A/N: This piece opens near the end of 5.09 Eye for an Eye and covers the events, including a few from the previous chapter of "Hard Out-Hers," from Michael's POV. The "Theirs" chapter will be based on 5.11 Better Halves, which I am going to try to get out to coincide with the #BurnerClub rewatch in two weeks.

Hope everyone in #BurnerLand is safe and doing well. More time to read #BurnNotice #Fanficion

~ooooooooo~

Sitting at the bar of Carlito's, one of the semi-official meeting places of Team Westen, Michael's attention was split between monitoring the conversation taking place around him while they were wrapping up their latest adventure in helping the desperate and downtrodden of Miami and ensuring his façade of polite interest covered his internal strategizing on how best to move forward with interrogating his prisoner.

Dan Tesmond's meeting with the Board at HLX had gone better than one would anticipate when the former company founder returns from a seven year absence as a convicted drug dealer in a Chilean prison to proclaim his innocence and his other colleague's extreme guilt… something to feel good about.

James Forte was facing trial and looking at five to ten for conspiracy… something to feel very good about.

James stiffing Jesse's firm for the fee for the security gig was more than a minor annoyance in Mr Porter's opinion, but not something really on his radar and sort of to be expected.

Lucian Balan was still in their custody… Christian Pavel, the man he'd built the bomb for and who had apparently attempted to frame him for murder, had not shown up to rescue his friend as he'd predicted.

Not yet anyway… They'd spent the first three days watching their captive clockmaker 24-7 on-site, taking shifts to sleep, and later when he'd been needed elsewhere to raise the threat level on Forte, they had added some of Fiona's specialty to ensure security when only one of them was on guard duty.

After letting the old man stew for a few days without any contact with his kidnappers or extra carrots, hopefully worrying about his daughter's fate and the Florida weather would have him ready to talk today…

Their boarder for the last five days would finally be taking his leave of them. Not sharing the bathroom anymore was a really good thing… The ex-agent had shared his space with many a client before, but Dan being there had been both welcome and yet troubling in ways he still couldn't quite fully grasp.

Shrugging off the cognitive dissonance with practiced ease, Michael was internally relieved by Mr Porter's departure, which signaled that this gathering was finally breaking up because he had places to be…

"I want to thank you guys for everything and Sadie wants to thank you too…" The dark haired man carefully observed her profile as Fiona's mouth dropped open at their former guest's statement. "No... we're just talking… getting reacquainted. It's never going to be how it was, but it's a start," Dan declared.

"You guys have a second chance..." The Irishwoman smiled her encouragement, but there was another feeling lingering behind that expression that Michael couldn't readily identity, which was nothing unusual when it came to his relationship with the woman who had gone from ex-girlfriend to live-in lover recently.

"Thanks again…" the hirsute man they'd helped repeated before turning away.

As the one-time burned spy had watched Dan Tesmond walk away from them toward an uncertain but certainly more hopeful future than the bearded man had had in recent years, Michael was still not sure what to do with all the emotions that the parallels to the other man's situation had kept stirring within him.

He'd understood immediately why Fiona had convinced Jesse to aid him instead of James, after Sadie had initially hired the bald man's firm, since the double dealing executive had so thoroughly wronged his previous business partner. Even though he'd had his company taken, had been framed and imprisoned and had his love stolen, somehow Dan had managed to overcome that myriad of massive obstacles.

It sounded exactly like something he'd do… Exactly what he'd been doing over the last five years… with a few more internationally relevant consequences but the same people assisting him in his quest too…

"I hope he makes the most of it…" the redhead continued to focus Mr Tesmond's retreating back as he exited the restaurant and headed out onto the street in front of Carlito's.

"He escaped prison and traveled a few thousand miles to get her back. That should count for something."

"Grand gestures are great…" Her gaze dropped to the polished surface of the bar and her volume too, as though she didn't want to be overheard. "Sometimes I think it's the day to day stuff that's the hard work…"

He watched her out of the corner of his eye. "You know who I am, Fi. I'm not—"

"Yeah, I know… " She cut him off, something in her voice finally causing him to look at his girlfriend full in the face. "And I know that you and Sam have a Romanian bomb maker to break, so talk later."

