Sara (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
scripted_sra) wrote2012-08-27 05:50 pm
scripted_sra) wrote2012-08-27 05:50 pm
Burn Notice | Between Past and Present Tense | PG-13 | Michael/Fiona (Part V of VII)
Title: Between Past and Present Tense (V/VII)
Fandom: Burn Notice
Rating: PG-13 (for this part)
Pairing: Michael/Fiona (for this part)
Warnings: For this part: None.
Summary: "But in this career path, relationships and self-identity are not prioritized. While spies are trained to be able to ingratiate themselves with others, fooling strangers is a long way from the honesty and communication that people in relationships tend to expect. Combined with an emotionally stunted bedrock, navigating these waters can be ill-advised at best and downright dangerous at worst, often with little hope of success." And yet, despite everything, Michael Westen finds himself trying anyway.
Word Count: 3,585 (for this part)
Disclaimer: All copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. This work is not created for profit and constitutes fair use.
A/N: See the masterpost for the full information.
V.
Michael was pretty sure that he hated Michael McBride.
McBride was the one who’d met Fiona. McBride was the one she identified with, the one she trusted. McBride was the one she was obviously falling in love with.
McBride was not the one falling, hard and fast, right back.
---
“That was fun,” Fi was saying, grinning widely, as they made their way inside the run-down little apartment he’d been using for this operation. “All those pretty little guns going to a much better home…”
He snorted, but truth be told, he enjoyed her enthusiasm. “Couldn’t have done it without you,” he said.
“Obviously,” she said, smirking, and opened his refrigerator. Tsking, she said, “You have exactly four eggs and two peppers in here.”
“There should be some yogurt, too,” he said, joining her at the fridge door. “Yeah, see? Right there. And there’s some cheese, and even a little milk. It’s practically fully stocked.”
She sent him a look. “We have got to expand your horizons.”
“Hey, I’m a decent cook,” he said.
Laughing, she said, “Oh? Prove it, McBride.”
Ignoring the stab in his gut, he grinned at her, and set about making her an omelet.
---
For all the curiosity and glamour surrounding spies and sex, Michael was fairly confident that it didn’t happen as often as most people assumed.
Seduction was one thing, the art of getting people to the point where they might want to sleep with you—or help you out in other ways, which was often more valuable—but actually having sex was a completely different thing, and it had never been one of his preferred tactics. Too much was up in the air. Too much could go wrong. It left you vulnerable, and vulnerability wasn’t useful in this business.
It could also complicate matters—though, granted, in this particular situation, he’d already complicated it. When he looked at Fiona, he didn’t think asset, he thought friend, and that was dangerous, not least because she didn’t even know his real name.
“Beautiful,” Fi said, voice breathy and light, as she put the finishing touches on the bomb she was assembling.
He would’ve agreed, because he could appreciate a job well done, and Fiona was nothing if not good at what she did. At the moment, however, he was more caught up in the way she looked when she was truly concentrating on something, from the laser-light focus of her eyes, to the way her tongue peeked out of her mouth, to the way every part of her seemed to be humming.
“Yes,” he said, belatedly, and she looked up, gracing him with a brilliant smile.
This was bad on any number of levels. This wasn’t like Larry, or Sam, or even Samantha. Fiona thought he was Michael McBride, born in Kilkenny, with a past very similar to her own.
“Are you talking about me or the bomb?” she asked, amused. “Not that you’re wrong on either count.”
“You do excellent work,” he said, in lieu of answering, and she snorted.
“I know,” she said, leaning in. “But I happen to think it’s not just my work you’re admiring.”
He played dumb. “I didn’t mean to—”
“How are you this oblivious?” she demanded, and pulled him in for a rough kiss.
He pulled away, a beat too late, and said, “I’m not sure we should—”
“Oh,” she said. “Not oblivious. It’s something else. Do you have a girlfriend?” He was about to run with the lie, because it gave him a perfect out, when she laughed. “What am I saying? Of course you don’t have a girlfriend. You don’t act like it. So what’s the problem, McBride? Don’t think you can keep up with me?” She smirked. “You probably can’t, but that’s no reason not to try.”
“We work together,” he said. “It could get messy.”
“Yeah, but getting messy can be fun,” she said, grinning irresistibly.
“Not if it results in you shooting me,” he said, and she laughed.
“So don’t give me a reason to shoot you,” she said innocently. “Simple.”
“That was reassuring.”
“You were expecting reassuring?”
“Momentary lapse,” he said, and she sidled closer to him.
“So how about we plant this little work of art,” she murmured in his ear, “watch it go boom, finish our job, and then come back here and celebrate a job well done?”
