Michael's distance had helped her feel that way. Her determination quickly overwhelmed Michael's; his eyes dropped to his plate before drifting away toward the walls.

"I just wanted to make sure you were okay," he said, addressing himself to the kitchen cupboards. "Whoever killed Diego—"

"Has been off the grid."

"For now."

Fiona made a small, humorless sound. "You do realize—people try to kill me more often when you're around than when you're not."

"I have always known that."

Michael's suddenly sharp eyes matched the edge in his voice. It was the strongest emotion he'd showed in days, and Fiona wanted more—wanted to split open the bored tension and confront the uncertainty she shouldn't have allowed to linger for so long. But before she could return his sharpness, Michael once again backed down, eyes wandering back to the cupboards. His next words were fully ensconced in his earlier nonchalance.

"We shouldn't have to stay here much longer," he said. "Sam's been watching your place and the loft, and they've both been clean."

"Great," Fiona ironized. "I guess I'll unpack a pen and paper and make a list of the places I'm not on a wanted list."

"Okay."

"Okay?" she echoed, incredulous.

"I can't stop you from going," he observed.

"You could try."

She'd hoped to provoke another sharp response, but instead, Michael affixed her with a version of the same expression he'd had when she'd entered the room—his eyes pleading and apologizing for everything and nothing, seeking a forgiveness she wasn't ready to give.

Fiona bit back her own threatening surge of anger in favor of a long, exasperated sigh. She knew from experience that there was little point in trying to argue with Michael when he was so determined not to participate.

"I'm not hungry," she stated, climbing down from her bar stool. "I'm going to get some air."

Refusing to eat made her feel even more childish. But when she slid open the patio door and stepped out of the crisp air conditioning into the pool area, she did feel sick, the hot, sticky air landing like a suffocating hand on her face and chest. Within a few steps, she'd acclimatized, but a flutter of nausea remained, aggravated by the suddenly sour memory of the few forkfuls of food she'd managed to swallow.

The pool was a long kidney surrounded by white concrete and tall hedges shadowed by a smattering of palm trees. There were blue neon lights around the pool and hidden in the trees, evoking a coolness at odds with the actual temperature. Fiona walked to the furthest edge of the enclosed space and looked up at the evening sky. The sun had set, but the shapes of the shifting clouds were still faintly visible in the darkness. Fiona knew there were many places she could live without missing the sky above the ocean. Though the ocean looked different in each of the places she'd lived, the sky looked the same—big, endless, and every shade of blue. Yet she also knew that the sky above the ocean would always remind her of something that, if did leave Miami, she'd miss far more than the turquoise waves and the sound of the wind in the palms. Michael's eyes had always been more like the sky above the ocean than the water below, in their unchanging changeability and occasional, blinding clarity.

She shook her head to clear it as she turned toward the pool, but the respite was brief; somehow, she always found herself returning to Michael. As she studied the neon lights fanning out into the glassily still water, it occurred to her that she and Michael had never gone swimming together, and probably never would. Try as she might, she couldn't picture Michael swimming for fun; even in childhood, she could only imagine him learning to swim to make sure he never drowned.

She was still transfixed by the water when she heard the hiss of the patio door, heralding the arrival of the subject of her tumultuous thoughts. She followed Michael with the corner of her eye as he performed a visual inspection of the premises, scanning the trees and looking for unexpected lights in the neighboring houses. Fiona knew she should have done her own inspection, but that would have defeated the purpose of her action; she'd gone outside because she'd known it was stupid, and because she'd known it would frustrate the man who was currently frustrating her. Yet as she watched Michael walk slowly and carefully from one end of the pool to the other, his intensity conjured a pang of guilt. When she looked back through the patio doors into the kitchen, where Michael's dinner sat abandoned on the counter next to hers, the pang became a wave, ready to wash away one of her secrets.

"It was strange," she began, "Sean mentioning my accent. Because I actually lost it years ago. When I was in New York, it made more sense to be from nowhere."