The covert operative sat there, watching the petite woman navigate her way between the patrons of their favorite watering hole, his attention gravitating between the swing of Fiona's bare arms and the sway of her hips under her garment. She was absolutely right of course… He had a bomb maker to break…

So why the hell was he still sitting there with a barely passable version of the first expression of banal affability of the unremarkable man they were taught at the Farm back in the day plastered on his face?

"Another iced tea?"

He nodded numbly at the bartender, whose quizzical expression seemed to indicate that he was doing a poor job keeping his own facial features appropriately neutral, unable to resolve the contradiction of his urgent need to go on to his next assignment and his seeming inability to do so.

There's a risk in being too obsessed with counter-surveillance. Spend your life paranoid, always looking for threats and it makes it easy for someone to find them for you. Pros call it "seeing ghosts".

Michael fought the urge to get up from his seat and put his back to the wall immediately behind him. Quickly surveying the patrons, he found no immediate threats, but that didn't mean there weren't any.

Fiona leaving meant the C-4 and her Walther had gone with her, but he still had his backup gun in his ankle holster and plenty of other hardware in the Charger. His senses were hyper sensitive, the overhead lights, the noise of the patrons, the smells of the food and booze, even the taste of his tea…

Was there something in the tea…? He pushed the beverage away, his skin prickly and uncomfortable.

The highly trained agent continued to search the room for signs of danger, but in his head he was replaying his last conversation with Lt. Ethan Reed, former Army sniper and soon to be CIA trainee.

"Well, I was wondering. Does it—does it ever get any easier?"

"No, it never does."

"You know, your prep talks are getting worse… Well, can you at least tell me this? If you had it to do all over again, would you?"

"It's who I am. I don't know how to be anybody else."

And it was true… he'd almost said the same to her moments ago before she'd interrupted, derailing any further conversation. He was usually the one avoiding talking about topics he found troublesome… but somehow Fiona telling him to do what he wanted sometimes didn't end all that well…

"If that's what you want… I'll be with you… I'll be with you."

Michael ran his hand over the lower part of his face and forced himself to stop grinding his teeth. Not going there… It was time to go, so why was he still sitting here? His eyes expertly swept the room again, cataloging the people and the details, searching for whatever was setting off his finely-toned paranoia.

"Again with the people that burned you…? Michael, you were there. We broke them into pieces. We ground them into dust. It's over. You won. Move on."

When you're running an official operation your mission is over when your superiors say it is. Documents are locked away to a basement vault and you walk away. When you're investigating events from your own life, it's harder to turn the page. Even if you've read a file ten times, it might still hold a secret…

It wasn't that nagging suspicion that it wasn't over, which his current circumstances of being framed for a homicide he hadn't committed seemed to indicate he had sadly been right and that he might have been premature in giving in to wanting to put the burned years behind him and trying to move on with his life.

There no greater satisfaction than that moment you get the answers you're looking for and nothing is harder to take than having those answers forever taken away.

"I had a chance to finally get some answers, make sense of the last four years and that chance ended up in a body bag."

"I'm sorry, man, but if you wanted tidy endings and easy answer, you picked the wrong job. He's gone."

It wasn't the nightmares that had plagued him since returning from Venezuela and beyond, though those certainly had not been pleasant… Post operation paranoia isn't something you can control. It's with you always: when you're working, when you're relaxing – even sleep is no escape… but what he had unintentionally done to Fiona that morning as she'd knelt by his side to wake him had truly scared him.

"I don't think it's healthy to keep files on the people who ruined your life: Vaughn… Carla… Management…. They don't deserve a place in your head or your file cabinet."

It wasn't the mistakes he was making in the field, nearly getting an FBI agent killed, practically letting a teenage hacker take him out of the game, or jeopardizing Sam's life with a poorly planned mission…

"You are taking big risks, Michael… putting Sam in danger, getting involved in the CIA investigation that could lead right back to you… all of it!"

