XII. Unspoken

June 1, 1984.

"Dust is more important than people think," Ford said, twisting his hands around in a sunbeam with tears still sparkling on his cheeks. "It makes up everything, you know. Everything we are, everything we think about. Everything that ever was or will be is just dust."

He never spoke much in basic training, or when we moved to the light infantryman training and became part of a battalion. He kept it buttoned when we were deployed to Somalia and the others in our battalion started whispering about cannon fodder. He spoke one or two words on the plane, a phrase or two on the twelve-hour hike into the desert, and barely commented on our new living space, a series of black tents absorbing heat on a sandy basalt outcropping.

But we got a call on the satellite phone to interrupt our days idly patrolling the desert, to inform him that his father had passed away and that he was not excused from duty to attend his funeral.

Ford talked a lot when he got that news, and wasted precious water on his tears. He never sobbed, never whined, but he sat there against the edge of one out our barriers, staring at the light that came through the cracks and talking about dust. It was the most I had ever heard his voice.

"Dust is everywhere," he kept saying, like we had no idea, like weren't all two shades darker from the dust settling on our bodies. "It never ends, so nothing ever ends. Not really."

I was out of patience for him. It was over a hundred degrees outside, bone dry, and we were sitting in thick pants under a cloudless sky, with no shade to speak of other than what the barriers provided. Inside the tents the temperature could get as high as one hundred and ten, without the occasional gust of wind. Ford had been talking like a crazy person for days and I was sick of it.

"Everything ends," I told him, kicking the barrier he was looking through with the tip of my boot, and making it tremble.

Ford gave me a look like I had just kicked his puppy. "Life is a cycle."

"Life ends. Your dad died, I know, but you gotta get over it."

"It's not that easy."

"It is. Put on your big boy panties and suck it up."

"Easy for you to say. Your dad is a bastard. Mine was a good man."

I had never bristled at anyone talking down on my dad, but his tone struck something in me. It might have been the sun, but it sounded like Ford was talking about us, not our fathers. I let the aggression come out unchecked, "I'm nothing like my father."

He set his jaw, and grunted, almost growled, "You look a lot like him today."

It was like he had punched me. It might have been better if he had. But in the desert it was hard to stay angry. Emotions drained away and dried up in the sand.

Ford shrugged it off.

I kept my eyes off of Ford for the rest of the afternoon. We shared out tent with six other soldiers, and when evening came he gathered us all up to make an announcement in that same solemn tone.

"You guys already know my dad died two days ago. His funeral was today. I wrote a… well, some things about him."

I listened in silence to his words about his father, deciding that he was right earlier. Ford had a good father. He taught him about life, took him fishing and hunting, and said he was proud when Ford decided to join the army. He was everything mine had not been. It was a wonder we had turned out this way, with me quick to talk and clever, and Ford quiet and a little dense. It should have been the opposite. I imagined, for a moment, what a family like that would feel like.

When his speech was over, I got my hands on one of the satellite phones and made my first call home since becoming an infantryman.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Ma."

She paused, and inhaled, and a smile came into her voice, "Michael."

"Happy birthday."

"You remembered." Her voice was almost musical, "Where are you?"

"Far away." Explaining where I was, and what I was doing here, would take up precious seconds, and Ma would never remember or understand anyway. "How is everything there?"

"Well, your brother failed his math class, and nobody told me about it until now."

I smiled, glad to hear something that reminded me of home. Nate was bad at math. He was bad at math, my mom was still smoking, and the world just kept spinning.

"Your voice is croaky. Are you getting enough sleep?"

I had gone light on the water for the day and my throat was raspy from inhaling sand. "Plenty. Not much else to do out here."

"No, it's not from that. You sound different."

"I do?"

"You sound scared."

I wondered what fear sounded like. Did it sound like Ford, sitting at the barrier and babbling about dust and death? Did it sound like our tentmate Bryan sitting on his knees every night and praying for the safety of his family and his battalion? Or did it sound like me, a seventeen-year-old boy fresh out of training in a desert half a world away from home?

"You can come home. I left your room the way it was."

Her offer was halfhearted. It always was. She could tell me to come home a hundred times but it would never change what she knew – she knew I had to go.

"I have a tour to finish. I think I was made for this kind of work, Ma."

"Nobody is made that way," she said, almost bitterly. She dropped her sharp tone and murmured, "When you figure that out, you come home."

"Ma, I-"

"Don't you 'Ma' me, Michael. I raised you. I know when my baby sounds scared. All I see are bad news reports from all over the world – bombings here, gunfights there – and I wonder if that's where you are. I'm so scared for you, and you won't even tell me where you are."

Her voice cracked and she gave a little gasp. I hated hearing my mom cry. It was one of my biggest weaknesses. "Nobody is shooting at me, and if they were, I would run the other way. Remember?"

"You better, young man."

"I have to go."

"I love you, sweetheart."

"I love you, too, Ma."

XxX

June 1, 1985.

She picked up three rings in, "Michael?"

Hearing her say my name made me smile, and I had spent so long wearing the same blank expression that my cheeks felt like dried plaster.

"Hi, Ma."

"I knew you would call. I was just telling Sophie you would call."

"I just wanted to say happy birthday. I don't have much time to talk."

She took that in, and maybe planned what she wanted to say, "Where are you?"

"Ma, you know-"

"Oh, it was worth a shot. Maybe one day you might slip up and tell me." She spoke to someone else, "One day I might actually know where my son is, right? Wouldn't that be nice, Sophie?"

"Ford is here. He has my back."

"So you got stationed together after all? What did I say about worrying?"

