Title: Choice and Change

Summary: Michael is back in Miami for the first time since he and Fiona nearly died with their hands joined over the trigger of a suicide bomb during the stand-off with Vaughn's team. Michael's only got a twenty-four leave, but in the world of Burn Notice, that's plenty of time for anything to happen, and everything to change. Set between the end of Season 4 and the start of Season 5.

Author's Notes: Hello, and welcome to my second Burn Notice story! As it says in the summary, this story takes place between the end of Season 4 and the beginning of Season 5, just before Michael and the CIA get to work hunting down the people on the NOC list. There's a big (i.e. six month) time gap in there that I thought would be interesting to play with and re-imagine, while providing a bit more emotional closure to the dramatic end of Season 4.

Some of the backstory stuff in this fic is taken from episodes of the show, while other things are invented by me; if you want to know which is which, feel free to drop me a line. For the purposes of the story, I also made one little, hopefully forgivable change to show canon; whereas the show has Michael cooking for Fiona on his last day in Ireland, I've got it the other way around. Overall: I'm hoping the story had a good Burn Notice-y mix of humour, action, and feels—but you'll have to judge for yourself :)

Shout-out to all the other writers, reviewers, and fans keeping this wonderful show alive—I wouldn't be writing without your fabulous inspiration.

Review if you like, but most of all… enjoy!

Disclaimer #1: My heroes always practice safe, consensual sex.

Disclaimer #2: I don't own Burn Notice, and I don't get compensated (in a financial sense) from fanaticizing about its world and its characters.

Prologue

Eleven Years Ago…

The last day of the best year of Michael Westen's life was unseasonably warm and sunny. It was early evening when he finally made it back to the north side of Dublin from his meeting with his handler in the city centre, but the late April sun still lingered, drawing after-work crowds from the pubs out onto the narrow, cobbled streets. It was an almost festive atmosphere, surreal in its inappropriateness—at least for Michael. It was the last day of the best year of Michael Westen's life—which meant it was also the worst day.

As he walked, he did his best to acknowledge the friendly glances of people he knew by sight, if not always by name. It was an instinctual gesture; every face was a blur, each simple word of greeting muffled and nonsensical. To the same degree that he was oblivious of his surroundings, he was hyper-aware of his body. Each step felt stiff, his joints petrified by a stifled desire to run; he had to bury his hands in the pockets of his jacket to hide the nervous, erratic flexing of his knuckles.

Six blocks from Fiona's flat, he bought a large bunch of white tulips from a street vendor. He was moved by the relevant symbolism of the flowers, whose simple, natural beauty signalled the dependable miracle of rebirth. Two blocks from Fiona's flat, he discarded the flowers in a rubbish bin, disturbed by his sentimentality and frightened by the thought of revealing it so obviously to Fiona. Yet he immediately realized that discarding the flowers was nearly as dangerous as purchasing them. His skin burned with the strange looks he garnered upon tossing the flowers in the bin, from an older woman in a plaid shawl and a man in his twenties wearing fluorescent orange headphones. The terrifying reality of his emotional unbalance thudded in his chest; it was as though he'd thrown all his training away in the bin along with the flowers.

He hesitated only briefly at the front door leading up to Fiona's second-floor flat. After the incident with the flowers, every second felt like an eternity; he imagined dozens of eyes watching him from the upper-floor windows of the adjoining buildings, wondering why it was taking him so long to open the door to his own home.

Shoving the key into the lock, he began his final journey up the familiar narrow stairwell with the peeling yellow wallpaper. At the top of the stairs, he paused for a longer moment in the privacy of the hallway. For thirty seconds, he contemplated turning back the way he'd come. This time, however, his training won out. If he left without seeing her, she'd think he'd been captured or killed. Fiona needed to see and know that he'd left of his own volition—even if it wasn't true.

Finally, Michael raised his fist to knock on the chipped green paint of Fiona's door.

"Fiona?" he called, speaking in Michael McBride's Irish brogue. "It's me. Can I come in?"

There was a brief shuffle of movement before the door swung open, greeting Michael with the smell of cooking and Fiona's face, eyebrows raised in a question under her shaggy bangs.

"You don't have to ask, y'know."

"I know. But I wanted to."

She continued to eye him suspiciously for a moment, then decided to tease him. Performing a sweeping bow with one arm, she opened the door wider and declared, "Won't you please come in, Michael McBride."

Michael managed a slight smile as he stepped past her into the flat. He'd barely made it over the threshold when Fiona slammed the door behind him and seized his jacket in both hands. With improbable strength, she threw him back against the closed door. For a split second, he wondered if she knew, half expecting her to knee him in the groin or strangle him; he'd already decided not to fight back, to take his punishment while apologizing through a bloody mouth. But then Fiona's lips covered his, and he could only thank her.

The wave of tension that had peaked at the sight of Fiona's door came crashing down at the reality of her body pressed against his, her strong, small hands tearing at his clothes and flesh. Michael was swallowed in the deluge; he clung to Fiona like a drowning man to a life raft, sucking her lips and tongue like her body contained his last reservoir of air.

He reached under the pockets of her jeans and she jumped into his grip, throwing her legs around his lower back. His lips stayed locked to her mouth and throat as he carried her stumblingly toward the couch, dropping his own body first into the sagging cushions and pulling Fiona down on top of him.

