A/N: So, here we are at last back with the sad state of Michael Westen's life as he tries to complete his mission, keep his friends and family out of jail and cope with the fact that the love of his life has apparently moved on with someone else. This story covers Michael's POV from 7.02 on through 7.04 and once again features a song by Skillet as the soundtrack for our disgraced spy's innermost thoughts.

Don't Wake Me

"Taken?" he had scoffed at O'Dowd's assertion that Fiona Glenanne had been officially off the market and therefore unapproachable all those years ago. "Ya see thot? Thot's tha kiss you give when tis over."

As he had stood there outside the bullet-ridden warehouse by a murky canal on Deer Run Avenue, surrounded by the SRT and EMTs, he was rooted to the spot, his mind processing what that gesture had meant when it had been applied to him just then. Michael had continued to stare at the Irishwoman's retreating figure, trying hard not to allow the sway of her hips, the swish of her long auburn locks, or the play of her backside against the fabric of the olive drab jumpsuit to affect him and failing miserably.

There had been so many emotions vying for prominence in his head and in his heart that the covert operative had done the only thing he could have to contain them all, falling back on his training, from the CIA to the Army to his upbringing and shut them all down: the fear that his desperate ploy to kill Dexter Gamble before that man could do the same to Fiona would fail; the relief that she was alive and well; the devastation of seeing her run into the arms of another man; the frustration with his handler's idiocy that had almost resulted in his friends' death; the shame over what the CIA had done to them and his unwitting complicity in the intense surveillance; a tiny spark of hope mercilessly crushed by rejection.

"So, whot's tha story wit' yar sister an' thot Keenan fella?" he had inquired of her brother later over a pint and a game of darts, deciding it was better to confirm his theory before he'd make his approach.

"Pat's nae above using his position as a shot caller fer tha brigade ta try an' impress Fiona, I suppose." Sean had made a disgusted noise and taken an overlarge draught of his ale. "But he donnae respect har for who she is really. Jus' wants ta get close ta har fer whot our family name can do fer his standing."

Caught up as he had been in the memory of the early days of his mission in Ireland when he had still believed the Glenanne siblings had broken away from their family and had become the latest recruits to the fledging Real IRA, which he had been sent to infiltrate and disrupt lest they derail the peace process, the man once known as McBride had heard the footsteps approaching him, but discounted the threat.

"We gonna have words, pendajo!"

But then his reflexes had kicked in the moment a hand had landed on his shoulder and the rest almost automatic from there. Grab wrist, use target's own momentum to pull him forward, elbow to the nose, sweep the leg at the calf, target down. Only the young Latino didn't have sense enough to stay down.

There had been a remote part of him that had to give Fiona's new lover credit for tenacity but not much else. Carlos had staggered to his feet, tears streaming involuntarily from his rapidly blackening eyes, and began to berate him for putting the Irishwoman in danger, for never putting her interests or her welfare first and for being a cold hearted hijo de puta to hurt her the way he had all those years. After spitting a mouthful of blood on the ground at Mr Westen's feet, he concluded his tirade with an order for Michael to go the hell back to whatever god forsaken hole he had crawled out of and leave su amado in peace.

Maybe it had been the man's words that had triggered his deeply felt guilt or maybe it had been all the pent up adrenaline, frustration and pain that had inadvertently been given a bull's eye when his possible attacker had wiped the crimson ooze from his face with the back of his hand and move towards the spy.

Whatever the reason, Sr. Cruz never saw the lightning fast punch that had impacted his face coming nor the thumb lock that had left him on the ground paralyzed, only able to gaze up at the scruffy man above him with murderous fury in his brown orbs that had turned quite blood shot and quite purple all around.

Even now uncertain as to how long he had stood there weighing his response and his next options, Strong's bellowing that they had a plane to catch and to leave the civilian alone immediately had broken through the red haze surrounding his vision. He had relinquished his hold on the younger man's hand and turned away after giving his patented death stare as a warning against pursuing the confrontation.

"What the hell was that, Westen?" his handler had demanded the moment they were back in the van.

