Disclaimer: Burn Notice and nearly all the characters mentioned herein belong to somebody else. We've just brought them out of the toy box for a while.

A/N: Welcome to the dark and dangerous world of Life with Larry, the first in a series of one shots about Larry Sizemore, the undead spy we all love to hate.

Some chapters will be very dark and intense (like this one) and others not as much, although still marked by the black humor that we associate with Lord of the Undead as Sam calls him. This is Larry we are talking about afterall!

These stories will cover Larry's life from 1988 through 2000. First up, who is Larry? Where did he come from? Who made him the man he became? These are some of the questions, but you may wish we never took the time to answer!

This series will update every Thursday night at 10:00 PM ET after #BurnerClub. If you don't know what that is, then join the fun every Thursday at 9:00 PM ET for live tweeting and DVD watching.

Much love and thanks to all the wonderful Burners out there who help us keep Burn Notice alive!

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Moscow, USSR 1988

He walked slowly back to his stolen car, arm pressed tight to his injured side, thankful for the bulky overcoat that hid a multitude of sins and kept out the world infamous Russian winter cold. The drive from the private ducha in the woods back into the city had exhausted him; but he had to keep moving. Clutching a bottle tight in one hand and his pistol in the other, the man returned to his transportation and headed for a place he could hide out until he had dealt with his wounds and his circumstances.

Sometimes, fighting is about tactical retreats. Surviving, living to fight another day, that's what you do.

He ascended the narrow metal staircase on shaky legs, leaning heavily against the wall on his good side. The dark haired man paused to catch his breath at the top of the landing and then moved into the small apartment over the unoccupied auto repair shop. No one would be back before Monday. The prior occupant had died last week and there would be no one by to disturb the meager contents or him. He had been damn lucky this time. He was still alive. He had lived to fight another day, but just barely.

Luck ain't a lady, Kid. She's a fickle bitch who can make you or break you. Even if you're the best at what you do, sometimes the other bastard gets luckier. That's when you have to be even better.

The words of his mentor echoed in his head as he prepared to clean the tiny tunnels the bullets had carved through his flesh. The alcohol he'd used to sterilize the blade was the local rot gut. A bleeding man would have attracted too much attention and a couple of gunshot wounds would be hard to explain away at the local hospital given the angle he'd been hit. He couldn't risk being identified by anyone.

Be careful when it looks like you're getting what you want. That's when you get careless—and careless will get you killed.

He had gotten sloppy. He'd taken his attention off the escort they had used to track their quarry. The woman was a top earner, a favorite of all the rich and powerful in the government and in the secret police. He knew if he shadowed her long enough, she would lead him to the man on the bed, who had information that he wanted, information that he was going to get before he handed him over to the CIA.

Whether you're in Moscow or in Minsk, call girls are a good source of information. Men say things to a good looking broad. They let down their guard. They start thinking with their dicks instead of their heads.

"Listen here now, lil lady, ya stop that bawlin', ya hear? Come along right quiet like now and thar won't any trouble," his colleague had pulled the shrieking woman from atop of her customer and off the bed.

Naked and but no longer hysterical, the blonde had been ushered into the next room by his partner, pointing a gun directly at the high dollar hooker's head, ensuring her silent cooperation. Once the door had closed behind them, he'd put the pair out of his mind. She was no match for an armed CIA agent.

Some people live and some people die, Kid. The idea is to make sure you're the former and not the latter.

He bit down hard on the pencil wrapped in cheap tissue while appreciating just how close he had come to being the latter and not the former. The first bullet had skipped off his rib, a quick in and out that if it had found its mark, he would have been treated to a collapsed lung at best and probably a lodged-in-his-heart shot at worst. Luckily, his opponent was only able to get her hands on the snub nose .38 back-up gun his now deceased associate had been carrying in his ankle holster.

Never trust a woman. They have lots of good uses, but they'll kill you if you don't keep your eye on 'em.

Sage advice he had ignored to his detriment. The second bullet had entered just below his ribs and exited just above his hip bone. If he had succeeded in coming all the way around the doorway to finish investigating the gun shots, he'd have been a dead man. But she'd shot too soon and he had pulled back just in time to see his target reaching under a pile of pillows behind his bald head for a weapon.

Some fights you can't win. You just gotta make sure you don't lose too badly.

If he hadn't already shot the KGB colonel he'd been sent to extract, he'd have killed the sonuvabitch all over again as he poured the hooch onto the entrance and exit wounds, clenching his teeth in an effort not to make any more noise than necessary. With the woman firing at him from behind good cover, he'd been forced to kill his asset-to-be before the man could bring the firearm bear on him.

