Grand Gestures and Day To Day Life 7.0.1

Want to start at the beginning? Head here.

A/N: Okay, I'm placing my official bet for where this season is going to start out. Here's some very dark pre-season warm up. Not sure if the plot bunny will bite again between now and 7.1, but if it does, you'll all be the first to know.

Michael's listening to a cover of Here Without You by 3 Doors Down.

---

7.0.1.

Michael Westen is not the kind of guy who sits in a club listening to sad music pouting about a lost love.

His cover does.

And he's having a very hard time keeping himself divorced from his cover right now.

One hundred days that made me older, since the last time that I saw your pretty face.

It's been more than a hundred days, but not many. 103? 105? He forced himself to stop counting a while ago.

No. Michael Westen does not listen to sad music and pout. He does not sit, hunched, at a bar, hearing a cover band warbling about being separated from the one person who matters most. Michael Westen has not once done that, not for himself.

Though he does seem to have a lot of covers that do.

He played the game. He played it longer and harder than anyone before him, and likely anyone after. He's smarter, harder, more experienced, and more desperate than anyone who's ever played. He put everything he had into it, including the lives of the only people he loved, including his brother, and he lost.

"You can't have the job and the girl."

He lost the girl.

He lost the love of the job.

These days he's just going through the motions, because it's easier to pretend that he cares than it is to eat his gun. Because, no matter how tempting the weight of it is in his hand, let alone the taste of metal on his lips, he can't do that to his mom.

Of course, he might not have to.

He can see it in his handler's eyes. Once the thing with Card was wrapped, and it took a lot less time than anyone had thought it would, they were left with a man too dangerous to let go, and too broken to give anything important.

That's the point of this and all the other nameless missions they've sent him on. Idiot mission after idiot mission, nothing worth his time or effort. Lots of danger, little intel.

They've sent him off to die.

He's in... Hell, he doesn't remember what country this is.

They say this life is overrated.

Fuck it is. The voices around him are speaking Russian mostly. He's in Moscow. The drink is Vodka, and he's had way more than a few of them.

At the rate he's going, if he doesn't get killed, he's going to wash out in an alcoholic haze, like Sam did.

He read Card's files on him, got to see his psych evals. Words like damaged and broken were in there.

If he was broken before, he's fucking shattered now.

There's not a man sitting at that bar, not anymore. Now there's just... a job.

And the job needs to be done. And maybe he'll be breathing when it's done. And maybe it won't. And maybe, if he makes it to tomorrow, he might decide breathing matters.

Or not.

I think about you baby, and I dream about you all the time.

Maybe tomorrow he won't dream.

38 Weeks: Week 247

Week 247

There were certain things Michael Westen expected about having an enormously cute little girl. Dresses, he expected dresses. Tea parties with Nana and Gram, sure, he was ready for that. Princess costumes for Halloween, of course (though Elise's costumes always involve swords and guns as well. She's way more Princess Leia than Cinderella. And considerably more her mother's girl than any Hollywood princess, ever.)

He wasn't expecting repeated bouts of flower girl duty.

But, when you've got a ridiculously cute little girl, with big blue-gray eyes and brown-black curls, and none of your other buddies do, you get to go to a lot of weddings and spend a lot of time going over how it's the little girl's job to walk straight up that aisle and drop the flowers on the runner.

Elise is an expert at it now.

The first time she did it, three days after she turned two, the instructions were pretty simple. Hold the flowers, walk straight up the aisle to Daddy, and drop the flowers while you walk.

After all, Daddy was right at the front of the church, standing next to Uncle Sam, the groom, so it wasn't like he'd be hard to find.

But there were a whole lot of people at that wedding. Between Sam's unending list of buddies and Elsa's numerous connections, both personal and business, there were over 400 people in attendance, so Elise got to the end of the aisle, saw everyone watching her, stopped dead, clutching rose petals in her hands, and burst into tears.

Fi got her calmed down, and held her hand, walking her up the aisle. But the flowers stayed in the little basket.

The second time was three months later, on an island known only by GPS coordinates.

Nana Katie was getting married, and she wanted all of her children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren there for the affair. Getting the entire Glenanne Clan in one place was a challenge, but lucky for Katherine, Sam had some strings he could pull, and he and Fi knew some awfully good smugglers. And there was a guy with a very secluded island who owed Mike a favor.

And, though that wedding would have been an MI5 wet dream of anti-British operatives, no one found out about it until months after it had happened.

Not that Elise knew anything about that. She just knew that it was her job, along with her sixteen older cousins and two younger ones, to throw flowers at Nana Katie and Popa Jim when they walked back down the aisle.