Everything in his head was telling him it was a bad idea. He wasn’t in control of this situation. This wasn’t calculated. It wouldn’t gain him a damn thing.
“It’s a date,” he said instead, and kissed her again, pulling her close.
---
Getting his cover blown was never fun. Getting his cover blown with Fi, by Sam of all people, was nigh unbearable.
“Westen?” she said, hurt and betrayal written all over her face. “Who the hell are you?”
“I—I’m CIA,” he said, and Sam looked between them, apparently discerning everything with a glance, because he left them to it without a word.
She made a low noise, almost a growl, and she said, “You’ve been lying to me all this time. About everything? For what? So I would help you and your government in some stupid little power play?”
“It’s not like that, Fi,” he said, and she physically stepped away from him at the use of her name, almost like he’d slapped her.
“Don’t you say another word to me,” she said. “Don’t you fucking look at me again, or I will—I don’t know what I’ll do. I never want to see your face again.”
“Let me—”
“No.” Her eyes were full of cold fury, her jaw firmly clenched. “You go straight to hell.”
---
“Fi, it’s me,” he called from her kitchen, the second he heard the door open.
She appeared almost instantly, gun drawn and trained on him. “I told you to stay the hell away from me, Michael Westen,” she snapped, and he held up his hands. “Get out.”
“I just want to talk.”
“Maybe I don’t want to listen.”
“Fi—”
“Don’t.” She narrowed his eyes. “What could you possibly have to say to me?”
“I’m sorry,” he said, and the words felt foreign and awkward in his mouth, not to mention hollow. “I am. Not everything—the way we work together, that’s real. The way I feel about you—”
“Leave me alone,” she interrupted, tone sharp.
“Just let me explain.”
She snorted. “Why should I?”
“Because I—I still care about you!”
“And why the hell should I believe you?”
“Dammit, Fi,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “It’s complicated, okay? But—”
She snorted. “That’s where you’re wrong, Michael. It’s not complicated. It’s really fucking simple. You lied to me. How do you ever expect me to trust you again?”
“I haven’t let you down until now,” he said. “You can trust me. Let me prove it to you.”
“Prove it to me? How do you think you’ll do that?”
“Anyway you want,” he said, before he could think about it for too long.
She eyed him for what felt like eons. Then, slowly, she lowered her weapon. “So help me God, Michael,” she said, giving him a warning look, “if you make me regret this, I will shoot you.”
He nodded, knowing she was deadly serious.
“And I’m not letting you off easy,” she continued. “You want to prove it to me? I’m making you work for it. You’d better deliver.”
“I will,” he said.
“Good. Let’s start now,” she said, sitting down at her kitchen table. “Tell me one completely true thing about you.” She set the gun down, and he eyed it. Rolling her eyes, she unloaded it and began to strip it, almost idly.
“What kind of thing?” he asked, sitting down next to her.
“Something not everybody knows,” she said. “I don’t care about your favorite color. I want to know about you, about the man I’ve—the man I’ve been spending so much time with. We’re starting over.”
He thought for a moment, not sure where or how to begin, but also willing to try.
“I joined the Army at seventeen,” he said, eventually, haltingly, and she nodded, now idly inspecting each component of the gun.
“That’s a start,” she said, and glanced up at him, meeting his eyes. “Tell me more about what you do.”
“A lot of it’s classified,” he said, looking apologetic, and she narrowed her eyes.
“I’m sure that’s convenient for you, isn’t it?” she asked. “You get to hide behind ‘it’s classified’ and no one ever gets to know who the hell you really are, is that it?” She shook her head. “I don’t want launch sequences, M—Westen. I want to know my opinion of you wasn’t so far off base, but as of now, I’ve got no reason to believe that. Give me a reason.” She held his gaze.
“I serve my country,” he said then, after a pause. “In a way not many people can. It’s not about me. It’s about everyone. It’s important work. It helps people.”
“That’s why you do what you do?” she asked. “Simple patriotism?”
“It’s not patriotism,” he corrected. “Or at least not just that. It’s feeling like you’re…like you’re a part of something bigger, something that connects you to…” he trailed off, not sure how to finish the sentence.
She didn’t reply, or demand that he finish, apparently focused on reassembling the gun in front of her. Michael knew her well enough to know that she could do it in her sleep. She was thinking.
“I understand that,” she said, finally, and looked up again. “You need to know that there’s something more than just…you. That there’s a point to the world. That things happen for a reason.”
He swallowed, and tried to say yes, but the most he could manage was a nod.