"We need to go back to that temporary office you've got rigged up downtown," he'd declared, ignoring the older man's question. "There's some intel I want to review before—"

"We need to get you back to the DR before Burke shows up looking for you! Haven't you taken enough chances today, made enough of a mess in Miami already? What if—"

"Which is exactly why I need to review this now; I can't be seen with you while Burke's watching just to get some intel updates. I know what I'm doing, Strong. Gamble's dead, just like I said, and none of this would have been necessary if you had listened to me to begin with. Now we're going back to the office."

"Need I remind you that we have a plane to catch?"

"And last time I checked, you're in charge, like you keep reminding me, so you decide when it leaves."

Mercifully that had been last thing the man in charge had said to him until they were actually on the flight. Going rapidly through the files he'd needed, Michael had never been more grateful for the nearly perfect photographic memory he'd inherited from his paternal grandmother, as he could ill afford to take any notes on this particular topic while he skimmed through the 201 file on one Andrew Strong.

The flight back to the Dominican Republic had been a special kind of hell.

The past nine months, the fighting, the boozing, all the dark thoughts living in that dank hole which tormented him day and night, the pain, had largely been in isolation, alone with his circumstances.

"Yeah it was one balls out crazy move and you made it work, but don't get any ideas about going off the reservation like that again when you get back to the DR. Just because I gave you a short leash in Miami doesn't mean you get to freelance the hell outta of it. This is my mission and your ass if it fails, Westen."

But for all its misery, before he'd set foot in Miami once more, he'd had two things back then which had now most cruelly been ripped away. Michael set his jaw and locked his hands together as he slouched slightly in the seat on the private black flight in an attempt to not tell the moron next to him exactly what he was thinking or, worse yet, snap Agent Strong's neck just to get him to shut his fucking mouth.

"That was one helluva beat down you gave him. Damn, she's gonna be pissed. But really it's a good thing your ex moved on. We were worried at one point she was gonna be a problem, but Carlos seems to have settled her down. Got her with the program, even though she doesn't know what the program is, ha ha."

First was the unknown… At the time, he'd thought the not knowing when or if Burke would contact him would drive him mad. Then there was the wondering and, if he was capable of being honest which was a dubious proposition even under the best of circumstances, the worrying about his friends and family.

Now that he knew what he knew, he was reliably convinced that ignorance was indeed bliss this time.

The plane rapidly began its descent. He used to think he despised his hometown and for a while that had been true. But now Miami had taken on a different meaning and rather than wondering what the future would hold, there was the stone cold certainty of the hovel he knew he was headed back to eventually.

"We're in the home stretch now, Westen, don't blow it. All you have to do is reel Burke in, I don't care what you have to do, whatever he asks you to do, you do it, whatever it takes. Once we have Burke in custody, we can talk about what's next."

While he couldn't wait to get the hell off the aircraft once it was taxiing down a darkened runway towards their respective vehicle and as far away from his Agency contact as possible, the second thing he'd lost on his sojourn in South Florida was even more painful because of the depressing certainty.

His squalid apartment would now be a place without the small glimmer of hope that had sustained him through those dark drunken months. The hope that she would be waiting for him, would forgive him…

He just couldn't face going back there tonight and he needed to close the loop on the cover story as to why he'd disappeared from the DR for two days … Two birds, one stone… He'd take what he could get.

Gabriella Garcia was a former prostitute turned madam who still entertained clients personally for the right money. She was also a fountain of information on the comings and goings of the seedier side of Santa Domingo and a business associate of Marquez. As a down and out former spy barely scrapping by, she would have been out of his league. But Michael had made a point to make sure he was around to bail her out of the trouble that frequently came with her line of work. It hadn't taken much to ensure the bodyguard who was supposed to be on duty had been mysteriously mugged on a smoke break.

She had also been a great way in the beginning to disseminate his sad tale around the criminal community, falling from his allegedly drunken lips that were in fact sometimes very inebriated. Madam Garcia had gotten him in with the owner of the bar where he did most of his bare knuckles fighting at night and she had thrown him the odd collections or protection job when he needed to make rent.

