Author's Note: This chapter is a flashback that begins in Season 2's finale where Mike and Paige are in the warehouse together.

****FLASHBACK***

Paige crouches beside Mike on the dirty floor. She can't believe she's been such a bitch to him these last few months. Now he's lying here, in pain, and she can't do anything to help. He won't let her drive him to the hospital. She's doesn't blame him. With the way she's been acting...

Nervously, she starts talking about work just to fill the silence. She wants to give him hope that Lina is out there. Hope that something in this string of disasters has gone right.

"...Good. It's better if they believe." He says weakly as he lies on his side facing away from her.

"Believe?" Paige catches the word, and gets that feeling of dread in the pit of her stomach again."Believe what?"

"That she's happy. That she's in a better place. It's better for them."

"You did it…" Paige's voice breaks. "She's dead."

"Paige, no! Don't go." Mike rolls over on his injured side and hisses with the pain but manages to grab her wrist to stop her.

"Tell me the truth!" Paige doesn't know what to believe anymore. How does he keep messing with her head? With her heart.

"You already know…" Mike groans weakly, squeezing his eyes shut in pain. "You know me Paige."

"No, I don't know who you are, Mike. Not anymore-" Paige insists. This cannot be the same innocent wide eyed boy who first arrived on the steps of Graceland who sounded like an encyclopedia of facts and rules when he spoke. She wants him back.

"Yes, you do!" Mike growls, insistently, tired of her claiming she didn't. She knew him better than anyone. She was the only one he couldn't fool. She could see him better than he could see himself sometimes. "You know who I am. You may not like it, but you know me. Just like I know you."

She stares down at him, her jaw set firm and tears brimming in her eyes. But she doesn't run. Doesn't leave. Doesn't yell. So Mike continues talking.

"You were right. About everything, Paige." Mike gasps feebly. "I went under for you. I stayed in there for you. I thought I could, I don't know, protect them? Make it up to you for keeping the place open? Prove to you I cared? God, I don't know what I was thinking. I got so wrapped up in things…"

"What happened to Lina, Mike?" Paige interrupts his rambling to cut straight to the point.

"You already know Paige. Don't make me say it." Mike squeezes his eyes shut and rolls away from her. He wants her to still have that hope, that small glimmer she had when she came in here. He wishes she would just let it go, but it's Paige and she won't.

"No! You have to say it! Dammit, grow some balls and just fucking say it. Tell me Mike! What happened to Lina?" Paige screams at him. She knows. She's always known. Ever since she found that backpack in the garbage, she's known she signed that poor girls death warrant. She just needs to hear the words. She can't live like this anymore.

"Everything that happened to Lina... I knew that if I'd done what you wanted that day... If I'd

taken Lina instead of you… it would have been you. It would have been you getting beaten and raped, and I couldn't handle it. I just snapped." Mike tries to explain, but she just sits there glaring at him. He's still not saying the words. Can't he see how much more painful drawing this out is making it for her?

"I had to protect her. I tried to protect her. I had to get her out of there. And Sulla saw that. He saw how much Lina meant to me. How much you meant to me, Paige... and he killed her. He killed her to punish me. For my disobedience. For my arrogance... and it worked. He doesn't know how well it worked because I didn't just lose Lina, I lost you. I lost any hope of us being together again. Of you trusting me." Mike is nearly in tears himself as well by this point. "Please, Paige-"

"And you burned her." Paige says in a cold accusing voice.

"He told me to clean up the mess-" Mike tries once again to sidestep. To explain. Not to say it in such a harsh way but Paige won't let him.

"So you burned her!" Paige repeats. She just needs him to say the goddamn words.

"I burned her." Mike closes his eyes in defeat.

He's given in.

He's broken.

He's failed.

And now she'll leave him. She'll leave him and that will be the end. All of their past happy memories together will be burned in that fire as well. That's all he'll ever be to her now. The man who burned Lina's body. A moment passes though and he doesn't hear her footsteps leaving. Then another moment. She's still here.

Mike dares to open his eyes. She's sitting beside him, hugging herself tight, silently weeping. Mike pushes himself up, ignoring the pain, to lean in to her. He knows it might scare her off but he can't help it. She is hurting and he needs to reach for her.