---
“You knew that was going to happen!” she shouted, voice carrying, and he winced.
“Fi,” he muttered, and the muscles in her jaw clenched, but when she spoke again, her voice was much more subdued.
“You knew it was going to happen, Michael, didn’t you? The plan to get us out of there, that couldn’t have been set up on a whim—”
“I had an idea that it could’ve happened,” he admitted. “I didn’t know for sure.”
“And you didn’t tell me,” she spit out the words, eyes blazing.
“It was—”
“If you tell me ‘need to know’, Michael, I swear to God, you’re going to regret it.”
“What do you want me to say, Fi?” he demanded. “That’s the job. I can’t tell you everything.”
“It’s not that you can’t, Michael,” she said. “It’s that you won’t. You could have given me a heads up, but you didn’t, because you keep everything bottled up inside that impossible head of yours, and you expect me to trust you anyway.”
“You have to understand—”
“Oh, I understand,” she said. “You have a perfect out, any time you get uncomfortable. You hide behind ‘need to know’ and ‘it’s classified’ and you say that’s the job and expect me to accept it.” She snorted, shaking her head. “Well, you know what? I don’t accept it, Michael. I need more from you than just the bits and pieces you’re willing to give.”
“I can’t share everything!” he exclaimed, frustrated, willing her to understand. “Maybe, maybe I’ve been overcautious—”
“Maybe?”
“—but it’s for your own safety! In some situations, the less you know, the better!”
“Let’s get one thing clear right now, Michael Westen,” she snarled, and pressed right up against him. “That will never be true, do you understand me? If you trust me, then you trust me, but if you don’t, then don’t waste my time!”
“Of course I trust you!”
“Prove it!”
“I have!”
She laughed, a coarse, bitter sound. “The sad thing is that you really believe that, don’t you?”
And suddenly, all the anger and frustration fell away, and he felt tired, and utterly drained. “You’re important to me, Fi,” he said. “I trust you. I do.”
She slapped him, making his ears ring, and then she kissed him, hard and desperate, and when they broke apart she whispered, “I don’t know if that’s true.”
He kissed her back, trying to make it clear that it was, and not sure that he succeeded.
---
“Sometimes I wonder,” Fi said, and stopped.
When she didn’t continue after a few seconds, Michael looked up from the listening device he was making. “Sometimes you wonder?”
“If most of the choices I’ve made are…” she said, and shook her head. “I don’t know. Decent, I suppose.”
Michael didn’t know what to say to that. He opened his mouth and shut it again, watching her face.
She merely smiled at him. “You don’t have to be reassuring, Michael,” she said. “I’ve done some things I’m not proud of, associated with people whose tactics are abhorrent, and I’ll always live with that. I just hope that those things haven’t been in…vain. That there’s enough to balance it out.”
“There is,” he said, instantly, and with conviction. Of that he was sure.
She smiled again, this time with a touch of sadness. “You sound so sure.”
“There are a few things I’m sure about,” he said. “Not a lot, but this is one of them.”
“What else are you sure about?” she asked, curious, her gaze just this side of piercing.
“My job,” he said. “That it’s a good thing, in the end.”
She didn’t say anything for a moment, then raised an eyebrow. “Is that it? Tell me you’re sure about more than just this and your job, Michael.”
He shrugged. “Is certainty that important?”
“Not with you, I suppose,” she said, snorting, and it made his hackles rise.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Fi snorted again. “It means just what you think it means. You live your life in these vague little grey areas, Michael, and you expect everyone else to be as comfortable with them as you are. Some of us prefer a little more reliability.”
“I’m reliable,” he said, firmly. “Where it counts.”
“Perhaps,” she said.
“I am,” he insisted, and she sighed.
“I don’t want to fight right now, Michael—I know, it’s a shock.” She said this dryly, and it surprised a soft snort from him. “I do trust you. I’ve trusted you from the beginning, and I hated myself for it, because you hadn’t really earned it, and then when I found out about, well—it’s very annoying when part of your own mind is telling you I told you so.” She shook her head. “And I even forgave you, which I probably shouldn’t have, and I trust you again, and part of me is waiting for the next stone to fall, because part of me is convinced that I’ll regret it again.”
He watched her, quietly, trying to conjure up the words to reassure her, but only coming up empty. “I—Fi—”
“You’re so bad at this,” she said, laughing.
“I’m less bad at it with you,” he offered, and she smiled, not quite happily, but not nearly as sadly as before.
---
He knew, even before he got the communication from his handler, that his cover was in trouble.
He’d spent much longer in Ireland than intended, and it hadn’t been built to last, the McBride cover. He knew, eventually, it’d catch up to him.