It wasn't the fact that Agent Pearce was breathing down his neck, getting closer every day it seemed to discovering that he had been there, holding Max as the breath left his body for the last time, even if that certainly was a primary concern of his. Continually lying to his new handler was bad enough. Someone had gone to a lot of intense effort to make him appear guilty and if he didn't find the actual assassin and clear his name, Michael had no illusions about his chances of not spending the rest of his life in prison.

"Mike, this is starting to seem personal."

"It's been personal since Max bled out in my arms… since he told me to say goodbye to his wife."

Sorrow over the murder of the man, who had not only been his Agency contact but also had quickly been becoming a friend, momentarily pushed aside his search for the source of his unsettled feeling. The spy allowed himself a moment to grieve for the loss of Max Grant both personally as well as professionally.

"Michael Westen, soon to be reinstated agent of the CIA. How does that sound?"

"It's a new job, Fi, but it's not a new life. I like my life and I want to live it with you. Here."

And as he sat at the bar like he had hundreds of times since being stranded in Miami, Michael felt strangely disconnected and alienated from his surroundings... He could feel new life he had been in the process of building, the one where he could have it both ways, the one where his gun dealing bomb making girlfriend and his employers could co-exist, could feel everything he'd fought for slipping away…

"Your obsession with this is starting to wear on me—on us. Now I want a real answer. Did Max buy your theory on loose ends?"

But even after Fiona had finally admitted there was the possibility the people who had burned him were involved in Max's murder, that maybe they weren't all dead or in jail, the turmoil caused by the investigation continued to intrude into their lives…

"How'd the job go?"

"Does it matter? You got what you wanted."

But it wasn't just during that debacle of a dinner with his mom and her new beau that Michael had felt the unnerving tension between himself and Fiona nor was it for the first time... Despite his desire to do otherwise, the seemingly endless argument over competing priorities had almost defined their relationship for decades… It had just never bothered him as much before.

"I'm sorry. It's- this guy—"

"Can help you find out who killed Max. I know. Take these. Be safe."

And that same feeling that had plagued him on that seven plus hour drive to Tallahassee to pick up clock maker and secret war criminal Lucian Balan was disconcerting him now, that tone he had heard before.

"You do what you have to do. I understand. I just can't stay here in Miami and watch."

The memory of Fiona Glenanne walking out of the Carlito minutes ago became overlaid with the vision of the redhead walking away from him, leaving the loft and refusing to help him do the job for Tom Strickler.

She'd chosen to leave him then over whom she thought he was becoming, a man she couldn't believe in.

He pushed his untouched tea towards the barkeep before she could ask if he was done, mechanically pushing a ten dollar bill towards the brunette with a nod to keep the change.

When you work as a covert operative, there's no line between who are and what you do. You are who have to be for the operation. It keeps things simple. But when you spend so much time living as someone else, sometimes the people you care about the most begin to wonder who you are.

"Things could have worked out with us, Michael."

"You ran away in the middle of the night for my benefit?"

"I didn't think we were in a relationship, 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."

" This is the moment I've been waiting for, too."

"Don't you pretend this is about us! It's about you! Which is fine… It's—It's just time I did what I need to do… too…"

"I can't stand this! I can't stand watching you keep this secret like it's nothing. I can't stand what you're turning into!"

"I want to know what this means in the end. Who wins? Cuz honestly I feel however this turns out, I lose."

"When it's time, we'll do this together…"

All those years, all those fights, the betrayals, the bittersweet reunions, only to depart again, it had almost ended with them holding hands over a bomb which would have ended it forever and yet they'd survived.

They were alive, together, sharing space as well as their lives, living on a razors edge hand in hand… No more denying… no more hiding… he was who he was and she had been given a front row seat…

And after all that, he could lose her because she'd finally decide he wasn't the man she'd believed in.

Michael Westen stood up so fast, the stool nearly toppled over, and he was out of the bar and behind the wheel of the Charger, heading for Hialeah before that same kind of gut twisting fear that he'd thought he'd left behind when he'd joined the Army at seventeen with the intention of never looking back, the kind he'd spent his life insulating himself from, the vulnerability he hated more than anything could truly take hold.

