BN Fic: In Hours of Insight Willed

[jesterladyfic]

Title: In Hours of Insight Willed
by Jesterlady
Pairing: Michael/Fiona
Rating: PG-13
Summary: You don’t get to have the girl and the job. So why don’t you do yourself a favor and forget the past? What happens next?
A/N: This line is from the episode. I don't own Burn Notice. The title is by Matthew Arnold.



In Hours of Insight Willed

You don’t get to have the girl and the job. So why don’t you do yourself a favor and forget the past?

The words roared into his head in a loud burst of white anger and his reaction was neither measured nor careful. He didn’t think about the consequences and he didn’t think about the morality and he didn’t think about anything other than losing Fiona forever.

“Fiona is not my past.”

Gunshots burst into the silence of his words and blood-red and flowing-accompanied Strickler’s fall to the ground.

That had been two days ago, but Michael still found himself unable to think about anything else. Fiona had been saved, but he almost mourned her as though she hadn’t. Even Diego’s death-a casualty of Michael’s own actions-didn’t do anything but compound the words slipping in and out of his thoughts, putting a veil over decision making, a barrier to rational ways forward. He was lost in the grip of them as they interposed over the sight of Fiona vanishing beneath the waves, blood bubbling up in the saltwater.

But the time had come for doing, for being something other than the reactionary watchdog he’d become, guarding Fiona, guarding Sean, guarding his mother. Sam was their courier, bringing supplies in and out, making inquiries, and testing the boundaries of their safe haven. But Michael was the sleepless one, the perimeter checker, the one with cracked ribs and a likely concussion, who self-appointed himself as protector. How could he do otherwise when this was his fault?

Remorse ate away at his previous beliefs. He hadn’t listened to anyone when they warned him about Strickler. Fiona’s earnest hand on his arm, Sam’s grim looks, Michael’s own inner sense of danger, and especially Fiona’s desire for him to safeguard his soul-all had been shaken off in the desperate attempt to get back in. That had been his one goal, his only aim, for so long, and he didn’t know how to operate without it. Michael had made a gamble on dancing with the devil, but others had paid the price.

Now Michael was uneasy, unsure about what would happen next. Would all his work the last two and a half years be for nothing? Would whoever had come to town to clean up Strickler’s demise soon make their way through his family, creating corpses of them all? He gritted his teeth against the thought, determined to be the first-and only-body down if necessary.

Irrational fear for others was partly why he’d made the calls he’d made, his reasoning so solid inside his forcedly narrow mind. He couldn’t afford to think broad in his line of work. All his creative force came into play when backed into a corner, but in making the strategic moves of his life, he thought in a linear fashion, making goals to achieve with the least amount of resistance. He, Michael, was a spy. A spy needed the support and backing and protection of a company. He, Michael, had people he loved. He, Michael the spy, needed that same company to extend an umbrella of protection to his family.

It was all so clear and he’d resented the implications from Fiona that he wasn’t doing the right thing, that he should somehow be expected to survive on his own and be the man she so desperately wanted him to be. He didn’t know how to live up to those expectations, despite how badly he wanted to. As good as he was, as resourceful, as many dangers as he’d survived, he was only one man. A man who had almost let the woman he loved be taken back to Ireland and put on an auction block for all her enemies to gloat and paw over.

Even with the guilt of that haunting his every moment, he still didn’t comprehend why things hadn’t worked as he’d wanted them to. After all, his desire to do all of this was to protect them-her. Yet she resisted to the point of leaving him, of doing the one thing he hadn’t known she was capable of doing-giving up. He didn’t understand why she didn’t understand. And yet he never understood her, so he’d simply accepted her actions, too stubborn to give up on his own, almost relieved when O’Neill and Sean had shown up, delaying her departure from his life. But in the end, she had been right, and he still didn’t know why. It had to do with Strickler, of course, but if that man was Michael’s only in back to the safety of the past, then maybe his goal of protecting everyone was pointless. Or at least the means he was attempting to do it.