As it was, some of his old associates had blown into town, and now he was in a precarious position. If the people he and Fi had been working with found out about this, it wouldn’t just be his ass on the line. Fi would be in danger too.
The CIA was insisting that he be pulled out. For now, he was resisting, but he also knew that he couldn’t do that forever.
He sighed heavily, watching as Fi slept next to him, and wondered how the hell he was going to tell her.
---
This was it. He had to say goodbye. He’d be leaving tonight, and there was no way to avoid it, not any longer. He couldn’t put it off anymore.
“Fi,” he said. “There’s something I have to tell you.”
She looked up, her expression curious, and when he didn’t say anything else for a long moment, she said, “What is it, Michael?”
I have to leave, he said in his mind, and tried to get his mouth to form the words. “I—” He faltered, annoyed at himself, and she arched an eyebrow.
“This must be serious,” she said. “You only ever hesitate this much when you’re trying to be honest about something.”
He rolled his eyes. “I’m not that bad.”
“Okay.” She looked amused, but unconvinced.
“It’s just—I don’t know how you’ll react,” he said, slowly.
“That makes me think it’s bad news,” she said, looking at him shrewdly. “What is it?”
“I—” he started, and he was sure the next words out of his mouth would be have to leave, but instead he found himself blurting, “I’m bisexual.”
She blinked, looking surprised, and then said, “Huh.” Shrugging, she gave him a reassuring smile. “Well, for the record, I don’t care. One of my brothers is gay.”
Distracted, he gave her surprised look. “I didn’t know that.”
“It’s a bit of an open secret,” she said.
He sat down next to her, considering that, and it made him realize something. “You know, you’re the first person I’ve told.”
It was true, in a strange way. With Andre, Larry, and Sam, it’d just been unspoken, and he never mentioned it to Samantha.
She smiled warmly at him, leaning in and kissing him, and when they broke apart, he looked into her eyes. “Fi,” he said again, because he really ought to tell her what he’d meant to tell her from the beginning, that he was leaving, that he had no idea when he’d seen her again, if ever.
She just kept looking at him, expectant and curious, and all he could do was shake his head and kiss her again, passionate and searching, trying to pour into it everything that he couldn’t say.
---
Leaving Fi behind in Ireland was one of the hardest things he’d ever done.
It almost wasn’t a surprise when, years later, she came crashing headfirst back into his life.
After all, that was Fi.
v.
“Fi,” Michael had started, saying her name in an odd tone—for the second time that night. The first time had resulted in a new piece of information about him, which, in hindsight, really should have made her suspicious, but his revelation had distracted her. It’d played so neatly into that little bit of hope she still held onto, so she’d given him yet another expectant, curious look.
This time, he hadn’t continued with anything more. He’d merely shaken his head and kissed her passionately, almost desperately, like he was trying to convey every single emotion he felt but couldn’t vocalize.
She’d given into it, like she always did with Michael, because being with him was like falling rapidly into darkness, exciting and unknown. You couldn’t see three inches in front of you, nothing was certain, and you didn’t know how to get out—not that you wanted to, when it came right down to it.
She didn’t actually put it all together until a few days after she’d woken up and found him gone. The first night had been consumed by worry, the second night had been consumed by fury, and then, finally, the third night had been resigned acceptance, and that was when she’d started thinking about it.
The whole thing had been a copout. He hadn’t even been able to say goodbye, the bastard.
She wasn’t sure why that surprised her. Every little piece of Michael, every little bit, she’d had to draw out of him, to separate him from the McBride character she’d met him as.
She could admit to herself, but only to herself, that in some ways, she preferred McBride.
He’d been easier to get along with, that was for certain, but even as she thought it she knew it wasn’t really true. He’d been fun, yes, but superficial, a mere wisp of the true person underneath, and even if it took work getting to know that true person…
Fiona was pretty sure it was worth it. This did not mean she wouldn’t be kicking Michael’s arse the next time she saw him.
Of that she was sure. There was damn well going to be a next time.
---
Clearly, someone had beaten her to kicking Michael’s arse. They’d done a pretty decent job of it, too.
She sunk into in the chair next to the bed and eyed him for a few minutes, watched the way his chest rose and fell in his sleep, somewhat ragged.
That was so like Michael, she thought, to not even be peaceful while sleeping. Though, she supposed, with those injuries, she couldn’t really blame him.
Glancing out the window, at the bright Miami scene before her, she shook her head. She was here, Michael was here, something dreadful had happened to him, and she had no idea what she was thinking, or what would happen this time.