She could feel Michael's eyes on her back, but he kept his distance, listening and waiting.

"The first time I saw you in Miami," Fiona continued, "I tried it out again, just to see if I missed it. But I didn't. Somehow, after all that time, it didn't feel real anymore."

In the long pause that followed, she turned from the house toward the pool, and halfway toward Michael. She was pleased to see her simple honestly unsettle him, just as his own often unsettled her; he shifted his weight from one foot to the other before he finally broke the silence.

"When we first met, you sometimes called me McBride. Remember?"

"Yes."

"And I told you to call me Michael."

He hadn't just told her—he'd insisted on it. Fiona remembered it clearly, though she'd been drunk at the time. On the cold January street outside Jimmy O'Connor's New Year's party, with her brothers looking on and a half can of Guinness still dangling from her fingers, Fiona had draped her hips across Michael's and jammed her free hand inside his stiff leather jacket, looking for the vulnerable texture of his ribs. Michael's skin had shivered deliciously at the intrusion of her icy hand, compelling her to drop her beer and slur, "I need ya, McBride. I need ya bad and I need ya now."

Michael's own hands had been climbing her back as he'd whispered against her hair, "Michael. My name is Michael."

"I'll call ya whatever I want," she'd declared, nipping his ear and digging her hands under his belt.

Suddenly, Michael had caught her wrists and her gaze, squeezing a bit too hard as he'd said, "No. Ya won't."

Instantly sober, Fiona had met his eyes and tried to decide whether to curse him or kick him in the balls with the steel toe of her motorcycle boot. She'd been stayed by the unexpectedness of what Michael had said next.

"Please."

Before she'd quite understood what she'd been agreeing to, Fiona had found herself nodding. Michael had released her hands to seize her lips, and she'd kissed him back before hauling him into the cramped backseat of her cousin Ros's Nissan Micra. Sometime after that, they'd arrived at her place, where there'd been no more time for words, thoughts, or clothes. But the next day and for all the days after that, she'd never again called him McBride.

"I remember," Fiona confirmed.

Even before she'd known Michael's real name, Fiona had struggled with his contradictions. In the present, she looked at him and continued to struggle. The neon lights caught in his white shirt, which fairly glowed against the dark backdrop of the hedge and the sky. The rest of him was cloaked in shadow, his face a faraway mystery. Fiona tried to tell herself it didn't matter; for as long as she lived, Fiona knew she'd never lose her perfect memory of Michael's face—she'd never forget the pink curve of his lips or the shiny black of his hair, and especially the blue of his eyes, as changeable as the sky above the ocean in each place she'd called home. Yet as she assembled the familiar pieces, she became frustrated by how little they told her. And all at once, she was angry again—furious that in all the years she'd known him and after everything they'd been through, she didn't seem know Michael any better than when she'd still thought he was a small-time gangster from Kilkenny.

"Is that it?" she questioned. "That's all you have to say? About Ireland? About everything?"

She took several determined steps in Michael's direction while he took a single step back, stopped from going further by the edge of the pool.

"I'm—"

"Don't you dare apologize," she warned. "I am so sick of apologies."

Michael swallowed as she stepped into his space, not moving away, but not moving closer, either. His still-pleading eyes flickered up and then dropped to the narrow space between their bodies, the fingers of his right hand opening and closing at his side.

"You could have died," he said quietly.

"That's happened before."

They were his words from a year before, when an assassin impersonating a bureaucrat had nearly killed him with a garrote.

"That's not the point," Michael grumbled, clearly remembering the reference.

"So what is the point?"

"I don't know," he said, still looking down at their feet on the concrete.

Fiona edged forward again, close enough to block Michael's view of the ground with the curves of her breasts, each deep breath threatening to brush her lonely nipples against his chest.

"You do know."

"Fi…"

His pleading tone shot a bolt of hot rage up her spine. It ignited her cheeks and simmered in her empty hands as she took half a step back, and then lunged. The forearm of her good arm slammed into Michael's chest while her foot hooked his ankle, tripping him backwards toward the pool.