They try to teach ya to give your life for the Cause, but lemme tell ya, pal, there's nothing in this world worth dying for. You're supposed to make the other guy die for his country. It's about surviving.

The полковник had certainly died for his country and the проститутка was going to get the opportunity to join him as soon as he was well enough to hunt the cyka down to make her pay for what she'd done.

Remember, Kid, they say that revenge is a dish which people of taste prefer to eat cold and there's something to that. But I'm here to tell ya, there's nothing like twisting a blade into their heart. You're never more alive than when you're killing someone up close and personal with your own two hands.

As much as he would have loved to be treating the blonde who'd almost killed him to a karambit across the throat, right now he had a hot knife that he needed to apply to himself. Running the hunting knife he always carried for luck over the open flame of the candle, he clamped down on the wooden object between his teeth and started cutting and searing the ragged flesh of the exit wound next to his hip.

Pain is a great motivator. It makes people really cooperative. The key is learning where to apply it.

White hot agony shot along his nerve endings, screaming their objections to the field medicine he was performing. He'd had to balance how much vodka he could pour down his throat to numb the protests of his body to what he was doing to it with the loss of fine motor control that came with the drinking.

Suddenly, there was another voice in his head. Not the voice of his mentor, the man who had been his savior, but the words of his long dead, rotting-in-his-grave-just-like-the-bastard-deserved tormentor.

You had rules and you had discipline and if you didn't follow the rules, there was hell to pay. Father was the man of the house. Sometimes, it wasn't nice, but we learned; we sure did learn. Now, face the wall.

Hands, not bullet holes, dug into his hips… a baton, not a .38 slug, impacted his ribs, knocking the breath out of him. He realized belatedly he was passing out, but he couldn't stop what he knew was coming.

Amusement accompanied his anguish… Invading his pre-adolescent body in the worst ways imaginable, grown men took their pleasure at his pain… no Vaseline for you…learn to swallow or else…face the wall!

NO! It was bad vodka… cheap home brew purchased with crumpled rubles near the pipelines in Kapotnya, where he'd been forced to lay low and treat himself from the gunshot wounds lest the OMSDON find him. It would almost be worse to be rounded up by the militsiya than it would the KGB.

That chilly October night, his twelfth birthday…a present he would never forget…gang raped and a cake.

The fumes here… that must have had something to do with the way his head was spinning. The nearby Moscow oil refinery happily pumped huge amounts of chemicals into the air, making the raion one of the most polluted and unhealthy of the hundred and twenty five districts in the Soviet capital. There was no escaping the distinctively foul odor that permeated the area and left him light headed to boot. Add the trip over badly lit, barely drivable back roads into the city and he was on the cusp of consciousness.

Use your rage, Kid. It's what makes you who you are. You don't have to keep all the darkness bottled up inside you all the time anymore. You know what you wanna do. When the time is right, you just aim yourself at the target and pull that trigger, baby. Live in the moment and enjoy what you're doing.

Yes… he had used his fear and his rage the night he and Thomas Marcano had escaped from Wilkinson's. Their feet had flown them across the melting snow heading fast towards the river that marked the back property boundary of the state run home for boys. Two of 780 youthful offenders housed in 5 units fleeing fast from what appeared to be a nice school or university, but that illusion was deliberate.

Tommy was down, slipping on the wet dead April grass near the river bank. He was torn, paralyzed with indecision. Help his friend or flee to freedom across the frigid waters? The guards were almost on them.

Shaking limbs staggered him towards the bed. Two clean towels would serve as bandages for now. He'd gotten all the lead out, no fragments to fester, and that was enough. It had to be. He couldn't afford to go into shock. Between the bad booze, bad air and blood loss, he needed to get horizontal in a hurry.

Johnny, turn the radio down…

He ignored the perennial call of his mother and went back to reading "The Shadow Unmasks." He wouldn't have had to turn it up if it wasn't for what she'd been doing in the next room. Poor, now widowed, a troubled pre-teen in tow, no source of income and two mouths to feed, his mother had taken to "entertaining" in the only other room in their run down flat. He never knew his actual father…He'd been a sailor moving through the Port of New York coming back from the war with loads of lies on his lips to get up his mom's skirt and viola… he was born…and abandoned. Who knew if it would have been any better or worse than having to live all those years with his abusive drunk of a stepfather?

Just something about squids he'd always hated. It had been his pleasure to make life as hard as possible for every frogman he was assigned to, short of botching the mission, and he did it with a pleasant smile on his face. He had been a cold warrior for almost twenty years… damned if some wet-behind-the-ears swabbie was going to tell him how to run a mission… The room spun as he tried to keep in the present.