"So, you get the money you after, or you spend it all already?" she asked as she'd opened the back door to her establishment, a slightly less dilapidated two story than the one he was currently inhabiting.

"No, it didn't come through… not yet…. I'm working on it," he answered, following her up the staircase.

"That why you sober, yes? You want a drink?" She strutted to the liquor cabinet in the back of her bedroom, the filmy dressing gown leaving little to the imagination as to what was underneath.

"No… I'm good." The voluptuous raven haired woman often reminded him too much of an informant in Bolivia that he would have preferred to have forgotten. But she had been a good asset for him in the DR.

"Don't worry, amigo, on the house. You look like you need it."

Michael bit his lip. She was right, he did need it…what was worse, he wanted it. But that didn't mean he was going to risk the mission or Burke invoking the world's most effective detox program to get it.

"No…no, I'm working on something," he repeated. "Gotta clean up my act…"

"I think you don't change your strips so easy, tigre." His associate downed the shot of dark rum. "You saw her again, the one you drink for," she declared. The younger woman stared at him, daring him to defy her assertions. "Gabriella knows… I see her in your eyes… That why you come here tonight?"

"I just need a place for the night…. Just tonight… in case… just in case Marquez…"

"A place to sleep, eh…? That all you after, cabrón…?"

And again the top half of the covert operative's mouth disappeared as he set his teeth to it. There was certainly a temptation to lose himself and his hurts in another woman's embrace, but Gabriella was plainly not Fiona and no amount of coital dopamine was going to make him forget that, not tonight.

"Just to sleep… it's been a rough couple of days…"

"Si, without a drink, eh….? You know, I don't make money if you take up space."

"Please…"

Ms Garcia watched him for a moment. "Fine… you sleep there… tonight…" She jerked her chin towards her ornate four poster bed set against the center of the back wall with good slight lines to the door and an unimpeded path to the window over the dense shrubbery below. "Dream about the one you lost."

And he did.

~~I went to bed I was thinking about you
Ain't the same since I'm living without you
All the memories are getting colder
All the things that I wanna do over~~

"You've been watching me for quite a while. Are you sure a dance is all you're after?"

"It's a start."

~~Went to bed I was thinking about you
I wanna talk and laugh like we used to
When I see you in my dreams at night
It's so real but it's in my mind~~

"So, what's your name?"

"Michael McBride."

~~And now I guess
This is as good as it gets~~

"Pleasure to meet you, Mr. McBride…"

"The pleasure's all mine."

~~Don't wake me
'Cause I don't wanna leave this dream

The feel of her in his arms that first time, that first dance bleeding into the next, shutting down the bar…

~~Don't wake me
'Cause I never seem to stay asleep enough
When it's you I'm dreaming of~~

That first kiss in the alley behind the Black Sand Pub… and the next and next until it was nearly dawn…

~~I don't wanna wake up~~

The daylight hadn't quite made its way into the windows when Gabriella had let him know it was her turn to use her bed. He wasn't sure what hurt more; her sympathy as she had kissed his scruffy cheek on the way out or the fact that he had needed the gesture before heading back to his empty dwelling.

After a quick check of the hallway to confirm he hadn't been followed, the covert operative made a slow survey of the ramshackle apartment, looking for anything that was out of place, anything that would indicate that he'd had visitors while he'd been out of the country. Despite his intention to examine every detail of the rundown place, the table at the center of the room commanded his attention.

Or rather, what was hidden in that wooden object…

When he'd been walking back across Santa Domingo, he'd been convinced that the sole thing he was interested in was getting a shower and then burning the clothes he'd been wearing since Monday.

Instead Michael had his only table on its side in a matter of moments, breaking the leg off and retrieving the rolled up photograph with a slightly trembling hand. Settling back in the chair, he glanced briefly his own grinning visage, his face covered in something between five o'clock shadow and the beard he was currently sporting, before fixating on Fiona's beaming smile. She looked so happy it cut him to his soul.