These thoughts led to other, more dangerous ones. If Strickler had been so influential and so able to connect Michael where he wanted to be, and yet ended up being who he was, what did that say about the CIA itself? What did it say about the people Michael was so desperate to connect with? Were they the ones who had killed Diego, one of their own? Or were they aware of whoever had? How could he trust an organization so full of secrets-the one he had (ironically perhaps) always trusted with all their lives? The thought of real trust had always been laughable; they were spies, after all. But perhaps without knowing it, Michael’s loyalties and mindsets were shaped by them, by believing they were his home. He’d never really had one. Every person, trainer, teammate-they had all chipped in, putting pieces of themselves into who he was as a person. And he was a product of their work, useful only for the things they molded him to be. He hadn’t thought he could survive without that.

But he had. Over the last several years, without them, even without Management’s mysterious protection from the shadows, Michael had survived. Not just physically, but in every other way. And, terrifying as it was to admit, it wasn’t because of his training; it was because of the people who persisted in loving him. It was because of being back in Miami, back with his mom. Seeing Nate’s desperate attempts at change. Having Sam at his side. But mostly because of Fiona.

Michael sucked in a deep breath, thoughts of her overwhelming as they usually were. Fiona was an assault against his controlled nature, a violent force of passion, sweeping through what he thought were firm boundaries, and reminding him of everything he’d ever known to be wonderful. She knit herself into him, one thread at a time, one attachment at a time, a gun at his place here, a reminder of the past there-with a look, a word, a touch, a kiss, a smell. His senses bloomed full of her, and sometimes he couldn’t remember what it was like before.

He used to sit and wonder who he was without the CIA. Now, with Strickler’s words pounding in his memory, he wondered who he was without her. From the moment they’d met, she’d confounded his expectations of what asset relationships should be like, what women should be like, what partners should be like. When he had first known her, he’d been running from a past full of hurt and anger, seemingly content with a present full of violence and people like Larry-whisperings of arrogance and insanity. But the wrench of leaving her in Ireland had been worse than leaving any one he’d ever left, and from that point on, in the back of his mind, she’d lingered, haunting his sense of who he was and what he wanted out of life.

He had tried to leave her in the past, then had tried to integrate her into the now without fully attaching himself, still caught up in the rules, the training, the safety measures, the lack of vulnerability that he’d been taught was so essential. She hadn’t allowed him that distance, and he’d gradually come to take her presence for granted, to lean on it with all his might and main. Still, some part of his mind insisted on labeling her as the past, as something he would have to leave behind when the time came-it would inevitably come. He’d believed Strickler’s words until they were shouted at him.

He watched his mother fuss over Fiona, packing leftover takeout into Tupperware. They were leaving his childhood home today, the one he couldn’t stand spending the night at. It had helped that he wasn’t sleeping-he could keep his presence to the main sections of the house and not venture into too many childhood traumas. Sean was well enough to travel and insisted on going home at once to warn the rest of their family, just in case any of O’Neill’s influence had reached them. And to mitigate the damage of Michael’s own lies to their family. Sam was gone, delivering Sean to a contact that would smuggle him out quickly, private goodbyes having been exchanged between the siblings.

Sam had also informed them that Fiona’s place wasn’t being watched and Michael would rather take Fiona there than the loft. Not only would it be more comfortable for her, but it would be safer than his home. She still needed medical attention and he planned to be at her side as long as she would allow it. It was the least he could do and the most he could manage without breaking down and begging her to stay.

He still didn’t know what her plans were, if she would try to leave again. Just because she couldn’t go back to Ireland didn’t mean she couldn’t go somewhere else. He didn’t want that any more than he did when she first told him her intentions, but now it was as if part of him would wither if she did go. He wasn’t sure how to live without her anymore, so accustomed to her barging into his life, belonging there in a way he’d never imagined when he woke up in that motel to her kicking his side. But just as he was sure that she was that important to him, he had no clue how to tell her that. For now, he hovered on the outskirts of her, soaking in her presence, building up a reserve in case that might be all he had to take with him into the future.