And she was good at throwing things, the flowers, the basket the flowers were in, and her cousin Sarah's basket, too.

The third wedding was held shortly after her third birthday, and just about everyone there seemed surprised to be there, especially the groom.

But Evan's girlfriend wanted to be a wife before she was a mother, and his step-father just happened to know someone who possessed a little girl who had copious flower girl experience.

Evan looked awfully green in his dress whites that day (how much of that was jitters versus post-bachelor-party-hangover was known only to the groom), but his bride was lovely, and the wedding, flowers and all, went off without a hitch.

Mike, Fi, and Jesse proceeded to spend most of the reception teasing Sam about how he was on the verge of being a grandfather.

He responded with great dignity by sipping his mojito and flipping them off.

It was a fun night.

And the fourth wedding, well, come on, this one can't be a surprise, right?

After three years in Mumbai, Dani Pearce had had enough. She'd looked at faked prescriptions until her eyes had bled, and she was done with it, done with the agency, and done with stupid bloody politicking. She got into the CIA to make the world a better place, and she'd spent three years doing nothing even remotely like that.

She moved back to Miami and went in search of the people she knew were working on making the world a better place.

From there, she and Jesse more or less set the land speed record for first date to engaged to married at nine weeks.

As Jesse once said, "Women in our line of work are like ghosts. Sure everyone knows someone who's seen one, but they aren't exactly easy to find." As soon as he found a woman who got it and him, he didn't see any reason to wait, and neither did she.

For the fourth wedding, almost four-year-old Elise had the flower girl thing down pat. Stand at the end, walk in before the bride, scatter petals in an arc pattern, go to the far end of the aisle, and then sit with Mom. (Dad was once again on groomsman duty.)

And now, before the start of the fifth wedding, Michael's once again getting his daughter ready. This one is a little different. Usually, Elise walks up the aisle, drops her flowers and then goes and sits with whichever parent isn't standing up with the rest of the wedding party.

This time though, Mike's giving away the bride, and Fi is her matron of honor, and Nana Katie is the other bridesmaid, so Elise's instructions have been modified to go sit with Uncle Sam and Aunt Elsa.

For Mike, the idea of giving away the bride is a bit surreal, or at least doing it now is. He's hoping, God willing, he'll be able to do it in the future. (Though if Elise waits as long as her mom did to get married, he'll be 88 when he walks her down the aisle. The idea of which he finds both troubling and amusing.)

Two years ago, after an amazingly thorough background check, Maddie started dating Adam. And they kept dating. And really seemed to hit it off. So it wasn't exactly a surprise when he proposed and they decided to get hitched.

Which is why Mike's standing next to his mom, watching his mother-in-law, wife, and daughter walk down yet another white runner toward a pastor and a happy looking groom.

If you had told twenty-year-old Michael that he'd spend the second half of his life surrounded by women, he'd have grinned. And if you had told him the women in question would be his wife, daughter, mother, and mother-in-law, he would have laughed in your face. The idea of a wife and daughter wasn't out of the question, but he was purposely seven thousands miles away from his mother, and had no intention of getting any closer.

If you had told thirty-year-old Michael that he'd spend the second half of his life surrounded by his wife, daughter, mother, and mother-in-law, he would have smiled and wondered at how he managed to pull it off. He certainly had the girl picked out, but getting things in order to build a life with her was something that had been weighing heavily on his mind. Plus, he wouldn't have been able to think of any way to keep his cover intact and somehow get his mother to move to Ireland. Among other things, Michael McBride's mother was dead, so having her somehow show up, alive and American, would be an issue.

If you had told forty-year-old Michael that he'd spend the second half of his life surrounded by women, and that those women would be his wife, daughter, mother, and mother-in-law, he would have walked out of the room. The whole relationship thing, which he'd decided was something he couldn't make work, had gotten considerably more complicated because for the previous three weeks Fi had been back in his life.  He might in fact be a bastard for leaving her once, but only a complete asshole breaks the same woman's heart twice. And his mom was calling him thirty times a day driving him completely bonkers. The idea was to avoid her, not spend more time with her. Meanwhile the idea of a daughter or a mother-in-law was so alien that he'd have been unable to wrap his mind around it.

Fifty-year-old Michael, on the other hand, has settled into the idea pretty well.

Elise has finished strewing flowers and has sat next to Sam and Elsa.

"Ready, Ma?"

She smiles at him. "Yes."

"Then let's go."

38 Weeks: The Thirty-Eighth Week

A/N: Burn Notice romantic fluff with a side of angst. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.

