A few minor details regarding scene settings were pulled from clips of 6.01, but I haven't revealed any new characters or plot elements or upcoming dialogue. The rest is all my own speculation.
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Hers
They're here.
They'll have her surrounded when they emerge from their hiding places.
The part of her that is still an IRA guerrilla bristles at the thought of walking openly into a trap.
Lamb to the slaughter...
No, not that- a willing sacrifice.
She came of her own free will. She has no intention of trying to escape.
Once upon a time, the number of armed FBI agents and SWAT team members they sent to contain one tiny Irishwoman would have amused her.
Today having a reputation is not a good thing.
At the top of the stairs, she hears him.
"Fi!"
She'd thought it was her mind playing tricks on her, the sound of him yelling her name in desperation, as she crossed the sidewalk and alighted the courthouse steps. It dredges up memories of other times, times when he was frantically calling her, times when she was almost taken away from him, memories of fires, of gun battles and of drowning.
Now she is drowning in sorrow, but she won't let that keep her from finishing what she came to do.
Through the glass doors, she makes eye contact with an agent pacing in the lobby, probably the one she spoke to on the phone.
She dares to turn around and look at him.
"Fi!"
It's just as she feared. He's not here to join her, to tell them the truth. He's here to try to stop her.
"You are just delaying the inevitable. There is no happy ending!"
She turns away from her center of universe and faces the tall man in the gray suit.
"Fiona Glenanne?"
"Yes. I'm here to, ah," the word sticks in her throat, "surrender."
She forces herself not to react as her body longs to when he raises his firearm and she's staring down the barrel of his gun.
The scene explodes into chaos. They swarm from their places, surrounding her, pointing multiple weapons in her direction. One wrong move. . .
She turns around now as ordered, hands behind her head, and cannot help but look at him. This will be the last time they see each other until...
He tilts his head to the side as he stares back, a well-known gesture of exasperation. Only this time, there's anguish in his beautiful blue eyes.
How can I make you understand?
She stares back at him, caught in his gaze and caught in the web of Anson's lies with nowhere left to go except to put an end it.
Then she sees it in his hand. Suddenly, as if he realizes what he's been holding, where the answers must be, he unfolds the crinkled note.
He stands there, reading her letter.
Every word is carved on her heart.
They could carve it into her headstone when she was gone.
She's seen him in pain before, but there was that certain look that he got when she has caused the hurt. Time seems to freeze as he stands there on the curb side. The people around her, surrounding her, they're just part of the background.
Yes, she is causing his pain.
It reminds her of the water running down his face that night as he'd pressed his cold, shivering and rain soaked body against her, it reminds her of the look in his eyes as he'd taken hold of her sandy and bleeding wounded arm and she had cried out.
But that was nothing, a pin prick, a scratch, a flesh wound, compared to the searing agony of watching him destroy himself.
"If I have to plant this thing, if I have to burn them, I will find a way to fix it. I've broken into CIA computers before I can do it again. I will find a way."
Jesse had been a mistake, though one he perpetuated and the price had almost been her life. But Michael, Michael Westen, deliberately burning fellow operatives-?
"How many people will you destroy if you can't?"
The price is too high. The price of her freedom is nothing compared to his soul.
"What do you want me to say, Fi? I'm doing this for you?"
Something sparkles in the sunlight as he looks up at her again, as the vehicles move between them, cars full of people going on with their lives, people not knowing, not caring, that their life together is over.
It reminds her of his expression another time she'd thought their lives were going to end, his face as he tried to push her away one last time to save her in that abandoned hotel, his eyes brimming with unshed tears and regret.
Is that what the light was catching?
Tears on his face?
She watches as the yellow paper flutters gently to the ground, leaving his suddenly lifeless fingers.
I love you, Michael. Forever.
How is it that had they had never gotten around to saying that to one another?
She turns away then, forced to look ahead as the FBI agent takes her by the arm and propels her forward. Her armed escort closes in around her.
She takes one last look at the man who's captivated her, heart, mind, body and soul, fresh tears and denial leaking from those haunted blue orbs.
And then he is gone.
Her wooden wedges clack a staccato beat on the polished stone floor of the courthouse, intermittently drowned out by the sound of a radio-transmitted voice announcing how dangerous she is. She's always prided herself on her reputation for being fierce.
Until a young girl looks at her with frightened eyes and a nervous mother pulls her child back in fear.
"I'm not a monster," she wants to assure her. "I'm trying to stop a monster."