They made their goodbyes, Michael inconsistently glad to know the house would still be there, instead of being sold to strangers. It was another strange phenomenon in his heart and soul; he would have once said he never wanted to see it again. But it had become an odd sort of permanence for him, the place where he could find refuge, the place he made attempts at building back up his familial connections. So he would keep coming back as long as his mother was there. As she had been for the past several days, smoking outside to avoid irritating the patients, and wisely not cooking anything herself, gentler than she was wont to be normally.

Michael and Fiona drove in silence, and he could feel tension and unsaid words crackling between them. She hadn’t said much since Sean had left and she’d barely talked to Michael since her first waking. She was a pale version of her kinetic, zealous self. All that was his fault too, and he almost wished she would try to hit him like she normally would. For some reason, he could take that from her when from anyone else-including his mother-it felt like a betrayal, a trigger back to younger, helpless-feeling times. He was a man of violence, used to pain and discomfort and fighting, but he wasn’t sure he could ever get used to someone he loved choosing to hurt him. His mind seemed to see it as Fiona’s communication of caring, her passion for the situation bursting out in violence to indicate how much she needed him to understand what she was trying to say. It always taught him to pay more attention so, though he knew it wasn’t the healthiest part of their relationship, he could still handle it in a way he couldn’t from anyone else.

Her breath came out in a long sigh, just a hint of a whimper in the end. She shifted her arm closer to her side. He closed his eyes momentarily, seeing her searching eyes, sea-wet face, and heaving breaths, lying on the beach, blood leaking onto the sand. He found he didn’t have coping methods for Fiona’s almost deaths. They undid him, and that was the most dangerous thing of all.

He’d known that since the night she’d sprung the fire trap and he’d enclosed her in a soaking wet embrace, touching her body like one of her snow globes, beautiful and always so close to breaking. At least that’s how it felt. He’d known then that he could no longer dismiss her as unimportant, no longer tell himself that he didn’t want her beside him at every moment. That he couldn’t pretend he wasn’t as in love with her as he’d always been. But he’d still kept her at arm’s length, still thought it was better to protect her, still thought she deserved something more than what he could give. He’d still thought the CIA was the answer.

And now . . . the doubts compiled, the questions rose, the loyalties shifted. Now he believed in her, in them, and wondered if it was too late. Was she angry with him as she so often was? Angry enough to leave and render him permanently bereft? Her uncharacteristic silence unnerved him more than most ops. He wasn’t sure how to handle a quiet Fiona Glenanne.

“Are you hungry?” he asked, after unloading the car. “I can make something.”

“Anything besides yogurt,” she warned him, the slight presence of her normal sharpness warming his insides.

He laughed lightly, the surprising feeling warming the cold shock of his now constant guilt and fear.

“You know, I am a pretty good cook.”

“I know,” she said, shooting him a sideways glance, full of some meaning he didn’t know how to interpret.

“Do you want to lie down and I’ll bring you something?” he asked. “We need to change your bandage in a few hours.”

“I know,” she said again, this time snapping the words.

He sighed, whatever connection he thought they were forming dissolved by her tone.

She went into the bedroom and, after doing another perimeter check, he busied himself in the kitchen. He made simple food, but whatever her thoughts on the matter were, he included yogurt for himself. He found her sleeping when he entered her room. Something twisted in his gut at the sight of her so vulnerable. He wondered what she thought of him asleep, since she was the only one he allowed to see that. He’d always found something endearing about her so quiet and still, so unlike her normal self, but now it just felt wrong. He resisted the urge to wake her up, to beg her to let him know she was still alive.

He set her tray down quietly and slipped beside her, checking to make sure she wasn’t sleeping on her arm. He couldn’t resist the urge to slide his fingers over her jaw up to her cheek, dancing them along her soft skin, one of his favorite things to do. Maybe this would be his last chance.