Because they had been happy, or as close to it as they would be for a while. Out from under Carla's thumb and with Management's blessing, he'd finally been on his own, except then he'd had a police detective on him like a blood hound. He'd had to lay low after he'd gotten Paxson's partner suspended, using a cover that required him to quit shaving and don a shaggy wig, staying off her radar momentarily.

He'd hidden out at Fiona's newly purchased condo while the beard had grown out and they'd spent some quality time reconnecting on multiple levels while prepping for the op. The job had gone well and they'd helped a deserving soul. They'd been very happy when Sam had snapped the photo at that hotel.

Until…

"I'm free of the people who burned me, I'm clear of the cops. This is the moment I've been waiting for."

Until…

"So, no, getting back in isn't just a way to survive or to protect the people I love. It's what I want. And if you truly care about me, you should damn well want for me what I want for myself."

UNTIL…

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

Much like taking apart his former lover's new boy toy yesterday, Mr Westen's body seemed to be operating of its own accord. He was standing by the sink watching their photograph burn before he'd been conscious of getting up from the chair, retrieving the Zippo or setting light to their picture.

Because it was easier to torch the image of that moment in their lives than face his own complicity in immolating their lives together over his obsessiveness for chasing a job he no longer wanted at all….

The television he couldn't remembered turning on caught his attention, announcing law enforcement was searching for the unidentified men responsible for the attack on the Latin American Blackwater, one of whom was already dead and the other of whom needed to not look like the police artist's rendering of the suspect being flashed on the screen.

Spies don't make a habit of holding on to keepsakes for the same reason prisoners serving life sentences stop seeing visitors. At much as you might want that connection with your past life, there comes a point when a constant reminder of what you can never have is just too painful.

Michael managed to remove the facial hair that had been a symbol of his fall from grace without actually looking himself in the eye until the task was finished. Staring at his clean shaven features, he now felt as alienated from his own face as he had all those wretched nights gazing numbly at the haunted stranger in the cracked mirror at the back room of the bar between fights. He shook off the past, reaching for the scissors and attempting to trim up the unkempt overgrowth, around his collar, his side burns and the top while refusing to think about who had previously been his in-house hair dresser.

And you can't have distractions like that when you have to focus on a job.

The soft scrap of something being pushed under the door had him on high alert. The covert operative pulled his P30 from under the sink before he crept sideways towards the entryway. After clearing the hallway, he stepped back inside to retrieve the folded paper, a map of an adjacent neighborhood with a location and a time. Michael let out the breath he'd been holding. Now he could take a shower…

Burke had made contact. Tomorrow he could to move forward with the mission. The sooner it was over, the sooner he could get on with the rest of his life… and his friends too… whatever that might look like…

~~I went to bed I was thinking about you
And how it felt when I finally found you
It's like a movie playing over in my head
Don't wanna look 'cause i know how it ends~~

"You remembered my story…"

"I'd never forget it."

"Fi…"

A light hand on his arms, a light brush of her lips to his cheek, a light whisper into his ear…

"Take care…"

"Thot's tha kiss ya give when tis over…"

~~All the words that I said that I wouldn't say
All the promises I made that I wouldn't break~~

"After I get Grey, I'll leave. I'm out."

~~It's last call, last song, last dance
'Cause I can't get you back, can't get a second chance~~

"No, Michael, you did what you wanted to do."

~~And now, I guess
This is as good as it gets~~

When you love a spy, you have to be willing to make that sacrifice too.

~~Don't wake me
'Cause I don't wanna leave this dream~~

"Michael, all I wanted was to be by your side. I'm not leaving it again."

~~Don't wake me
'Cause I never seem to stay asleep enough
When it's you I'm dreaming of
I don't wanna wake up~~

A rooster crowed in the distance and Michael awoke with a start, disoriented by his new surroundings.

So much had happened in this past week or so that he took a moment before rolling out of bed to clear his head. Not only of his phantom Iover, whose visits more recently had been as painful sometimes as they had once been pleasurable, but of the actual nightmares that were occupying his conscious hours.