Michael realized what was happening in time to mount a brief, futile challenge. His feet teetered precariously on the edge ahead of a moment of suspended animation, in which his right arm just managed to balance the backwards momentum of his body. The impasse ended with Michael's right hand swinging back before shooting forward, seizing her bicep below her stitches. He clutched her to his chest as he finally succumbed to gravity, pulling her with him as he crashed into the deep end of the pool.

Fiona's chest collided with Michael's in the same moment his back and shoulders collided with the heated water that was barely cooler than the heavy air. A split second later, they were both underwater, where Fiona struggled to control her limbs that had instinctively tensed with shock and were hopelessly tangled with Michael's. Time slowed again as she realized: her limbs weren't just hopelessly tangled with Michael's—they were intentionally so. Michael was holding her down and close to his body, his hands cupping her thighs to pull her tight against his twisting hips. Fiona's tension dissolved in the friction of Michael's wet jeans against her bare legs and barely-there shorts, bleeding out into the water with which she was suddenly one. Her loosened hair and limbs were as liquid as Michael's shirt when she reached under and through its undulating waves to touch his skin and grip the slow-motion flex of his muscles.

She was kissing him before they reached the surface, all her anger transformed into a passion for stealing the air from his lungs and fighting deeper into the already tangled mess of his arms and hands and wet jeans. When they did finally surface, her head still spun and her chest ached, but in the right way—the one she'd been missing for almost a week of days and just as many nights. As they bobbed in the water that was too deep to stand, Michael's legs kicked and wove through hers in a vain but valiant effort to do everything at once—to support her weight around his neck and keep his lips covering hers while trying not to drown. Their lip-locked faces dipped several more times into the water before they surrendered to the need for firmer ground.

Fiona only waited long enough for her toes to scrape the tiles before knotting her hands in Michael's shirt and peeling it up his chest. Her teeth grazed his nipples while he was still struggling with his long sleeves, a provocation that caused him to stumble against the circular stairs near the railing. He grunted as his backside collided with the stairs in the shallow water, and again when she landed in his lap before shuffling down to attack his jeans. Her stitches yawned as she wrestled with the brittle, soaked denim and Michael's own provocations—like the fingers that slid under her top and into her shorts, down the back all the way to the front.

She watched her top and shorts float away as she settled her naked thighs around Michael's and ran two heavy hands down the slippery contours of his chest. She knew it was where he wanted her. Michael loved her on top as much as she loved to be there, watching his surrenders that were never really that; Michael was never truly powerless, and usually proved it. But now, even as she rocked with the hand that slipped in and out of the water to coax her tailbone, she knew it wasn't right. Now, she needed to feel the truth in his naked need that wasn't yet naked enough.

"I need ya," she purred, slipping into her old accent, the one she'd supposedly lost. "I need ya now."

Michael blinked once, slowly, as she stroked him under the water. Her fingers teased him before her palm sank deeper, whole hand flexing as she said the word she knew he liked best.

"Michael."

Her next sound was a gasp as Michael's hands closed around her hips, lifting her roughly before knocking her back into the stairs. The stairs were hard and scratchy on her thighs; she groaned at that even as she moaned at the wet friction of Michael's gut climbing hers in the shallow water. Her heart throbbed there and in her arm, her stitches straining as she seized Michael's ass to pull him closer. But Michael braced his hands on the stairs by her shoulders and waited, testing her with his weight while looking for her gaze. Time slowed yet again as she met his familiar eyes, which were often cloudy, but sometimes clear. Now, they were clear enough for her to see herself reflected, her own eyes over-large in their convex mirror. And suddenly, Fiona remembered what Sean had said about Jimmy O'Connor's New Year's party—how Michael had looked at her like she was the only girl in the world.