“Why do you do that?” she asked sleepily, keeping her eyes closed.

His heart pounded in surprise, but he simply rubbed his thumb over her cheek one more time and leaned back.

“Do what?” he asked.

“Touch my cheek,” she said, opening her eyes, looking at him with an intensity he wasn’t prepared for. “You always do that first.”

He tilted his head, curious himself now that she’d brought it up. Over the many years they’d been together, off and on, whether as himself or McBride, that had been his first impulse at almost any tender moment. He didn’t know why, but he could guess, turning his intense feelings into faltering words.

“Maybe, maybe . . . because it’s a way to let you know I see you,” he said, returning her gaze, hoping against hope she wouldn’t rebuff his attempt.

“I’m small, but not that hard to miss,” she grumbled.

Michael chuckled and leaned his head back against the bedpost of her canopy bed.

“I never miss seeing you,” he assured her. “I honestly don’t know why.”

“I think you do miss me,” she said, her face returning to a pensive state. “I think you need to remind yourself that I’m there because you’re so focused on other things.”

He winced at her perceptive words and ducked his head.

“I know,” he confessed. “But I promise you, it’s not because I don’t see you or think about you.”

“That’s not enough,” she said sternly. “I need more than that.”

“What more?” he asked, earnestly desiring to know the answer. He had suspicions and he was a master at getting under the skin of most people’s motivations, but Fiona had foiled him from day one. He needed her guidance to be anything other than clueless around her.

“I need to be chosen,” she said, looking everywhere but at him.

Her words pierced his carefully kept shields and he wondered if now was the time he could finally present what had been brewing within him for the past two days. Normally, he would have kept all his doubts to himself, but he owed her more than just an explanation. He owed her himself.

He pondered his next words carefully. He had the feeling they would make or break her decision to stay. And he so desperately wanted her to stay.

“When I got burned,” he began, “I didn’t want anything else but to get back in. I liked my life. It gave me purpose. It kept me busy. It kept me away from here.” She turned her eyes back toward him, studying him closer than he was comfortable with. “But you were here.”

“That was your fault,” she interrupted.

“Maybe,” he said. “But you stayed. And being around you again was . . . confusing. I didn’t see a way for us to be when my goal was to leave and stay gone.”

“It always was,” she muttered.

He didn’t respond to that, any fairness in her jab keeping him from protestation.

“But after last year with the night I thought you . . .” he trailed off, the memory painful in his mouth. “I knew that no matter what happened with my job, I wanted you in my life. You were important.”

“But not the most important,” she prompted, her shoulders tense and her head studiously pointed away.

“It’s not that simple,” he argued. “Fi, in my mind, loving someone and having the ability to protect that someone is the same thing.”

Her head swiveled quickly toward him and he wondered why. The words weren’t that profound; they were who he’d always been.

“They did entrench themselves, didn’t they?” she said, almost like she was talking to herself, putting out her uninjured arm, tracing the same spot on his cheek he’d recently traced on hers. “I didn’t know you could see that.”

He leaned into her touch, surprised by his own need for her to reach out to him.

“If you know it, why are you surprised?” he asked.

“Surprised isn’t the word,” she said, sighing, dropping her arm down. “Despairing might come closer.”

He clenched his jaw, deprived of her touch and further apart in communication than ever.

“Why?”

“Because you as good as told me that you’d always choose them first,” she said, glaring up at him. “You might think that’s how you protect me, but it’s how you lose yourself and then me.”

“I know,” he said. She gaped at him again and he fought the urge to laugh simply for the novelty of surprising her. “I didn’t always, but the past few days have made me realize that my loyalties and desires are different than when I was burned. And that’s your fault.”

“Good,” she spat out, then looked confused, as if she hadn’t really understood his words. “How?”

“I did choose you, Fi,” he said, his trigger finger suddenly aching with the memory of metal pressed against it. “I shot Strickler for you.”