On the first day of the thirty-eighth week, Elise Westen came home, as babies often do, carried by her father.

Her mother got in the house, sat on the sofa, and promptly fell asleep. Between the pain meds and the fact that Elise seemed to be under the impression that meals should be served every two hours, Fi was beat.

So, it was three days after she was born, that Michael got his first moments really alone with his daughter.

Moments being the operative word because both his mother and Fi's showed up within minutes of each other, and him, and whisked Elise out of his arms, while tutting over Fi and making sure that she was properly comfy.

Then his mom shoo-ed him into his room, told him to get a nap, because he'd be on baby duty that night, and he'd need the sleep.

So he did.

Seven hours later, as he walked Elise around the house, through the blue-lit gloom of midnight, trying, praying, begging her to go to sleep, he was actually pretty glad he had gotten the nap.

And when she did fall asleep, all seven pounds of her curled between his collar bone and sternum, he very carefully lay down next to Fi, and got a quick nap as well, both of his ladies by his side.

 

38 Weeks: The Thirty-Seventh Week

A/N: Burn Notice romantic fluff with a side of angst. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.

On Monday, Doctor Johnson said, "The baby is still in breech position. We might want to think about an eventual c-section. If she moves, things will be fine, but in my experience babies usually flip into head down position long before this, and the ones that don't usually have a reason for not doing it, like a short umbilical cord, or" and Doc Johnson looks at Fi meaningfully, "a very tight pelvis is making it hard to maneuver."

Which is why, two days later, as Michael stood in a hallway next to the surgical theater in the obstetrics ward at Miami Dade General, dressed in disposable surgical scrubs, he's not in any way surprised to be there.

But not being surprised is having very little effect on his nerves. He's been preparing for this for two days, trying to be calm about it. As Dr. Johnson said, it happens all the time, that one in three babies in the US is born by a c-section, and for Fi's age group the numbers are even higher, but right now, as he's standing there, on the other side of that door a stranger is shoving a needle into Fi's spine, and Michael is having a very hard time being calm about it.

He almost wishes he smoked, or could smoke, because he'd at least have something to do with his hands besides clench them.

The door swings open as another scrub bedecked person heads in. He can hear dull voices, a quick laugh, Fi's, and that helps to relax him a little, whatever is happening in there can't be that bad if she's laughing, and then she shrieks which blows relaxed all to hell and gone, and only the fact that him bursting in is likely to startle the guy with THE NEEDLE IN HER SPINE keeps him from kicking open the door and strangling whoever made her sound that way.

The longest minute of his life passes before he hears her voice again. She's not yelling, and then there's another laugh, which is probably good, followed by retching, which makes his hands clench again.  

Ten more minutes pass before the door opens and one of the nurses lets him in.

She's lying on a surgical table. When she hears him come in, her head turns toward him.

"Hi."

"How are you feeling?"

"Really good, right now. Getting the epidural wasn't fun, but it was so worth is. Nothing hurts at all. I'd forgotten how great that is."

He stands next to her head and strokes her cheek, trying not to burst into scared questions about why there's an oxygen tube in her nose.

"She did just fine with the epidural," a nurse chimes in. "A contraction hit right while he was inserting the needle and she stayed perfectly still through it."

"Is that why you shrieked?"

Fi gives him an indignant look, or at least as close as a person in a hospital gown, with a paper bonnet over her hair and an oxygen tube in her nose can. "I did no such thing."

He can see them setting up a drape between him and the top half of Fi and where the surgery takes place. It's probably a good thing he won't be able to see them cut her open.

"We're going to get started. In a few minutes, you'll have a baby."

One of the nurses offers him a rolling stool, so he can sit next to her head. He does, one hand on hers, which is strapped to an extended arm on the table, and the other touching her forehead. Her eyes are closed, and he's focused on her eyelashes, trying not to hear what the doctors are saying to each other. He already has nightmares of Fi cut open and bloody, no reason to try and imagine what's happening on the other side of the drape.

After what was either a very slow few minutes or a very fast half hour (he's not sure which, though Elise's official time of birth would seem to indicate about seven minutes went by) a small cat meow sounding cry fills the room, and a nurse is asking if he'd like to cut the cord.

Fi's eyes are open now, so he kisses her and tells the nurse no. Elise won't remember this moment. But Fi might, so he'll stays with her, holding her hand until a woman in green scrubs hands him a very small, very warm bundle of tightly wrapped blankets, and both of them get to see their daughter's face for the first time, together.

She's tiny. He finds himself thinking that and feeling silly for it. Of course she's tiny. That's what newborn babies are. If they weren't tiny, that'd be a problem.