He still felt guilty about burdening Sam and Jesse with the full knowledge of what they were up against, but the dark haired operative had to admit it was a relief being able to bring in people he could trust instead of the ace operators with fantastic covers that his case officer had wanted to foist upon on him.

No one wonder the man had gotten everyone he'd tried to get close to Randall Burke killed already.

It was tough enough dealing the deep cover mission without adding having to compensate for Strong's incompetence and arrogance at almost every step. The spy was as certain as he could be without directly asking that his best friend had been the one to discern his play when he'd stood with his exposed back to the window in an effort to prove the snipers overrunning the warehouse he'd secured were not his.

"You're right. You deserve answers, only I can't give them to you. All I can do is ask the man who can and then it's up to him… You're on a path, Michael. All will be revealed in time, I promise."

Realizing Randall Burke was part of an organization and not running his own show plus that everything he had done for the man who he'd saved a decade ago in Dagestan had all been a pretext to draw out Rafael Serano, because the infamous terrorist had information the people Burke worked for wanted, had been surprising but not totally unexpected. Tradecraft was called the hall of mirrors for a reason.

Far more deeply disturbing was what his former fellow agent had expected him to do once they'd failed to get their hostage to talk and had discovered where the man's family was living. He might have been able to bluff Tyler Brennan into believing he was cold enough to assassinate a child, but Michael hadn't actually walked in her dorm room at her Switzerland prep school and held a gun to Annabelle's head.

But he had done that to Rafael Serano's daughter… right before her father had cracked and then died.

The only way to get through a mission like that is to remind yourself that to stop a monster, sometimes you have to pretend to be one.

Michael threw his legs over the side of the high bed and sat up, then dropped his elbows onto his knees, scrubbing his hands over his head. Yesterday by sunset, he had been back in that Dominican hellhole, a freshly purchased pint of rum in his possession as he'd made his way back to call his supervisor.

He'd been so shaken by the circumstances that he'd called the man directly. He couldn't wait for another clandestine meeting to update Strong in person and he'd almost wanted to be exposed.

"This mission is getting out of control. Strong, you need to talk to your people at the CIA, make them understand I can't do this."

"Michael, calm down. I know you're upset."

"Upset? Burke almost had me kill a child."

But nothing he'd said had mattered. The man in charge only ever had one answer for him.

"Now he wants me to pull Sam and Jesse in for a job in Cuba and… I can't do it."

"You can't? You have to! You know as well as I do that it's not just your ass on the line if this mission goes south. Michael, do you understand?"

Oh yes, he'd understood… all too well… As he'd stood there with that tumbler of alcohol, ready to crawl back into the bottle, the inner homegrown rage that he had used to fuel himself from the day he'd set foot in Ft Benning decades ago rose up and he'd launched the container of spirits at the wall.

He'd stared at the glass infused liquid covering the plaster for a moment and then had taken all of his belongings from that decrepit apartment . Wherever he was going next, he was never coming back here.

It hadn't taken long. What he'd owned for the last year fit in a backpack. He'd spared a moment to appreciate the irony of coming full circle. He'd left home at 17 with nothing but some clothes and $50 bucks in his pocket. Forty six years later, he was $30 dollars poorer for his troubles and his choices… no, his fixations, had left him under the thumb of an imbecile, one using his attachments to his friends and family, to further Strong's manic pursuit of Randall Burke for the last eight years across three continents.

He didn't want to do it, but he knew he had to. There was no way to finish this job without his friends.

Michael pulled the burner out of the cargo pants he'd slept in. His thumb hovered over the call button. Looking around the third story corner hotel room with a balcony view of the Old Town area where Burke had set him up once they'd learned their target was in Havana at some factory near the South Port, the covert operative reviewed his tactical situation in light of this past week and his new intel from Miami.

Getting them involved could put them on the wrong end of a Cuban firing squad, but not involving them could land them all in a CIA prison if the mission failed. He couldn't afford to let Burke bring someone else in to complete the job. Whoever this woman was, his former fellow agent had his own laser focused obsession with rescuing her from the hands of the Russians. Having experienced that brand of Slavic hospitality, he could certainly sympathize. Everything he'd done up until now had been leading to this.