Michael slid inside her while their eyes were still locked, eyelids fluttering when the water started to move around their hips. The water sloshed languidly along Fiona's stomach until it didn't—until it splashed up her sides and rang in her ears, crashing like waves in her thighs and squealing between the fingers that struggled for handholds in Michael's slick flesh. When she couldn't hold onto Michael, she flung her arms behind her to grip the stairs and the base of the metal railing, toes extended on the tiles to arch her back into Michael thrusts. Wave after wave, her eyes and fingers fought to hold on. But it was with numb fingers and half-lidded eyes that she finally watched Michael's beautifully needful face wiped clean by a smack of pleasure, and saw his water-slick muscles tense and then tremble with bliss. Fiona rode his surge of pleasure into a second wind, wrenching down hard on the railing to wrench Michael as deep as she could. She came with a breathless growl that covered a sound she imagined but didn't hear, as her shoulder tore open and sent a warmer, thicker wetness streaming into the still-choppy water.

For a while, everything was wonderful. Then she was cold everywhere she didn't hurt, her arm burning in the tepid water while her face froze in the sticky air. Yet even the cold and pain felt good, so much better than the cocoon of her painkillers and the placelessness of sharing a home that wasn't.

While his wet, pulsing body was still heavy on hers, Michael kissed and caressed her cheeks and throat, smiling lips releasing a sigh against her ear. She felt rather than saw the moment he noticed her arm. His loose body went suddenly stiff as he withdrew his weight and a hand that was dark with her blood.

"Did I—"

"No," she assured him, voice breathless and raspy through the slit of her frozen lips. "I did it, it's okay. It's okay..."

Michael's relief was obvious but cautious as he pushed his wet hair off his forehead and the rest of himself off her body.

"Your stitches—"

"I know."

Fiona accepted Michael's offered hands and was glad that she did; as she made her way to her feet, her arm began to throb ahead of a fresh current of nausea that might have felled her if Michael hadn't been there to catch her, slipping an arm under her good shoulder above her breasts. She knew Michael would have carried her if she asked, but she didn't ask, wanting to fight Michael's withdrawal by holding while she was held. It was difficult to know if it mattered; along their slow, dripping journey up the steps and through the patio doors, Michael's body remained stiff around hers, and when she looked up, his previously smiling lips had settled back into a flat line.

When they reached the main floor bathroom, Michael spread a towel across the wide counter around the sink and helped her onto it. As Fiona continued to wonder whether or how much Michael would retreat or engage, he retrieved a grey T-shirt and a pair of navy pajama pants from a hook on the back of the door. He pulled on the pants and then helped her with the shirt, working the sleeves slowly up her arms before stretching the collar over her head and rolling up the left sleeve to expose her dark, leaky bandage. It was one of Michael's shirts, but on her, it was oversized, covering her backside and pooling around her thighs. Fiona was happy for the extra coverage. In another time and place, she would have relished challenging Michael to focus on threading a needle with her naked nipples staring him in the face. At the moment, though, the frigid air conditioning wasn't helping the already cold parts of her body feel any warmer.

Blood dribbled onto Fiona's fingers as she held her wound and watched Michael wash the blood off his own hands, his left hand vigorously scrubbing the red stains on the palm and fingers of his right. When he'd finally finished with his hands, he wordlessly and efficiently assembled supplies, finding gauze and tape under the sink and reaching into the cabinet behind her head for the needle, thread, and disinfectant. As he stretched for the top shelf, his breath hitched on a twinge of pain. Fiona blinked at the ribs that filled her field of vision, surprised she'd forgotten they'd been cracked during the tangle with O'Neill. Michael, of course, had helped her forget; part of what made him good at being hurt was his ability to deny the fact that he was. But she'd also helped herself forget, so focused on the fact of Michael's distance that she'd been blind to some of its causes and symptoms. All at once, she started seeing other things she'd missed, like the faint yellow bruises on his chest and the tired purple creases around his eyes; she'd assumed Michael had been sleeping on the couch, but it was also possible he hadn't been sleeping at all.

Quickly and almost desperately, Fiona laid a hand on Michael's side over his injured ribs, and kept it there as his skin twitched with another stifled intake of breath.