His hands clawed at Fiona's sweater as hers wrestled with the hardware on his jeans. The frantic scramble to nakedness ended with him sitting upright against the arm of the couch as Fiona straddled him, each of them with one foot on the floor. Michael's face was nestled in Fiona's breasts when her warmth encased his own. At first, he surrendered to her rhythm. But soon they shared a furious harmony, her breasts slapping against his cheeks as she scraped her fingernails through his hair and moaned toward the ceiling. Her short, sharp nails tore a jagged path up his spine as she gasped and shuddered around him; he lost himself a moment later, clenching hands filled with her hair as he bared his teeth into the hard centre of her chest.

Michael fell backwards and Fiona went with him, her cinnamon brown hair falling in a wave across his shoulder. He cupped her shoulder blade and breathed along with her residual, pulsing heat, too sated to dread the inevitable separation of their bodies. For a few precious moments, he forgot it was the last time he'd ever hold her—that in a few short hours, he'd only have the memory of her lithe curves and lavender shampoo. As reality crept up his spine and made a heavy home in his heart, he realized that even those memories would fade over time; eventually, he'd remember the fact of her smell, but not the smell itself. Years from now, that's all Fiona would be to him—a collection of facts, filed between Serbia and wherever he went next.

Fiona finally shifted in his grip, propping herself up on his chest. Her hazel eyes glittered as she gazed at him, her flushed cheeks rounded by a content-but-playful smile. Michael struggled to corral his own features. He told himself to return her happiness, but couldn't tell if he succeeded. The flood of passion had almost completely drained away, marooning him in the desert of reality.

"Welcome home, Michael Westen," she purred.

Michael swallowed, forcing down a tightness that was more than thirst.

"It's good to be home," he managed, speaking in his American accent. Since Fiona had discovered his real identity, he'd tried to speak in his true voice whenever he was sure they were alone. Dropping his cover wasn't wise, even within the confines of Fiona's flat. But Fiona was the one woman who frequently made him abandon his wisdom. His true voice had become a symbol of their intimacy, a sanctuary from the many layers of lies that ensnared everything else. For Michael, that sanctuary was already shattered, but Fiona needed to believe it was intact.

"How was your meeting?" she asked.

"Fine," he lied. "Routine."

Fiona nodded carelessly, her easy, unexpected trust destroying the final pieces of his already broken heart.

Using his chest as a springboard, Fiona hopped off the couch and onto her feet.

"Now that we've had desert," she said, bending all the way over to collect her bulky grey sweater off the floor, "I guess we should have dinner."

By the time Michael had reached his own t-shirt and jeans, Fiona was buttoning her fly and jogging toward the kitchen.

"Did you cook?" he asked.

"I made lamb stew," Fiona called from the kitchen. "My mother's recipe. You're going to love it."

Michael wasn't hungry, but he ate anyway—because of the trouble Fiona had gone to, and because he couldn't afford to arouse her suspicions. He told her the stew was delicious, and he wasn't lying; Fiona didn't cook often, but when she did, she was good at it, her chemical and mechanical skills translating easily into less destructive ventures.

The rest of the evening passed in the same surreal, sickening blur as his walk home from the city centre. Michael made sure Fiona drank enough red wine to make her drowsy, and used his own tiredness as an excuse to bow out of any additional sexual escapades. It was a miracle Fiona didn't try to push the issue; his reluctance was rare, and usually, it only encouraged her.

Michael pretended to sleep until the early hours of morning, waiting until he was certain Fiona was well and truly asleep to extricate himself from her arms and bed. It took him ten minutes to collect his personal effects from Fiona's drawers and closets and pack them into a black duffel bag. Though he mortgaged all his considerable skill to do his work as quickly and quietly as possible, he was surprised Fiona didn't wake up. The piece of Michael's brain that could still feel was so overwhelmed with sick grief, he couldn't believe it wasn't somehow detectable.

Training and an instinct for survival allowed him to complete his work with a mechanical efficiency that only broke twice, first at the sight of the framed photographs on the mantle above the dormant fireplace. Michael appeared in just one image, taken by Fiona's old Polaroid; it showed himself and Fiona mid-kiss, half-smiling and lost in each other's eyes. Michael removed that and one other photograph of Fiona from their frames; he wrapped both in a sheet of note paper, which he then tucked under the insole of his shoe. His insole would hide the photographs from his handlers, but he couldn't hide from Fiona the fact that he'd taken them. A secret part of him hoped she'd take the theft as an invitation—that she'd fight for him, as she'd done before.

He betrayed his training again when he allowed himself to look in on Fiona one final time. Standing on the threshold of the bedroom doorway, he watched her narrow chest rise and fall; her left arm was draped limply across the pale blue pillow, her utterly blank features signalling the depths of her oblivion. Watching her, Michael felt nothing. The emotion would come later, and repetitively, for years; ironically, the moment's numb detachment would allow him to recall it with nightmarish precision.

A black sedan was waiting for him in a laneway a block away from the flat. Michael tossed his duffel bag into the back seat and climbed in after it. The driver started the engine in response to Michael's nod of confirmation.

The last day of the best year of Michael Westen's life ended in the air above the Atlantic Ocean, Michael's too-warm forehead resting against the cool surface of an airplane window. His eyes were open, staring at nothing.