Disclaimer: I don't own the situations or characters portrayed herein. I'm just playing with them for a while.

Burnout

He raised his hand to her face, and, instead of the caress he longed to give her —

He slapped her.

He saw the magic die in her eyes as pain and betrayal filled them instead, and her hand flew to her cheek, and he knew, in that moment, that she would never look at him the same way again.

He reached for her, blindly, instinctively, and she was hard and unyielding under his hands.

"I'm sorry." His voice wasn't the drunk acting voice, but he couldn't live with himself like this.

"That's okay. It didn't hurt." She was still closed off from him.

"No, no, I'm sorry." The sorrow and panic and fear were threatening to engulf him.

"You can move your hand." He pulled back, and she turned away, and it was worse than if she had hit him back.

"Good shot," he said, coming out from behind the trees. She was carrying Harris' gun gingerly, much like she would a dead rat.

"Oh!" she said, and then promptly handed the gun to the man who had drunkenly slapped her not three hours before.

"You all right?" he asked.

"Do you think I killed him?" It might have seemed like she was answering a question with a question, but he knew Amanda well enough to know that whether she was all right or not depended on whether she had killed someone. Even in self defense.

"No, no, but he'll be asleep for awhile. Now look. I'm going to throw the spare onto your car, then I want you to meet me downtown at Chez Nouvelle on 21st Street."

"Right."

Maybe we will be okay.

"Why did they try to kill me?"

He shifted uneasily, dancing uncomfortably around the fact that he had slapped her.

"Well, you have been awfully protective of me lately, you know. Lot of public shows of, you know, trying to help me through my troubles and all, and, uh, maybe he thought you were going to get in the way."

For a woman who had been slapped by a man who really should be protective and nurturing, she was being awfully understanding. She was even smiling at him.

"What?" He couldn't help it that it sounded a little wary.

"You sound like your old self," she said gently, but her eyes were sharp and questioning.

"Yeah. I guess you have the right to know about my, uh — "

"No, that's okay. You don't have to tell me. I already know. It's a cover. It's all a cover, right? It's all a cover because of this Harris stuff."

Bless her. He should have known he could have come to her.

"Shhh. Now you listen to me. Nobody else knows. Just Billy and I. Not even Francine."

"I won't tell a soul," she breathed, her eyes wide.

"Good." But there was something else he needed to address - something big and shameful, and completely terrifying. "Amanda. There's something else I've gotta talk to you about."

She looked down, as if by not talking about it they could pretend it never happened. "No. That's all right."

"No, listen." He had to make her understand, had to tell her that he regretted what he had done more than he regretted anything else in his misspent past. "There's some things that I ... Back there at Nedlinger's, what I did and, you know, what I said, it was just to, to keep you away from me, that's all."

"That's all right. I understand."

It was torture to see her accept his apology as if he had done nothing out of the ordinary. It was torture to hear her minimize the horror of using her so roughly as part of his cover. It broke his heart that she was forgiving him for such an egregious act against her. It made him wonder what else he had done that hurt her too.

It wasn't all right.

"No, it's not. Amanda, I really am sorry."

"That's okay. I really do understand."

He didn't deserve her, and she deserved so much better than him.

The moment he had seen Brackin on the couch, he had known that he had to play his cards right or he was dead.

If Brackin were as sharp as Lee thought, he was probably already onto him by that time. A real burnout would have a messy apartment, after all. Lee's old apartment, before Amanda, had been a mess - and he had been headed straight for burnout back then.

This apartment had not looked like a burnout's apartment. It was his safe space, a haven of Amanda-ish-ness in a world that he was tearing apart at the seams in an effort to make it look like it was falling apart on its own.

So that was probably what tipped Brackin off to the fact that he was playing a part. He had still found Lee useful as long as he played dumb about suspecting Brackin of suspecting him, but he would definitely kill him at the end. And now Amanda would have to pay the price of Brackin's ironic cruelty.

He weighed the gun in his hand - lifted it - paused. Her eyes were too expressive, and he longed to shout out that this was where he drew the line, that he was not going to shoot her in a million years. But then her eyes shifted and her mouth thinned, and he knew what she was saying to him.

Make it look good.

Maybe, he thought, someday I'll be able to look back on this moment without regretting it.

The acrid taste of bile flooded his mouth and - he pulled the trigger.

She stood there examining the bullet hole he had made, and he decided to

just

go

for

it.

What was the worst that could happen? She pulled away? She hadn't done that when he'd slapped her or shot her.

He bent down and took her hand, and, not even bothering to be discreet in front of dozens of sharp-eyes agents, he kissed the fingers protruding through the bullet hole.

He winked as he did it, his heart full to bursting at seeing the magic restored in her eyes. He was rewarded with a smile that put all the scrunch-nosed grins to shame.