Shrugging, she kicked at him, almost absently, trying to wake him up.
He sat up like a shot, startled eyes quickly focusing on her.
It was time to find out.
Part IV | Masterpost | Part VI
Fandom: Burn Notice
Rating: PG-13 (for this part)
Pairing: Michael/Fiona (for this part)
Warnings: For this part: None.
Summary: "But in this career path, relationships and self-identity are not prioritized. While spies are trained to be able to ingratiate themselves with others, fooling strangers is a long way from the honesty and communication that people in relationships tend to expect. Combined with an emotionally stunted bedrock, navigating these waters can be ill-advised at best and downright dangerous at worst, often with little hope of success." And yet, despite everything, Michael Westen finds himself trying anyway.
Word Count: 3,585 (for this part)
Disclaimer: All copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. This work is not created for profit and constitutes fair use.
A/N: See the masterpost for the full information.
Michael was pretty sure that he hated Michael McBride.
McBride was the one who’d met Fiona. McBride was the one she identified with, the one she trusted. McBride was the one she was obviously falling in love with.
McBride was not the one falling, hard and fast, right back.
“That was fun,” Fi was saying, grinning widely, as they made their way inside the run-down little apartment he’d been using for this operation. “All those pretty little guns going to a much better home…”
He snorted, but truth be told, he enjoyed her enthusiasm. “Couldn’t have done it without you,” he said.
“Obviously,” she said, smirking, and opened his refrigerator. Tsking, she said, “You have exactly four eggs and two peppers in here.”
“There should be some yogurt, too,” he said, joining her at the fridge door. “Yeah, see? Right there. And there’s some cheese, and even a little milk. It’s practically fully stocked.”
She sent him a look. “We have got to expand your horizons.”
“Hey, I’m a decent cook,” he said.
Laughing, she said, “Oh? Prove it, McBride.”
Ignoring the stab in his gut, he grinned at her, and set about making her an omelet.
For all the curiosity and glamour surrounding spies and sex, Michael was fairly confident that it didn’t happen as often as most people assumed.
Seduction was one thing, the art of getting people to the point where they might want to sleep with you—or help you out in other ways, which was often more valuable—but actually having sex was a completely different thing, and it had never been one of his preferred tactics. Too much was up in the air. Too much could go wrong. It left you vulnerable, and vulnerability wasn’t useful in this business.
It could also complicate matters—though, granted, in this particular situation, he’d already complicated it. When he looked at Fiona, he didn’t think asset, he thought friend, and that was dangerous, not least because she didn’t even know his real name.
“Beautiful,” Fi said, voice breathy and light, as she put the finishing touches on the bomb she was assembling.
He would’ve agreed, because he could appreciate a job well done, and Fiona was nothing if not good at what she did. At the moment, however, he was more caught up in the way she looked when she was truly concentrating on something, from the laser-light focus of her eyes, to the way her tongue peeked out of her mouth, to the way every part of her seemed to be humming.
“Yes,” he said, belatedly, and she looked up, gracing him with a brilliant smile.
This was bad on any number of levels. This wasn’t like Larry, or Sam, or even Samantha. Fiona thought he was Michael McBride, born in Kilkenny, with a past very similar to her own.
“Are you talking about me or the bomb?” she asked, amused. “Not that you’re wrong on either count.”
“You do excellent work,” he said, in lieu of answering, and she snorted.
“I know,” she said, leaning in. “But I happen to think it’s not just my work you’re admiring.”
He played dumb. “I didn’t mean to—”
“How are you this oblivious?” she demanded, and pulled him in for a rough kiss.
He pulled away, a beat too late, and said, “I’m not sure we should—”
“Oh,” she said. “Not oblivious. It’s something else. Do you have a girlfriend?” He was about to run with the lie, because it gave him a perfect out, when she laughed. “What am I saying? Of course you don’t have a girlfriend. You don’t act like it. So what’s the problem, McBride? Don’t think you can keep up with me?” She smirked. “You probably can’t, but that’s no reason not to try.”
“We work together,” he said. “It could get messy.”
“Yeah, but getting messy can be fun,” she said, grinning irresistibly.
“Not if it results in you shooting me,” he said, and she laughed.
“So don’t give me a reason to shoot you,” she said innocently. “Simple.”
“That was reassuring.”
“You were expecting reassuring?”
“Momentary lapse,” he said, and she sidled closer to him.
“So how about we plant this little work of art,” she murmured in his ear, “watch it go boom, finish our job, and then come back here and celebrate a job well done?”
