Disclaimer: As always I do not own 24…blah blah blah.
AN: If the disclaimer shows up twice I am sorry I can't figure out why it's doing that it's not on my original document. ANYWAY! Here is the next chapter and THANK YOU FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY HEART TO MY REVIEWERS!! It is greatly appreciated. It would be amazing to get a few more. I am going to do my best to keep this as real as possible and at the same time not sound like every other T&M stories out there. If anyone has any suggestions let me know either through review or PM.
ON WITH THE STORY!
"Okay well since you are the one that left, I think it's only fair you start."
Michelle took a deep breath and looked up at him.
"Fine I'll start."
Michelle looked down at her hands. She had been playing with the bottom edge of her tank top and it was starting to fray. She took a deep breath and looked up at Tony. His face was patient yet expectant.
She looked back down at her hands. They frays on her shirt were getting worse. Then his hands were covering hers.
"Michelle it's okay. This is us talking, nothing changes, remember? No matter what you say, I promise I'll still be here."
Michelle looked up at Tony and he nodded at her in encouragement. She nodded back at him readying herself for her words.
"When you came back from prison, I knew things were going to be difficult and you were going to be different but I never imagined things would be that hard. I wasn't ready for it."
She looked up at him waiting for a sign to go on. He squeezed her hand reassuringly and his eyes looked a little watery. She wondered silently how much he actually remembered through his drunken haze.
Michelle continued.
"I tried to get you to talk to me but the closer I got the harder you pushed me away. The drinking was really hard to deal with. You never drank before then and I knew you were trying to just forget everything but I couldn't help being…"
Michelle stopped talking and just stared at their joined hands.
"Being what? Talk to me 'Chelle."
"Disappointed Tony. I never thought you would be like that. You just sat there and drank away your life. I couldn't sit there and watch it. You wouldn't talk to me, touch me, I could have been completely invisible and it wouldn't have mattered. I thought you didn't love me anymore. I thought that if I left you wouldn't have to work so hard at pushing me away and you would stop drinking. It didn't matter if we were together as long as you were happy and you again. That's all I cared about."
Tony just stared at her. How could she ever think he didn't love her? She was everything that was great and good in his life, without her nothing mattered.
Michelle finally got the courage to look at his face. His heart nearly shattered when he saw her face. She was biting her lip and tears were rolling silently down her cheeks.
"I never wanted to hurt you Tony; when I told you I was leaving you didn't try to stop me. You just opened another beer and turned up the TV. I took it as a sign that me leaving was what you wanted."
He couldn't even speak, he just shook his head back and forth. What upset him the most was that he couldn't remember her telling him she was leaving. He remembered waking up the next morning and her not being there. Her clothes and car were gone and everything just felt empty.
Finally, Tony found his voice.
"Michelle I never wanted you to leave. I didn't mean to push you away. Once I started drinking I couldn't stop. It just made everything that had happened go away. I was so ashamed of myself I didn't know how to talk to you. I didn't want to get close to you and then hurt you again. I couldn't stand hurting you."
"Tony I need you to honestly answer a question for me."
"Anything."
She bit her lip and looked down at their hands and squeezed his lightly. Michelle looked back up at him.
"Did you…did you ever wish you hadn't saved me?"
"No, and don't you ever think that way. The only thing I regretted was getting caught. I didn't care what happened to me, if I had to spend the rest of my life in prison, I would never change what I did. If you had died or even gotten seriously hurt I would never have forgiven myself. The only way I can make it through life is, knowing that even if you aren't with me, somewhere out there you're alive."
Michelle nodded slowly.
"I mean it Michelle, I don't want you to ever think that again. You are the most precious thing in the world to me. I would do it all over again if I had to."
"But if I had never gone into that Hotel, if I had followed protocol and waited, then I would never have gotten taken and all those agents who followed me in there would have lived."
"Stop. That's the last I want to hear of that Michelle. You did the right thing, those agents knew the risk of going into that building just like you did, and they accepted them. You can't hold yourself responsible for that. You didn't kill them Stephen Saunders did. There was no way you could have known about his plan to take you, and if he really had wanted you, he would have found another way to get you. It happened and it's over. You survived and now we are here together and nothing that happened to us was your fault. Everything you did was right."