She stands frozen in place as a large brunette in uniform lays hands on her with blue plastic gloves. No one touches her without her consent—not since that black day- and now, today.
She holds herself stiffly, keeping herself aloof from what is happening to her. She refuses to let herself think about the only touch she permits, the only touch she welcomes.
That brought her up short as her fingerprints are being scanned into the computer. She had permitted another man's touch once, not because she desired it, but because he had withheld his.
"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."
How many tears, how many years...? All gone by because he wouldn't let go of his job, couldn't stop being a spy, wouldn't cease his dogged pursuit of the people who burned him, couldn't relinquish his feeling of responsibility to the noble purpose, the nameless, faceless people he served while he ignored the ones right in front of him, the ones who had his back every day.
"I'm free of the people who burned me. I'm clear of the cops. This is the moment I've been waiting for."
How many times did she almost walk away from him, only to come back again because he needed her, because she couldn't say 'no' to her heart?
And yet, how many times had he pushed her away? After all they had been through, how could he let her go without a fight? Had she meant so little to him?
"You're too worried about your own future for there to be one for us."'
How many days, in how many ways, had she longed for him to put her first?
Until the day it happened.
"There is no line when it comes to you!"
Until the slight sound of the handcuffs being closed penetrated her consciousness.
Until the tearful face and the loving embrace of the moment before evaporated and she realized just what lengths he was willing to go because she was the most important thing in his world.
"I'm sorry, Fiona."
Be careful what you wish for…
She sits in the hard chair, wrists shackled to a metal bar on the table. No amount of dislocating her shoulder is going to get her out of this chair. It had been a long walk down the hall, surrounded by FBI agents and SWAT teams. The memory of the little girl's face still cuts her.
She's been searched, photographed, finger-printed and booked. Soon, someone would come to interrogate her. Soon, she will be able to do what she came here to do.
She wonders if this is what had happened to him when the FBI arrested him after he'd stopped Simon from killing Management. She wonders if someone will come and take her from the FBI's care and lock her away into a dark hole as they had done to him. Could Anson still reach that far?
Or would they get the chance? Would the British, whose consulate she'd blown a hole in, come and claim her at long last? Carry her back to England and lock her away forever before he could-
She swallows thickly and tries to push away her last memory of him, of their time together, not daring to think of when or if she'll see him again. She had to do it. She had to! She couldn't watch him destroy himself over her anymore.
No, she thought defiantly. When the CIA had taken him after their last stand against Vaughn, she'd fought against thinking the worst. She would do so now as well.
Maybe she could end up as cell mates with Vaughn, she ponders briefly. The slight smile thinking on the unlikely event brings to her countenance is strangely out of place under the circumstances. She owes Vaughn Anderson some quality time with her knuckles for what the dark man had done.
She remembers when he had returned from his weeks of imprisonment, his distressed embrace and the feeling of being momentarily frightened as he shivered in her arms. Then he was back, back to the business of stopping them from hurting anyone else.
"He's going to hurt more people. A lot more people."
How many times had she gotten angry with him? She'd been so frustrated, though it included equal parts fear and loneliness, when he would insist on leaving her behind.
She even said it to him once, when he had returned home for a brief moment a few months into the manhunt for what turned out to be Anson's organization. She had been almost passed out, bruised and bloodied and stinking of spilt liquor, all the results of having to rescue Sam on a job that had gone completely sideways.
Guilt washes over her briefly. He'd tried to tell her, tried to tell anyone who would listen that it wasn't over. Perhaps if she had listened to him then- but she had wanted it to be over, no, needed it to be over, so very badly. Well, now it was.
When he'd had to leave again the very next morning, she'd wished aloud that he knew what it felt like to be the one left behind. So often, it had felt like Ireland all over again.
She puts her head down on her arms. Now she is hurting him to defend people she doesn't know and would probably never know.
Behind her closed eyes, the image returns. His face is a mask of sorrow, his eyes damp as he shakes his head in denial.
"We start down that road, we can't come back and I'll lose you and I can't lose you."
The words she had longed to hear. And now he knew her pain. And she knew his.
…Because you just might get it.
A/N: Hoping to have this finished by Thursday (fingers and toes crossed). Thanks to everyone who favorites, alerts and reviews! It is ALWAYS appreciated. Thanks to amazing Amanda for the quick BETA and to equally awesome Purdy's Pal and the utterly incredible DaisyDay for reading thru and much love to the PCC. Thanks again to Amanda for all the awesome spoilers that inspired this piece!