Michael deposited the disinfectant on the counter and looked down at her hand on his body. Fiona's cheeks darkened with the recognition that she'd broken something in their unwritten contract—the part that said worry wasn't supposed to be expressed so directly or blatantly, and never in moments that didn't directly precede or follow a life-or-death crisis. Sometimes, Fiona was grateful for that contract; other times, it was a stranglehold. Long ago, she'd told Michael McBride that she never worried. At the time, it had been mostly true. But in the weeks that followed, her world would be rocked by the revelation that the man she loved was really someone else—and by the realization that she loved him anyway.

The longer Michael stared at her hand, the more impossible it became to remove it. Finally, when she was sure she'd pushed him away by reaching out, he leaned into her touch, stepping forward to brush her thigh with his hip. Fiona let her hand fall, understanding that she no longer had to fight or reach to touch him.

Fiona swallowed and flexed her jaw, searching for her voice. Michael came to her rescue with a false nonchalance that was suddenly welcome.

"The game starts in ten," he observed, dabbing disinfectant on a clean piece of gauze.

Fiona managed a hint of a smile. "Then you'd better work fast."

Michael acknowledged her smile with one of his own before reaching up to tend to her bandage. She hissed as the tape sucked free of her skin. Things got worse a moment later, when the disinfectant touched her stitches and burned through her skin to her blood.

"Fuck."

She said it the American way, which had a gutturalness she missed in her native brogue.

"Thought that's how you got into this mess," Michael teased.

Fiona narrowed her eyes at Michael's cocky smirk that was sexier than it should have been. Memories of a similar expression on the face of Michael McBride surged and then fizzled in the next dab of disinfectant. Her narrowed eyes scrunched shut and stayed that way as Michael began the stitches. The first stitches were always the worst; her skin pulled against the thread while her battered muscles screamed in protest at the pressure of Michael's fingers. She squeezed the counter with her right hand and tried not to think about how good it would feel to close that hand into a fist and slam it into Michael's ribs, hitting the same spot she'd caressed a minute before.

She opened her eyes for the final stitches, watching Michael's deft fingers make a knot and cut the thread. When Michael lowered his hands, her long, relieved breath brushed her breasts against his shoulder. Michael's own breath was warm on her cheek as he swapped the needle for the disinfectant, his hip still sliding along her bare thigh. Fiona managed not to swear at the second dose of disinfectant, focusing instead on the subtle, ticklish kiss of Michael's nose in her hair. Her skin shivered with something other than cold as the thumb and fingers of his left hand grazed the underside of her knee, and his right hand circled her whole arm to press the bandage flat, carefully smoothing every inch of the tape.

She was almost sorry when he finally finished, but was too weary for many regrets. While Michael cleaned up, she closed her eyes and dropped her heavy head back against the mirror, breathing the scent of Michael's skin and the stronger smell of chlorine. She'd lost track of time when Michael's voice penetrated her reverie.

"The point was, I wanted to tell you."

Her eyes blinked open, but Michael was looking down, folding gauze and replacing it in a white paper box.

"Tell me what?" she asked.

"The truth."

"When?"

"When I didn't want to lose you."

He could have been talking about Ireland, a week ago, or a dozen times in between. Or maybe he was talking about all of the above—every time one of them had almost or actually lost the other, and put new cracks in two stout hearts.

"And now…?" she wondered.

Finally, Michael met her eyes. His lips had just parted to speak when he was interrupted by a loud gurgle from her empty stomach.

Michael's eyes dropped to the sound of her hunger.

"You need more to eat," he observed.

"Yeah," she agreed, disappointed but not unhappy; the night was still young, and the day far away.

Sometime later, Fiona lay sprawled on the blue velvet sofa, looking past the empty plates on the saddle brown ottoman to watch the final minutes of the Miami Heat's victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers. She was still swimming in Michael's shirt, which she'd paired with her favorite black silk sleep shorts. Michael was still shirtless, because she hadn't given him a chance to be anything else; after he'd joined her in the living room with the re-heated food, she'd eaten quickly and then made a home in his body, her cheek on his stomach below his injured ribs and her own injured arm draped across his outstretched legs.

