Grand Gestures and Day To Day Life: 6.1.1

A/N: The week after Anson flees, Michael copes with Fi gone.Want to start at the beginning? Click here.

6.1.1

The first night he, Sam, Jesse, and Pearce dissected every piece of paperwork Anson had in his office, his home, his personal computer, everything.

They have a list of people to watch out for. People who Anson may be blackmailing, or may, like that monster he sent to Maddie, be using to destroy other lives.

But there's nothing on Rebecca in any of the paperwork they find, which doesn't bode well for the idea that anyone they've pegged now is likely to be one of Anson's pawns.

They are not any closer to finding Anson. His tracks are too well covered for that.

On the upside, Jesse remembers the account where the money went, so they begin tracking it, working on cutting off Anson's funding.

Dawn breaks, and with it they break up.

Michael does not go back to the loft. He goes with Sam and crashes at his place. Hours later, he's three quarters asleep and half hears Sam explain to Elsa what's happened.

At lunch time they get together again, and go back to work.

 

The second night Sam took him to his mom's house, certain that Mike in the loft, alone was an awfully bad idea.

She fed him something, he has no idea what it was, no idea of much of anything that happened that night. Mostly he stumbled around in a haze of shell-shocked failure, vaguely aware of Sam answering his mom's questions in a soft voice.

Lunch to dinner and then beyond, and nothing. They've got no leads, no ideas, though the money is once again flagged. Now there's just waiting, hoping that Anson's crazy or sloppy enough to actually touch that account.

But Anson isn't lazy or sloppy.

The next morning he woke up in his old room, his tongue coated with foul tasting fuzz and a headache that felt like it was going to drill out of his skull and make his left eye explode. He's awfully sure Sam slipped him something in his dinner. Hangovers don't feel like this, but even if they did, he knows he didn't drink any alcohol last night.

The third night he takes her pillow off the bed, and retreats to the sofa on the loft. He wants her scent but can't stand to be in their bed alone.

He's halfway asleep when he realizes he's sulking about being alone in their home, their comfortable, free, open, and filled-with-good-things home, and she's locked in a prison cell.

He spends the next two hours beating the absolute hell out of the punching bag.

When his fingers are black and blue and will no longer form a fist, he collapses onto the sofa, holding her pillow, and falls into an exhausted sleep.

The fourth night, ghosts of Fi seem to whisper around him. He feels steeped in the lack of her. The flowers are starting to wilt. He waters them. Her snow globes catch the light and shine it at him while he walks from the shower to the sofa. The handcuffs, reproaching him for trying to cage her, mocking him for failing her, are still hanging from the chain link wall.

The fifth night he almost punches Jesse when he takes Fi's last meal out of the refrigerator, wondering what's making that odd smell.  It's Chinese takeout, long past its prime. They hadn't been able to eat it together. He'd been running back and forth to Tampa, and she had some spare time, so she got them dinner. He got home later, and sat with her, at the table, talking about what Vaughn had told him, eating his half. She'd finished hers hours earlier, tucking the remains away for a quick lunch.

Jesse looks at him sadly, while Sam says, "Mikey, it's growing mold. She's not going to want it when she gets back."

The sixth night, he spends going through Anson's files, again. And again. And yet one more time. And once after that. There has to be a crumb somewhere. Something, anything, that can open this up.

He's not really reading them. He's not really seeing the page in front of him.

Michael's hand strays to his pocket, touches the folded paper in it. He keeps her note with him at all times, though he hasn't re-read it since sitting in the Charger.  Sometimes he takes it out of his pocket and runs his fingers over the words. Usually he'll just touch it, and then start cursing about this whole thing.

She's trapped because of him. And he has to get her out, but he's got nothing.

The man who could fix anything, for anyone, can't do this.  There are no leads. Pearce can't help him. No one at Langley is willing to touch this.

He can't even find out which prison she's in. But he knows the first thing he's going to do when he gets that information is start on a plan to break her out. One way or another, Fi is getting out.

The seventh day, Sam brings him a letter, and with it, an idea of something that might help.

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