From the first day of training you're told not to get emotionally involved in operations. But sometimes it happens, and there's nothing you can do.

Racing to meet Sam at the deserted industrial space where they had stashed their prisoner, a different sort of discomfort settled over him. Michael's grip tightened on the white wheel of the black muscle car as he tried to coax a little more speed out of the aged auto.

Only the smartest, nastiest war criminals make it to old age. If you have to capture one of them you can assume they'll have a trick up their sleeve like a concealed weapon, a covert escape route – or a metal floor grate rigged to electrocute any unwanted visitors.

He'd sent his lover to search the bomb maker's apartment. At the time, it had made perfect sense. They were still uncertain if they'd be facing any sort of armed rescue attempt on behalf of their kidnapee and she had the most expertise of all of them to recognize the sophisticated booby traps Lucian was likely to have guarding his lair. The fact that she had come back unscathed with the information he'd needed exactly as planned did not quell the disquiet washing over him now, moving down I-95 towards the 932.

The image of Fiona, dusty and disheveled, lying on the ground in the open outside the military compound they were trying to infiltrate a few weeks ago while three truckloads of heavily armed extremists were targeting her in their scopes merged with the memory of watching helplessly from across the water as Gabriel held a gun to her head and then his stone cold fury as he'd shot one man before exploding the fuel truck morphed into targeting a group of Irish assassins, wanting to mow them all down, but needing them to get on the boat with the bomb they'd planted became holding the sodden and shot redhead who was bleeding all over the blanket and coughing up mouthfuls of murky bay water in the back of the Charger, terror that he could still lose her even after he'd almost lost to her a stray bullet choking him.

Michael clenched his jaw and turned the Charger onto the deserted road that would take him to the ramshackle collection of buildings that had once served a more useful purpose than interrogation, fear of losing Fiona to fate still meshing with the dread that she could choose to walk away from him forever.

It wasn't like he wouldn't deserve it after everything he'd done to her it was a wonder she'd hung around as long as she had and an even greater miracle she was still alive for him to disappoint her again after he had sucked her into one dangerous stunt after another like she didn't get into so much suicidal shit all on her own which didn't matter because just being around him was hazardous enough to her health as it was

The covert operative brought the vehicle to an abrupt stop, slamming his hands against the steering wheel and then mashing his clenched fists to his forehead, filling the empty air with silence curses.

In any kind of emergency situation, an operative's greatest enemy is panic. The spike of adrenaline, the increased blood pressure and the loss of any sense of time can make it impossible to think clearly at exactly the time you need a clear head the most. In those moments it takes all your training, all your will power to pull yourself back from the brink.

He had been an Army Ranger, all the 'quit' beaten out of him decades ago… He had been a highly decorated field agent, serving his country for sixteen years before the burn notice… He had fought the people who burned him for the last five years. He was NOT going to come undone before he was done.

People tend to think spies are motivated by the love of the game desire for adventure or patriotic fervor. The truth though, is that you don't choose a life as a covert operative unless something deeper is going on beneath the surface. Something more personal, something harder to explain and something a lot more painful…

Easing into the concealed spot just outside their makeshift gulag, Michael let out a deep bone weary sigh and shut off the motor. He had the training and the experience to push through this and get the end.

Covert operative is one of the most stressful jobs there is. Like soldiers, ER doctors and astronauts, spies have to schedule extended downtime for decompression. Carry that stress to long…

But that same preparation and knowledge told him in no uncertain terms he was dangerously close to hitting empty. The fact that other people had seen it as well was testament to just how near that line…

We've always known you were a little crazy, but we don't want you going crazy crazy.

Listen, bro, I know you're going through some stuff—But half of you is better than all of most people.

He could do this.

He just needed to focus…. just needed a little more time.

Break the bomb maker.

Find out who framed him.

Get the killer caught.

Bring down the rest who'd burned him.

Fix his relationship with Fiona.

Michael let out a quiet snort as he exited the Charger, waving to Sam and skillfully side stepping the booby traps the IRA-trained guerilla had provided them to make sure their prisoner was secure.

Definitely saving the hardest for last…