The dark haired man closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, ignoring the nausea that was trying to settle in.

"Yeah, Sam, about that fishing trip… It's a go. There'll be a 30 footer with a Bimini top waiting in your slip, twin Merc's fueled up and ready to fly. Yeah… I thought we'd go to the Colonel's spot. There's a café in the marina there where Larry introduced me to that coffee, you know the one he was always raving about? Great, yeah, that's great. See you in a couple hours. Yes, really… I'll pick you up."

With not much to do but wait and hope that the ex-SEAL had correctly interpreted all the clues to lead him to Havana, where one of the their former targets Colonel Ivan Prokov had retired to after they had successfully made him look like an unstable drunkard to the FSB and thereby saving Sam's life from a blown mission with bad intel, and the little spot where he'd been dropped on his first mission with Larry, Michael walked slowly to the balcony, peering through the thin curtains to the bustling street below.

Almost losing his best friend back in '99 on lousy HUMMIT had the covert operative thinking about the man who never missed an opportunity to remind him that he was supposedly running the show and that everyone's freedom hung in the balance on his every action… like he could forget that any time soon.

There was so much wrong with their pursuit of a former CIA officer who had actually gone rogue

Michael shook his head, remembering the moment he'd realized that the Agency had never cared whether Andrew Strong would succeed in his mission. Michael Westen was supposed to be killed, like every other agent who'd been assigned to the case, or rot away in the Dominican Republic, out of their hair and not their problem once he'd convinced his friends he was back in voluntarily. In retrospect, he understood now why they had leveled the most surveillance at Sam, besides his thorny past with them; because the former Navy man had the most resources at his disposal financially and politically.

Michael felt guilty again for dragging his two brothers in arms into it, but as the Company had obviously discerned, while he was highly effective on his own, they were nothing short of unstoppable as a team.

And Strong, for all his stupidity, had been smart enough to figure that out and ensure he was isolated from them, even beyond the point of all operational sense once it should have become apparent they needed to combine forces. No matter, the older man was all on board with using Jesse and Sam now.

However, Mr Porter and Mr Axe were than less enthusiastic once they'd met up with him at the café.

"Look, Mike, Jesse and I will back you up, but tell me there's an end game here. When do we get to take this sonuvabitch down?"

"As soon as I find out who Burke is working for. This is much bigger than just one guy, Sam."

"Great, let me guess. Strong and the CIA brass want you to find out how much bigger."

"This doesn't end until I do."

And the pair had become downright pessimistic when they gotten the full mission brief and hadn't wasted any time letting him know how they felt about storming an abandoned refrigerator factory with only one way in and one way out, half a dozen snipers on the roof, steel reinforced front doors, solid block concrete walls, lots and lots of cameras and little to no intel on what lie between them and Sonya Lebedenko, the woman Burke was determined to extract from that highly secure GRU black site prison.

"Okay, Mike, it's official, you've gone crazy!" Sam shouted as soon as he'd opened the door to the suite.

"I can't have Burke bringing other people on this-"

"This is impossible!" the older man declared.

"My mission with the CIA is riding on this!"

"Well, it's not gonna mean much if we all get pumped fulla lead, Mike," Jesse countered, the voice of reason in this scenario. "And there's a good chance of that happening if we go in there guns ablazing. You know I'm right."

And he did know that. The tall bald former CIFA agent was correct. But that didn't mean they had to go at it head on. One by one he and Jesse worked through every one of Sam's objections until they had a workable plan: Michael would approach the Russians as the turncoat the Agency had said he was, on the run from the CIA, who happened to be in town to raid them and steal their high value prisoner, so they needed to move Sonya Lebedenko now. All that was left to do was make one Ivan Gorev, the GRU Deputy Chief at the Miami consultant look like he had been doing something besides Moscow's bidding.

"We get someone in Miami to grab this guy, make it look like he's spying for the US. Then Mike goes in, tells 'em about a traitor in their ranks. They might buy the story."