“Good,” she said again, whispering the words fiercely. “But I don’t understand what that means.”

Michael pulled the words up from his soul, determined to get them exactly right, to be abundantly clear as he’d never thought possible.

“He told me to forget the past. He said I don’t get to have both, the job and you. And when that happened, I knew that if I had to choose, then I couldn’t choose anything but you. And that’s . . . terrifying, because I don’t know if I can protect you on my own.”

“Who protects who?” she asked, her words a gentle mockery.

“We protect each other,” he admitted. “But just being around me, that might be the most dangerous thing of all. I don’t know what’s going to happen. And I’m only starting to realize that putting you in danger is the line I don’t want to cross.”

“I can protect myself,” she said. “I have for years. Before I met you and while you were gone. Us working together, that’s when we’re both better.”

She was right, but he suddenly saw himself hitting her, her hair flying up in the air, betrayal burned into her eyes, heard her hushed, angry words after he’d tried to apologize. The image mingled with the one of her floating in the water, and he could suddenly understand why she’d want to run away to Ireland, as far away from him as possible. Why hadn’t she done it sooner?

“What about when I’m the danger?” he whispered quietly. “Like with Natalie.” Fiona stiffened and he didn’t know how to continue, but he had to, now that his thoughts refused to stop taunting him with how badly he’d treated her. “We didn’t talk about it. We pretended it never happened. Like my mom used to.”

Fiona’s eyes closed and he waited, a man at the gallows.

“I was angry,” she said finally, her words slow and thick, weighted down with importance. “And you might not have been right to do it. But you did it for the job, not to hurt me. It was not because you’re anything like your bastard of a father.”

“But I did hurt you,” he said, his eyes pinned to her cheek, as if he could still see the red marks of his fingers. “Once I found out Natalie was the real boss, I was terrified of you being hurt, panicked to the point of barely being able to function, but the only way I knew to fix it was, was-”

“It worked out,” Fiona said, her tone gentler than he felt he deserved.

He hadn’t realized this guilt was weighing on him almost as heavy as the guilt of her almost dying, but the relief over talking about it was stronger than he could bear. He’d always sworn he would never hit her in anger. Sparring and training-that was different, and even then, he was careful, reserved to the point of her verbal annoyance, always petrified his reflexes would kick in, and he would somehow do something worse than block. That had happened before. But in his journey across the open courtyard to where Fiona and Natalie sat, his fear had given him a blind plan and he’d acted without thought of doing anything but keeping Natalie from doing to Fiona what he himself then did.

“Did it?” he asked. “You would barely talk to me for days afterward.”

“Look at me.” Her words were fierce, compelling, and he obeyed though he dreaded what he would see. He saw exasperation mingled with regret and it bewildered him. “Of course, I was upset, but it was about so much more than you hitting me. Michael, I’ve hit you more times than I can count, without even the excuse of a job to hide behind. If anything, well, maybe I should be the one apologizing.” He shook his head, not wanting to talk about that, having settled it in his own mind. “So I’m sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, uncomfortable in his skin, feeling exposed and vulnerable.

“When you mentioned Madeline just now . . . I think I finally see. It reminds you of being a kid, doesn’t it?” she asked, looking at him as if seeing him for the first time. “It hurts.” Michael didn’t trust himself with words, so he gave the barest of nods. “Then I promise to stop, as best I can,” she added almost as an afterthought. “You can be infuriating.”

His lips inched upward, then down again, still unsure of what any of this meant for them, for the future, for her safety.

“I’m still dangerous,” he said. “The situations we face, they come through me.”

“O’Neill was my past, not yours,” she reminded him. “I made my choices too.”

“But they wouldn’t have been nearly so dangerous without my choices. Strickler was my choice,” he insisted.

“Michael, I could die from almost anything,” she said, sitting up, grimacing in pain. He hastily moved to help get a pillow under her arm. “Crossing the street or in a gunfight. We live dangerous lives and that’s both our choice.”