"Paige, I swear. I tried. I did everything I could. Sulla-"

"Sulla didn't make you burn that body Mike. He didn't hit you with that crowbar. He didn't lie to me for weeks-" Paige jerks back from his touch, and begins to yell at him. Tears running down her face.

"How could I tell you?" Mike demands, "How could I break your heart after all you'd been through? I promised you. I promised you I'd get her out and I… Paige, you have to believe me, if I could have traded my life for hers, I would have"

She slaps him. There's no thought, no reason behind it. It just happens.

"How can I believe you? You lied. You're a liar. You had the chance to change things, Mike." She accuses him, and he looks at her confused by her logic, rubbing his face calculating in his head why it was that comment out of all of them that got him slapped. "You could have bought Lina, and left me-"

"No." Mike cuts her off harshly.

"I could have handled myself." Paige argues back with him. She sighs and tries to take a different tactic. "Knowing everything you know now. Just admit you were wrong. That you would do things differently."

"I wish I could go back and change a lot of things." Mike says, applying pressure to his side. "Choosing you will never be one of them."

"What would you change?" Mike rolls his eyes at Paige's question. He's bleeding out on the floor here. Now was not the time for him to sit here counting regrets.

"For starters I would have BRIGGS HERE INSTEAD OF YOU!" He yells out in frustration with so much force, that he has to lean over to support his side.

"Well too bad because you're stuck with me! If you really want to get rid of me you'll have to let me drive you to the hospital." She yells at him. He was still being a stubborn obstinate asshole.

"I will get myself there! Dammit Paige, just go! Why did you even come?" Mike groans.

He needs time to think. He can never think with Paige around. Wasn't there some study that proved beautiful women made men stupider? Christ, not the thing to focus on right now. How much blood had he lost?

"I came to apologize! Because I felt horrible for the way I'd been treating you. But now I find out I was right all along. You sent that letter!" Paige yells down at him, not caring how much pain he's in. She won't take it easy on him.

"You were never supposed to get that letter! It was meant for her family." Mike says, staring off to the side. He's exhausted. He's so tired of having this fight with her. There is so many other things he should be focusing on right now. Dwelling on the past, On all the ways he's fucked up, is not helping.

"It had her prints. The handwriting was perfectly crafted. Her own sister-" Paige begins to list off the exquisite detail of the letter. He had to know she'd find it. Why else would he have written it? He was just trying to throw her off his scent. Which he nearly had.

"That was the point, Paige!" Mike cuts her off. His head is pounding and his injury needs medical attention. Her being here has completely derailed his plans and he needs to think. He can't do that with her sitting there yelling at him.

"You're a sociopath… Normal people don't put that much obsession, that level of detail-"

"And that is why you love me!" Mike snaps at her, his own mind somewhere else, working through how he will get away from Sid as he talks. He's only half paying attention to her harping and even less attention to what he's saying, but he continues talking anyways, "Because I'm just as crazy as you!"

"I am nothing like you."

"Oh please. Focused. Obsessive. The attention to detail. The inability to let things go. We are two parts of the same cloth." Mike laughs bitterly. "You've known Lina's been dead for weeks now. You've known the truth, yet you kept digging. Kept obsessing. All that couldn't have been about Lina. Your obsession wasn't about finding her. It was about proving I did it. You have the worst way of showing it of any woman I've met, but you care about me. And it scares the hell out of you."

"Once again you think everything is about you." Paige scoffs at his arrogance.

"No. I think this about you. For some reason you've decided you need to hate me, and you've been looking for reasons to back that up for months now. And guess what, Paige? You've found them. Congratulations. Now can you please just leave?!" Mike insists again. He needs a new plan. Again. Because all of his plans so far have had a spectacular way of blowing up in his face.

Paige is so stunned by his accusation. She doesn't love him. She can't. How could she after what he's done? How could he think she did after the way she'd treated him? And now that the words were out there. Now that he'd said that, he was what? Just giving up? Telling her to go. They are finally talking to each other, finally saying all the unsaid words, and now he's telling her to go? Has she finally pushed him too far and now he's just given up? He lies there, his back to her, and she doesn't know what else to say.

She's stunned.

In a daze she stands up and does the only thing she can.

She walks out of the warehouse, leaving Mike lying on the ground. She doesn't even notice the rain pouring down upon her. It's only once she's sitting in the front seat of her car that the tears begin to pour like the rain on the hood. Sitting in the parked car, she's never felt so lost.