She's also pink, very warm, and quiet. Her eyes are open, the murky gray-blue of a newborn, and not really focused on anything, but moving around, looking at everything avidly.

Fi can't move her arms, so he holds Elise close, so she can nuzzle and kiss her. Fi does, whispering something, he's not entirely sure if they're words, and if they are words, if they're English or Irish Gaelic, but he figures that doesn't matter.

"Does she have hair?"

Michael peeks under the crocheted cap they put on Elise. "Yes. Lots of it. And it's black."

"Good." Fi giggles a little. "She's squinting at me; the same way you do when you run into something you find confusing."

"I'd imagine this whole thing is confusing to her."

Fi laughs at that, too. The morphine might be making her a little silly.

For a long minute, they just look at her.

"She's got your nose," Fi says.

Michael smiles. "I was just thinking how much she looks like you."

"Mr. Westen," the voice sounds almost hesitant to break into this moment.

Michael looks up and sees one of the nurses standing next to him.

"We're going to be moving Ms. Glenanne to the recovery room now. If you've got some people in the waiting area, now might be a good time to let them know the baby is here."

And for the first time in probably three hours, it occurs to Mike that Madeline and Katherine, and probably Sam, maybe Jesse, are in the waiting room.

"Oh. Yes." He starts to hand Elise to the nurse.

"You can take her with you. I'm sure your family wants to see her."

"Right." And it hits him. This is his daughter. He'll be taking her home in a few days.  He'll be there for her first steps, first words, first day of school, first date, and a flood of other images come crashing onto him.

It's a good thing he's sitting down, because he feels his knees go week and his hands start to shake.

Now the nurse looks like she wants to take Elise from him. "Are you all right?"

"Yes. Just—"

"Sit tight for a moment. Do you need me to take her?" Michael shakes his head no. "Okay. Don't stand up until you can do it without dropping her."

"Michael?" Fi's voice.  He can hear the unspoken echo of the nurse's question.

He strokes Elise's face, crying. "She's real, Fi."

"Lean down here." Michael does, and Fi kisses him. "I know. She's real, and she's here, and she's perfect."

"Oh God. She's is." His breath is coming fast, and for once he's not feeling any need to try and calm himself down. He can see the nurses and Doctor Johnson all want to get moving. And someone probably needs or will need this room soon, but he sits on the stool and says, "Can we have another minute?"

Doctor Johnson says, "Sure. But we do need to get moving soon."

"I know. Just..."

"We understand. Take your minute."

Michael holds her, looking at this tiny pink person with dark blue eyes, his nose, and a baby version of Fiona's face, and he can't imagine how he could have possibly been this blessed or lucky. He's not a religious man, though he's always believed in God, and for the first moment in his life he understands the idea of reverence, because it's the only word he can think of to describe how this moment feels.

After a few seconds, he feels his control coming back. He kisses Fi one more time. "I'll see you in a few minutes." She nods, and he stands.

He holds Elise against his chest, and whispers against her head, "Time to meet your grandmas. And probably Uncle Sam and Uncle Jesse."

 

38 Weeks: The Thirty-Sixth Week

Week Thirty-Six

                      

"Mike, I've got some bad news for ya, buddy."

Michael eyes Sam apprehensively. Sam had called an hour earlier, and asked to meet him, alone. "What, Sam?"

"Elsa noticed this in the paper yesterday." Sam hands Mike a piece of the newspaper.

Michael looks down and sees that there is indeed a problem, and understands why he didn't want to do this with Fi around. Sure, she hasn't been doing the traditional pregnant woman mood swing from hell routine, but she has been a bit easier to upset than normal.

"That's my house."

"Yeah, brother."

It's a notice in the paper for an auction. A foreclosed upon property is being sold tomorrow, and the house in question is the one Mike and Fi are currently living in.

"Your landlord doesn't really own that house. I had Barry do some digging for you, and well, no one's owned that house in three years. It's up for auction because the bank wants to get rid of it on the cheap."

"Great." No one in his right mind would call Michael Westen a coward, but that does not mean that he's got any desire to tell his extremely pregnant, likely to go into labor any minute now wife about how the house they live in is about to be sold out from under them, and how the bank that owns said house is likely to be extremely displeased about some of the modifications he's made to the place over the last five months.

Sam smiles at him. "Here's the good news. Barry got you a seat at the auction."

"Sam?"

"If you want to, you can buy it. You've got the funds, and Barry's got the corporation set up."

Which is how Westanne Holdings LLC., a subsidiary of RobinHobb Limited, which was part of the Finley Group, gained its first asset: a single family home just outside of Little Havana.