Everything in his head was telling him it was a bad idea. He wasn’t in control of this situation. This wasn’t calculated. It wouldn’t gain him a damn thing.
“It’s a date,” he said instead, and kissed her again, pulling her close.
Getting his cover blown was never fun. Getting his cover blown with Fi, by Sam of all people, was nigh unbearable.
“Westen?” she said, hurt and betrayal written all over her face. “Who the hell are you?”
“I—I’m CIA,” he said, and Sam looked between them, apparently discerning everything with a glance, because he left them to it without a word.
She made a low noise, almost a growl, and she said, “You’ve been lying to me all this time. About everything? For what? So I would help you and your government in some stupid little power play?”
“It’s not like that, Fi,” he said, and she physically stepped away from him at the use of her name, almost like he’d slapped her.
“Don’t you say another word to me,” she said. “Don’t you fucking look at me again, or I will—I don’t know what I’ll do. I never want to see your face again.”
“Let me—”
“No.” Her eyes were full of cold fury, her jaw firmly clenched. “You go straight to hell.”
“Fi, it’s me,” he called from her kitchen, the second he heard the door open.
She appeared almost instantly, gun drawn and trained on him. “I told you to stay the hell away from me, Michael Westen,” she snapped, and he held up his hands. “Get out.”
“I just want to talk.”
“Maybe I don’t want to listen.”
“Fi—”
“Don’t.” She narrowed his eyes. “What could you possibly have to say to me?”
“I’m sorry,” he said, and the words felt foreign and awkward in his mouth, not to mention hollow. “I am. Not everything—the way we work together, that’s real. The way I feel about you—”
“Leave me alone,” she interrupted, tone sharp.
“Just let me explain.”
She snorted. “Why should I?”
“Because I—I still care about you!”
“And why the hell should I believe you?”
“Dammit, Fi,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “It’s complicated, okay? But—”
She snorted. “That’s where you’re wrong, Michael. It’s not complicated. It’s really fucking simple. You lied to me. How do you ever expect me to trust you again?”
“I haven’t let you down until now,” he said. “You can trust me. Let me prove it to you.”
“Prove it to me? How do you think you’ll do that?”
“Anyway you want,” he said, before he could think about it for too long.
She eyed him for what felt like eons. Then, slowly, she lowered her weapon. “So help me God, Michael,” she said, giving him a warning look, “if you make me regret this, I will shoot you.”
He nodded, knowing she was deadly serious.
“And I’m not letting you off easy,” she continued. “You want to prove it to me? I’m making you work for it. You’d better deliver.”
“I will,” he said.
“Good. Let’s start now,” she said, sitting down at her kitchen table. “Tell me one completely true thing about you.” She set the gun down, and he eyed it. Rolling her eyes, she unloaded it and began to strip it, almost idly.
“What kind of thing?” he asked, sitting down next to her.
“Something not everybody knows,” she said. “I don’t care about your favorite color. I want to know about you, about the man I’ve—the man I’ve been spending so much time with. We’re starting over.”
He thought for a moment, not sure where or how to begin, but also willing to try.
“I joined the Army at seventeen,” he said, eventually, haltingly, and she nodded, now idly inspecting each component of the gun.
“That’s a start,” she said, and glanced up at him, meeting his eyes. “Tell me more about what you do.”
“A lot of it’s classified,” he said, looking apologetic, and she narrowed her eyes.
“I’m sure that’s convenient for you, isn’t it?” she asked. “You get to hide behind ‘it’s classified’ and no one ever gets to know who the hell you really are, is that it?” She shook her head. “I don’t want launch sequences, M—Westen. I want to know my opinion of you wasn’t so far off base, but as of now, I’ve got no reason to believe that. Give me a reason.” She held his gaze.
“I serve my country,” he said then, after a pause. “In a way not many people can. It’s not about me. It’s about everyone. It’s important work. It helps people.”
“That’s why you do what you do?” she asked. “Simple patriotism?”
“It’s not patriotism,” he corrected. “Or at least not just that. It’s feeling like you’re…like you’re a part of something bigger, something that connects you to…” he trailed off, not sure how to finish the sentence.
She didn’t reply, or demand that he finish, apparently focused on reassembling the gun in front of her. Michael knew her well enough to know that she could do it in her sleep. She was thinking.
“I understand that,” she said, finally, and looked up again. “You need to know that there’s something more than just…you. That there’s a point to the world. That things happen for a reason.”
He swallowed, and tried to say yes, but the most he could manage was a nod.
“You knew that was going to happen!” she shouted, voice carrying, and he winced.
“Fi,” he muttered, and the muscles in her jaw clenched, but when she spoke again, her voice was much more subdued.