She let go of his hand to wipe her face with the back of her hand.
"And the drinking? Why did it start? What made you do it in the first place?"
"I would love to tell you that I know exactly what made me drink and exactly why I continued it but the truth is I can't. All I know is that there were so many feelings inside me it was ripping me apart and I didn't want it to rip you apart too. It wasn't because I didn't love you or because I had to be drunk to be near you, I just couldn't handle my own feelings and everything that had happened and that was the only band-aid I could find."
It was Tony's turn to look away. He kept his eyes on the floor as tears ran down his face. A few tears fell on their joined hands.
"You're supposed to cry on my shoulder not my hands."
He laughed a little and she could hear the sob he was holding back try to break through. She closed the distance between them a little more.
"Look at me."
Tony shook his head.
"How can I?"
"Well first you turn your head toward me and then normally your eyes would meet mine."
He took a deep breath and looked at her.
"That wasn't so hard was it?"
"You have no idea."
"You have no reason to be ashamed of anything. The things you went through to save me and the stupid trial and prison, I have no idea what that was like for you. I know it was hard and frightening but until I saw you at home I had no idea the kind of effect it had on you. I don't blame you for anything, I never did. I just wanted you to be happy. When I saw you at CTU today I was stunned to say the least. I was so angry that you were there and that you were Tony again I wanted to hit you. The truth is that even though I was angry I was relieved because you were back, I didn't have to worry anymore."
"You probably should have hit me."
Michelle looked at his serious face and laughed hard and loud.
"Tony I couldn't hit you when you were drinking away your life, how on earth would I ever be capable of hitting you when you were finally back to normal? I left hoping that the next time I saw you, you would be Tony again and I got what I wanted. I think it would have been selfish of me to hit you for being you. It just took me until you were going to leave to figure that out."
"Are you still mad at me?"
"No, as long as you promise me something."
"What?"
"No more drinking. None. To help I won't drink either. From this second on we are alcohol free."
"That sounds good to me. I won't drink ever again, I promise."
"Well now that that's settled we can move on to the next topic."
Tony looked at her quizzically.
"Which would be?"
"Communication."
"Ah, I was wondering if we would reach this topic. I take it this stems back to the day you were kidnapped?"
"I understand that Jack wanted you to keep the mission to yourself but what I can't handle is that you walked around planning everything with him and Gael for a month and I never noticed you were keeping something from me."
"Michelle there was nothing I could do; I argued with Jack about it for hours and got nowhere. He didn't want anyone else in on it. I told him you would figure it out and he told me to find a way to keep it secret. I hated every second of it."
"Why couldn't you just tell me you were working on something with him and that it was a need to know, highly classified case?"
"Would you have stopped asking questions?"
"Work and home separate Tony. I would have let it go. I was your second in command if I had needed to know the details I would have been in on the mission."
"Well I'll keep that in mind next time."
"Next time? There will be no more next times, we are done with that place right?"
"Yes we are, I was just acknowledging what you said. What else?"
"The other communication problems, we have to talk about what is eating at us, maybe if you had been able to talk to me you wouldn't have had to drink so much. You can't worry about whether or not I can handle what is upsetting you, we are in this together, that's what a marriage is."
"I know and I'm sorry. You need to talk to me too. I know I was hard to reach but you have to tell me that you're leaving because you think that's what I want. Otherwise how am I supposed to stop you?"
"Okay I'm sorry too. So that's solved."
"Yeah."
Tony started scratching his face. He knew there was still one more thing eating away at Michelle and it was only a matter of minutes before she brought it up.
"Tony?"
"Yeah?"
"Did you sleep with that woman?"
AN: Okay so that's all I've got for now. I hope you guys liked it and I addressed the problems in a way you think they might have. Please Review and let me know what you think. Constructive Criticism is also welcome. I probably wont update until Sunday or Monday. Thanks for Reading!! I hope you enjoyed it!!
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