"It'll give me wrinkles."

"It will!"

"I only have a few-"

"Did you pass those tests you were taking? I forget what they were for."

"I did. I'll be commissioned as a ranger soon." I had mentioned, offhandedly, when I called my mom two months ago, that I was about to take my final assessment to be commissioned as an army ranger. It was almost impressive that she remembered.

Ma had a strange memory. If she wanted to use something to torment me, she could remember it forever, but if it was an achievement, something good and positive, she could forget about it the next day. "You know, Patrick Garney bought a new motorcycle with that check you sent, and he drives it up and down the road at night making all kinds of noise."

"He started it."

"You always say that." She paused again, taking a breath that might have been a draw from a cigarette. "You can talk a little while, can't you? Just for a few minutes?"

I was on the rim of a mountain, walking a worn trail in a line of forty soldiers. We had been moving since dawn, from a little village on the border to the interior of the country, where we would engage a larger rebel force and attempt to regain control of this hostile valley. Everything hurt, from the balls of my feet to my throbbing head, and soon night would fall and the temperature would drop and we would all hunker down against the wind, trying not to get blown off the mountain.

But my mom sounded so hopeful, and her voice was a refreshing change from the sound of my brothers grunting and panting.

"Yeah, I can talk for a few minutes."

XxX

June 1, 1986.

Her voicemail was dry and quiet, not the same one she had when I left the house. It used to be all of us, pretending to be happy, saying every other word like a sitcom family. Now it was her voice, a tired request to leave a name and number, and nothing else.

"Hey, Ma, sorry I missed you."

I did my best not to sound sad. Lying to people gets a lot easier when they can't see you, when you're just a voice on an answering machine. Instead of trying to control your voice and your sullen face, you just have to make sure you sound more tired than scared.

"Sorry I haven't called in so long. I just never notice the time passing."

It had been five months since I had talked to her, when she managed to track me down and call me at a holdover base on my birthday. Even then our conversation had been short and simple, because I was exhausted and irritable. I tried to sound chipper this time.

"Everything is fine over here. Lots of rain. I got a great tan. Ford says hi." I paused, lost in my script, and pressed my hand to my forehead to find it again. "I love you. I hope you have a great day. Bye."

I hung up. That was it. Just a few sentences, short and to the point. I wanted her to think I was alright, that everything was okay, that I was out of the desert. If it was the only news she got today, I wanted it to make her smile. I might have been the only person to remember her birthday, and maybe my message would make her happy.

Ford groaned and rolled over at the sound of his name, gripping his injured leg in one fist and dragging it with him. Congealed blood spilled over the top of the bandage and stained the mattress. He caught my gaze, blue eyes burning like a comet streaking through the night, and tried to say something. But he was stuck in the pain, briefly, and speechless.

"Rest," I said, cutting him off crudely while he struggled. I was too tired to try and listen to him, too numb to my own pain to imagine his, too tired inside and out. "Just rest."

He spoke anyway, in a defiant gurgle, "How is your mom?"

"Fine."

"Good." Ford laid back, staring up at the pitiful stack of boards we called a ceiling. He always asked about Ma, and I always said the same thing. He never noticed. He was too far gone to notice anything now. "Good, good."

Rhodes adjusted his gun, and wiped his grungy face with his arm, streaking his sleeve with soot. "Four hours and counting."

"Hear that?" I sat down beside Ford, on the only mattress in this hellish place. "Four hours and we can get some morphine in you."

Ford sort of smiled, and said offhandedly, "Didn't think you could… carry me… huh?"

"You're a dense son of a bitch."

He laughed, and groaned, "Don't make me laugh."

"We're putting you on a rice diet when you get better, help you lose some of that muscle. How does that sound? Next time you decide to step on a bomb I can carry you a little further."

"Yeah, good idea," Ford said, forcing another smile. "Find a better hideout next time. Some hot towels would be nice… little mints on the pillow… some stitches."

"I'll keep that in mind."

I thought about the voicemail for a long time, hoping my mom would listen to it while she was distracted, so she didn't pick up the tremor in my voice. Ford and I joked about death nowadays, now that our jobs involved so many risky situations, but when it came down to losing him I was petrified. It was almost assured now. He would die, and become like the dust he was so obsessed with when his dad died. I would have to leave him here, and break my creed.

He kept bugging me about it.

"You should go. You and Rhodes and Burk. You can make it out."

I was silent, and Rhodes only grunted at those words.

"I mean it. Look at my leg. Look at it, guys."

I did look at it, and my stomach twisted into knots. I wasn't squeamish to the wound, but to what it implied. Hot tears invaded the backs of my eyes so I focused on the ceiling.

"We had a good run," Ford insisted.

"I will never leave a fallen comrade." I dropped one hand on his chest, right in the middle, and shook him by his jacket. "So shut up."

"Don't quote the soldier's creed to me."

"Stop being stupid and I won't."

He was quiet for a time, and then out of nowhere, "I can't wait to be a ranger. You and me and a bunch of special forces badasses storming the jungle, huh?"

"Yeah. Me either."

He smiled and laid his head back, and I sat there for hours making sure he kept breathing. Only later did I realize I forgot to tell my mom happy birthday in the voicemail.

XxX

A/N: I'm so glad everyone has been enjoying this story! I was worried there wouldn't be much interest in a Burn Notice fic so long after the show ended. Anyway, the format of this chapter is a little different than most. I wanted to jump forward a few years, but instead of just leaving a bunch of empty space, I decided to do it this way so we could sort of 'check in' every now and then to see where Michael is and what he is doing. I thought a good way to do that would be through his birthday calls to his mother.