“You knew it was going to happen, Michael, didn’t you? The plan to get us out of there, that couldn’t have been set up on a whim—”
“I had an idea that it could’ve happened,” he admitted. “I didn’t know for sure.”
“And you didn’t tell me,” she spit out the words, eyes blazing.
“It was—”
“If you tell me ‘need to know’, Michael, I swear to God, you’re going to regret it.”
“What do you want me to say, Fi?” he demanded. “That’s the job. I can’t tell you everything.”
“It’s not that you can’t, Michael,” she said. “It’s that you won’t. You could have given me a heads up, but you didn’t, because you keep everything bottled up inside that impossible head of yours, and you expect me to trust you anyway.”
“You have to understand—”
“Oh, I understand,” she said. “You have a perfect out, any time you get uncomfortable. You hide behind ‘need to know’ and ‘it’s classified’ and you say that’s the job and expect me to accept it.” She snorted, shaking her head. “Well, you know what? I don’t accept it, Michael. I need more from you than just the bits and pieces you’re willing to give.”
“I can’t share everything!” he exclaimed, frustrated, willing her to understand. “Maybe, maybe I’ve been overcautious—”
“Maybe?”
“—but it’s for your own safety! In some situations, the less you know, the better!”
“Let’s get one thing clear right now, Michael Westen,” she snarled, and pressed right up against him. “That will never be true, do you understand me? If you trust me, then you trust me, but if you don’t, then don’t waste my time!”
“Of course I trust you!”
“Prove it!”
“I have!”
She laughed, a coarse, bitter sound. “The sad thing is that you really believe that, don’t you?”
And suddenly, all the anger and frustration fell away, and he felt tired, and utterly drained. “You’re important to me, Fi,” he said. “I trust you. I do.”
She slapped him, making his ears ring, and then she kissed him, hard and desperate, and when they broke apart she whispered, “I don’t know if that’s true.”
He kissed her back, trying to make it clear that it was, and not sure that he succeeded.
“Sometimes I wonder,” Fi said, and stopped.
When she didn’t continue after a few seconds, Michael looked up from the listening device he was making. “Sometimes you wonder?”
“If most of the choices I’ve made are…” she said, and shook her head. “I don’t know. Decent, I suppose.”
Michael didn’t know what to say to that. He opened his mouth and shut it again, watching her face.
She merely smiled at him. “You don’t have to be reassuring, Michael,” she said. “I’ve done some things I’m not proud of, associated with people whose tactics are abhorrent, and I’ll always live with that. I just hope that those things haven’t been in…vain. That there’s enough to balance it out.”
“There is,” he said, instantly, and with conviction. Of that he was sure.
She smiled again, this time with a touch of sadness. “You sound so sure.”
“There are a few things I’m sure about,” he said. “Not a lot, but this is one of them.”
“What else are you sure about?” she asked, curious, her gaze just this side of piercing.
“My job,” he said. “That it’s a good thing, in the end.”
She didn’t say anything for a moment, then raised an eyebrow. “Is that it? Tell me you’re sure about more than just this and your job, Michael.”
He shrugged. “Is certainty that important?”
“Not with you, I suppose,” she said, snorting, and it made his hackles rise.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Fi snorted again. “It means just what you think it means. You live your life in these vague little grey areas, Michael, and you expect everyone else to be as comfortable with them as you are. Some of us prefer a little more reliability.”
“I’m reliable,” he said, firmly. “Where it counts.”
“Perhaps,” she said.
“I am,” he insisted, and she sighed.
“I don’t want to fight right now, Michael—I know, it’s a shock.” She said this dryly, and it surprised a soft snort from him. “I do trust you. I’ve trusted you from the beginning, and I hated myself for it, because you hadn’t really earned it, and then when I found out about, well—it’s very annoying when part of your own mind is telling you I told you so.” She shook her head. “And I even forgave you, which I probably shouldn’t have, and I trust you again, and part of me is waiting for the next stone to fall, because part of me is convinced that I’ll regret it again.”
He watched her, quietly, trying to conjure up the words to reassure her, but only coming up empty. “I—Fi—”
“You’re so bad at this,” she said, laughing.
“I’m less bad at it with you,” he offered, and she smiled, not quite happily, but not nearly as sadly as before.
He knew, even before he got the communication from his handler, that his cover was in trouble.
He’d spent much longer in Ireland than intended, and it hadn’t been built to last, the McBride cover. He knew, eventually, it’d catch up to him.