"That could work… now this someone in Miami, any ideas?"

He knew what had to be done… and he knew who had to do it.

"I'll call Fi."

~~Don't wake me
We're together just you and me
Don't wake me
'Cause we're happy like we used to be
I know I've gotta let you go
But I don't wanna be alone.~~

Sam and Jesse had left him alone in the suite momentarily, as Michael was unable and unwilling to have the necessary conversation in front of the other two men. If he'd had any more room in his heart or in his head for another painful emotion, he would have been just a little bit embarrassment by how long it took to prepare himself.

There was the trained operative who knew exactly what he needed to say to get what he required for the mission. He was doing this for her after all whether she knew it or not, because there was no way he could allow her to be deported; it was a guarantee death sentence for her, likely a painful one at that.

Then there was the man who had wronged the woman he loved too many times to count and he needed to apologize for that, not only because he owed her that much, but because there was always the possibly given what he was doing that he might not get another opportunity to offer his contrition.

Taking a deep breath, Michael hoped that both sides of him had the right answer. He scoffed at the foolishness that had his heart skipping a beat waiting for her the pick up the call. What if she didn't—

"Hello?"

"It's me."

"Well, I assume you're not calling to catch up."

"Fi, I need your help."

There was a short sigh and then a sharp inhale. He hoped she'd let him finish before she hung up on him once she'd finished giving him a piece of her mind. The dark haired man stared out the window at the street below and braced himself for whatever it was, because he deserved it.

"Michael, I have spent the last year trying to put my life back together. What was left of it… Now, things are good. I-I… can't drop everything when you call… Not anymore."

Given what he'd done to her boyfriend, he supposed he should count himself lucky she'd answered him.

"You're right and I'm sorry I-."

He could hear the hesitation in her voice, in her determination to stand up for herself.

"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…"

"Look, Michael—" she cut him off, resolute.

"Please let me finish."

"Out of the CIA…?"

"Out of all of it… How does that sound?"

"I'm sorry I made a promise that things were gonna change and then I broke that promise. You deserve better." His teeth sank into his upper lip nearly hard enough to draw blood. The spy and her lover came together, each using the same words for different motivations. "I'm glad you have that now…"

~~These dreams of you keep on growing stronger
It ain't a lot but it's all I have
Nothing to do but keep sleeping longer
Don't wanna stop cause I want you back~~

And then there was nothing to do but wait and pray and try to keep his breathing under control because his alternatives if she refused and the odds of accomplishing this without her were low. As the silence grew, he blinked back the moisture that had no place in his eyes right now but came nonetheless.

"What d'ya need?"

Michael leaned his forehead against the window, the conflicted feelings arising from the crack in her voice making it momentarily difficult to concentrate. It was good that she picked up on where they were going with the kidnapping and incrimination of the Russian spy in Miami as quickly as she had, because by the end of the conversation, her ex-lover was unable to entirely keep his own voice under control.

~~Don't wake me
'Cause I don't wanna leave this dream
Don't wake me
'Cause I never seem to stay asleep enough
When it's you I'm dreaming of
I don't wanna wake up~~

"Fi, I- I… Thank you, Fi."

Michael was grateful when she terminated the call. He hadn't been able to bring himself to do it. Swiping at his treacherous eyes with the back of his hand, he straightened up and pulled back from the dirty pane that separated him from the world outside. When this was all finally over, he would go back.

~~Don't wake me
We're together just you and me
Don't wake me
'Cause we're happy like we used to be
I know I've gotta let you go
But I don't wanna be alone.~~

He would say his piece when he was, when they were all, actually free and then he would wait. Because whatever her decision, he would honor it. But only when he was absolutely sure this was well and truly over. Until then, he had a job to finish or they would never get to have that very necessary conversation.

~~I went to bed I was thinking about you
'Cause I don't wanna leave this dream
It ain't the same since I'm living without you.
'Cause I never seem to stay asleep enough
I know I've gotta let you go
But I don't wanna wake up.~~