Before the final buzzer sounded, LeBron James was already embracing Dwyane Wade, shattering any illusion of bitter competition. As Fiona watched the two star players hug and whisper secrets before erupting in laughter, it occurred to her that they'd make a good team—power paired with finesse, efficiency with grace. She opened her mouth to ask Michael's opinion, which she was already prepared to refute. The question died on her lips when she realized he was asleep; his breathing was long and deep under her ear, his left arm limp and heavy where it outlined the shape of hers.

Fiona used the remote resting on the ottoman to turn off the TV and then tried in vain to get comfortable, missing the drowsiness she'd hated for days.

She was unsettled by the fact that they hadn't settled anything. It was a familiar feeling, as familiar as the contours of Michael's body where she'd laid so many times before—like five days ago, after she'd nearly died, and after Jimmy O'Connor's New Year's party nearly ten years before that. From those early hours of the first day of the year, Fiona remembered being lulled into a boozy slumber by the gentle rhythm of Michael's fingers in her lower back. She also remembered waking up too few hours later with a sharp pain in her bladder. After scrambling out of bed to relieve herself, she'd returned to the bedroom to find Michael still sleeping. Then as now, that had been unsettling enough; usually, Michael was one of the lightest sleepers she'd ever seen, capable of waking at the motion of a glance or the breath of a sigh. At the edge of the bed, Fiona had stared as though hypnotized at the rare spectacle of Michael's sleeping face, marveling at the dark fringe of his eyelashes on his pale cheek and the loose press of his full lips. Studying him, she'd thought he looked entirely too young and decidedly too careless—in general, but especially for all her doubts about the parts of him she didn't know and the flaws in the parts he did. Yet his too-boyish oblivion had also reminded her of herself—of the romantic streak that inspired her to leap with faith and feel safe in places that weren't.

In the present, Fiona shifted to get up, but was stopped by a reciprocal shifting of Michael's body.

In a sleep-gravelly voice, he said, "Don't go." His left hand squeezed her fingers as he added, "Please."

Fiona laid still for a long moment, weighing the words she'd been longing to hear and thinking about all the things she couldn't see—like the ocean, and Michael's face, and what was going to happen next. She wanted to feel sure, but needed more proofs. In the space of several heartbeats, she found two: she'd been sure of Michael's eyes the night he'd watched her dance in the New Year, and when his slippery flesh had pinned hers in the shallow water. Both images reminded her of something else Sean had said: people don't change so much.

She made a vow to call her brother more often as she threaded her fingers through Michael's, and squeezed back. Her lips moved against his skin as she said, "I am going somewhere."

"Where?"

"Upstairs—to the master bedroom."

"I'll carry you."

"Just follow me."

Later and for the first time in weeks, Fiona dreamed beginnings instead of endings, her cheek on Michael's chest facing the promise of turquoise days.

~END~ (for now...)

A/N: I tweaked the ending of this once since I first posted it, as some of your comments made me feel it needed a bit more optimism. Hope the re-write satisfies! Also, though it's not terribly important: the Lebron James/Dwyane Wade thing was meant to be a reference to LeBron's controversial Decision to join the Heat in 2010, which was something of an exciting Miami moment; LeBron hawked his special edition Miami Vice-themed sneakers in an ad with Don Johnson and everything :P

Special thanks to beejed for pushing me to do a two-parter for this one. The more I thought about it, the more I felt badly about doing Michael's thoughts about the Strickler/O'Neill/Ireland business, but not Fiona's. So now I've done both, and made a little trilogy within the larger series.

Though it's been fun hanging out in Season 3, I want to try and jump forward a bit for the next installment... A few of you have suggested something in and around Michael asking Fiona to move in with him in "Bloodlines," so I may give that a try :) As always—thank you so much for reading and reviewing!