As it was, some of his old associates had blown into town, and now he was in a precarious position. If the people he and Fi had been working with found out about this, it wouldn’t just be his ass on the line. Fi would be in danger too.
The CIA was insisting that he be pulled out. For now, he was resisting, but he also knew that he couldn’t do that forever.
He sighed heavily, watching as Fi slept next to him, and wondered how the hell he was going to tell her.
This was it. He had to say goodbye. He’d be leaving tonight, and there was no way to avoid it, not any longer. He couldn’t put it off anymore.
“Fi,” he said. “There’s something I have to tell you.”
She looked up, her expression curious, and when he didn’t say anything else for a long moment, she said, “What is it, Michael?”
I have to leave, he said in his mind, and tried to get his mouth to form the words. “I—” He faltered, annoyed at himself, and she arched an eyebrow.
“This must be serious,” she said. “You only ever hesitate this much when you’re trying to be honest about something.”
He rolled his eyes. “I’m not that bad.”
“Okay.” She looked amused, but unconvinced.
“It’s just—I don’t know how you’ll react,” he said, slowly.
“That makes me think it’s bad news,” she said, looking at him shrewdly. “What is it?”
“I—” he started, and he was sure the next words out of his mouth would be have to leave, but instead he found himself blurting, “I’m bisexual.”
She blinked, looking surprised, and then said, “Huh.” Shrugging, she gave him a reassuring smile. “Well, for the record, I don’t care. One of my brothers is gay.”
Distracted, he gave her surprised look. “I didn’t know that.”
“It’s a bit of an open secret,” she said.
He sat down next to her, considering that, and it made him realize something. “You know, you’re the first person I’ve told.”
It was true, in a strange way. With Andre, Larry, and Sam, it’d just been unspoken, and he never mentioned it to Samantha.
She smiled warmly at him, leaning in and kissing him, and when they broke apart, he looked into her eyes. “Fi,” he said again, because he really ought to tell her what he’d meant to tell her from the beginning, that he was leaving, that he had no idea when he’d seen her again, if ever.
She just kept looking at him, expectant and curious, and all he could do was shake his head and kiss her again, passionate and searching, trying to pour into it everything that he couldn’t say.
Leaving Fi behind in Ireland was one of the hardest things he’d ever done.
It almost wasn’t a surprise when, years later, she came crashing headfirst back into his life.
After all, that was Fi.
“Fi,” Michael had started, saying her name in an odd tone—for the second time that night. The first time had resulted in a new piece of information about him, which, in hindsight, really should have made her suspicious, but his revelation had distracted her. It’d played so neatly into that little bit of hope she still held onto, so she’d given him yet another expectant, curious look.
This time, he hadn’t continued with anything more. He’d merely shaken his head and kissed her passionately, almost desperately, like he was trying to convey every single emotion he felt but couldn’t vocalize.
She’d given into it, like she always did with Michael, because being with him was like falling rapidly into darkness, exciting and unknown. You couldn’t see three inches in front of you, nothing was certain, and you didn’t know how to get out—not that you wanted to, when it came right down to it.
She didn’t actually put it all together until a few days after she’d woken up and found him gone. The first night had been consumed by worry, the second night had been consumed by fury, and then, finally, the third night had been resigned acceptance, and that was when she’d started thinking about it.
The whole thing had been a copout. He hadn’t even been able to say goodbye, the bastard.
She wasn’t sure why that surprised her. Every little piece of Michael, every little bit, she’d had to draw out of him, to separate him from the McBride character she’d met him as.
She could admit to herself, but only to herself, that in some ways, she preferred McBride.
He’d been easier to get along with, that was for certain, but even as she thought it she knew it wasn’t really true. He’d been fun, yes, but superficial, a mere wisp of the true person underneath, and even if it took work getting to know that true person…
Fiona was pretty sure it was worth it. This did not mean she wouldn’t be kicking Michael’s arse the next time she saw him.
Of that she was sure. There was damn well going to be a next time.
Clearly, someone had beaten her to kicking Michael’s arse. They’d done a pretty decent job of it, too.
She sunk into in the chair next to the bed and eyed him for a few minutes, watched the way his chest rose and fell in his sleep, somewhat ragged.
That was so like Michael, she thought, to not even be peaceful while sleeping. Though, she supposed, with those injuries, she couldn’t really blame him.
Glancing out the window, at the bright Miami scene before her, she shook her head. She was here, Michael was here, something dreadful had happened to him, and she had no idea what she was thinking, or what would happen this time.
Shrugging, she kicked at him, almost absently, trying to wake him up.
He sat up like a shot, startled eyes quickly focusing on her.
It was time to find out.