“True,” he acknowledged. “But-” he closed his throat tight over the fear swelling within it “-but I don’t know how to lose you.”

She sighed, almost a laugh, and leaned her head back.

“We really are no good at this,” she said, her hand closing over his.

He grasped her fingers tightly, threading the evidence of her touch into his own, needing it for the assurance of her vitality and existence.

“Terrible,” he agreed. “But I mean it. And I know I need to find out what happened with Diego and what that means for the future, but I want you to know, that I do choose you. Always.”

Tears glittered in her eyes, descending to her cheeks with a slowness that was agony to watch. Her grip on his hand grew tighter, almost painful.

“Michael,” she breathed out.

He could see her teetering on the edge of her choices, and words tumbled out, a cyclone of air designed to prove to her Miami-he-was the right decision.

“You said you had changed too. That who you are now is because of what we’ve been the past few years. So, I think you deserve the chance to see what it could be like, for real. And I’m sorry you can’t go back home, even though you wouldn’t have been able to return to the person you used to be. But I’m glad you can’t because I don’t want you to go. So, stay?” he asked-no, he begged. “Will you stay?”

She stared at him and he could almost see the unbelief warring with the hope in her expression. He had abandoned her and failed her and disappointed her too many times. Would she be able to see his sincerity? Realize how his beliefs had shifted? Know that she had irrevocably changed who he was? He couldn’t believe it himself, didn’t understand what it really meant, wondered how the pitfalls and uncertainties of the future would test his words. But at this moment, he meant them to last forever.

Fiona closed her eyes and gave a quick nod of her head. Michael reached forward to her jaw again, this time catching her tears as they fell. Maybe that’s why he loved her face so much, displaying the emotions and expressions that paraded there, the essence of her presented to him.

“Australia is terrible this time of year anyway,” she said softly and opened her eyes, grabbing his hand on her face. “But I will go if I have to.”

The warning thudded into his psyche as it was likely meant to, an impetus against betraying their compact and always to be a sharp reminder of his past folly. He’d wasted too many years dancing out of her reach.

“I promise,” he said, holding her gaze with his, trying to push all the intensity of his emotions through his eyes, since words failed him so often.

She smiled and beckoned him forward. He followed her eagerly, the taste of her lips salty but with the truest meaning of home. There was something softer about the kiss than they normally shared, but it felt honoring to the sacredness of this new sweetness between them, this meeting of intentions and emotion. He had never allowed himself this kind of openness before and it was as exhilarating as it was terrifying.

Her stomach gurgled loudly, interrupting the moment, and he pulled back, his lips twitching.

She glared at him and then at the tray of food he’d set down.

“Michael Westen, I see yogurt.”

“That’s for me,” he protested.

“Well, everything else will be cold,” she said.

“Would you rather we hadn’t talked?” he asked, getting up to take the tray back to be reheated.

“I guess it was all right,” she said, the edges of a smile hovering around her lips.

She still looked exhausted. There were rings around her eyes, only matched by the ones around his. Sleep threatened to overwhelm him now that his heaviest burden was laid down-the fear of her leaving. Her face bore the evidence of a beating and his hands itched to tighten around O’Neill’s neck. Her wound was seeping a soft red and she lay on the bed, eyes closing, thin and small and battered, but gloriously his.

She was there and she wasn’t going anywhere. That was what mattered. The wounds they had both received would heal, physical and otherwise. Together they were a force unmatched and he was not afraid of danger to himself if she was there to support him. He somehow knew he would always be scared of losing her now. That was the tradeoff for the full devotion he was giving. But it felt worth it-it felt right. It felt better than blind loyalty to an organization that would abandon him-had already abandoned him-as she never would.

He had no answers for where things would lead them, so he began to plan, working on how they would find out who shot Diego and how they would move forward-together. Her insight added to his was the path she’d always laid out and he’d always been skittish to join her. But now she was staying. Now he had chosen. Now she was not only his past; now she was his future.