They were beating Tommy to death… slowly, systematically, as painfully as the amateurs could manage. And they were making him watch…letting them know how he was going to die…after they'd had their fun with him as well…one last time…yes, they'd made him watch that, too. Their faces were burned into his brain for the rest of eternity…which probably wasn't going to be very long apparently…

He tried to fight his way through the haze of alcohol-fueled low blood pressure. He refused to die. Death hadn't taken him then and it wasn't going to take him now. Too many scores to settle, too much money to be made… He'd survived the Kitchen, he'd survived Wilkinson's. He would survive this too!

Turn tha fecking radio down, ya little bastid!

Not damned likely while his favorite show was on, "Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of men?" They both did. But John Reilly was an Irishman with a quick temper and faster fists. Domestic abuse was a cottage industry in Hell's Kitchen back in the day. The will of the church was forceful. For a marriage to end, someone had to die. And die somebody did indeed. The grieving widow never knew who ended it.

Helluva thing to get away with killing the bastard, his first homicide, and then get sent to Wilkinson's for a murder he hadn't committed. But Carcaterra and Sullivan, his supposed friends, paid dearly for the lies that cleared their names, but sent him and Tom to that state run hellhole for involuntary manslaughter.

Styler and Addison were down by the river, weighting down what was left of Thomas Marcano. If he was going to do something, it had to be now while there were only two of them with him. But, how the hell—

And then Hades itself appeared to have answered his prayer.

A figure stepped out of the trees, a man in a trench coat, wearing a fedora, a dark scarf wrapped around his features against the cold. With lightning speed, he broke the neck of Ferguson and the man's corpse had barely hit the ground before Nokes, the organizer of his personal tour through hell, was breathing his last, gasping and clutching weakly at the knife sticking out his heart, his savior giving it a final twist before releasing that body too. The duo at the river had been long gone before he'd turned back around.

He really should have been thanking the man for saving him, but the only thing he could see was the group leader of their floor, the man who had eradicated what tiny fragment of decency he'd had left, lying on the ground in front of him with the blade in his chest singing to him, singing like an angel's voice.

He was sweating now and freezing too. He no longer knew up from down. The room was a black swirl. But twenty seven years ago, he had been just as disconnected, only he had been seeing nothing but red.

He seized the hilt, pulling it out of the remains of Sean Nokes only to plunge it back in again and again, stabbing what was left behind multiple times and Ferguson as well. Then, using the handle as a brass knuckle, he smashed the noses, the mouths, the eyes of the two dead men until his own hands were covered in their blood and he had nearly exhausted himself from the cathartic effort. One last job, one last bit of retribution, one last thing to cut off and stuff down their throats! Finally, he remembered…

"I like your enthusiasm, but we gotta work on your technique if you're gonna be sticking around."

He stared dumbfounded into the black eyes above the dark cloth that blocked the view of his features.

"Who are you?"

"Who do you think I am?"

"The Shadow…" he had whispered, not caring that the barrier between his crazed blue eyes and the man's face should have been red. There was crimson color everywhere, on him, on them, on the ground.

"Hmmm…" The man chuckled. "And who are you?"

"John… John Reilly Jr…" He wasn't though. That had been the name they'd given him when she'd remarried. It was not his name. It was never going to be his name ever again. "But not anymore…"

"Good answer. You're a smart kid. You could go places with the right training. You wanna live? Then say the word, cuz the police are gonna be here eventually and we've got one helluva crime scene to clean up. Otherwise, I can make it quick and painless for you, kid, and I'll go back to what I was doing before."

He had stared at him blankly. He had thought he was dead and now he was being offered a new life.

And what a life it had become.

()()()()()()()

When the team had found him, he'd been hallucinating about killing Adam Styler, who became a beat cop with a coke problem, and the very special end he'd arranged for Henry Addison, who'd become a community outreach director in Brooklyn working for the mayor's office, but still liked to have sex with young boys. He'd overheard them talking from a great distance, or so it seemed to him, about the creepy smile he'd had on his face when they'd made their way into his little bolt hole and done the exfil.

"Well, son, that's cryin' shame about Brick, but Ah'm gonna see to it that he gits a medal fer whud he done. Yep, his pappy sure gonna be pleased… Course it'll have ta be a secret fer now."

Larry wasn't sure what kind of medals they gave out for letting a woman get the drop on you and blowing an operation all to hell and back. But if Senator J.B. Jamieson wanted someone to get a commendation, then they got one. Maybe he'd get the old bastard to give him one someday.

"JB, this young associate is my protégé, Larry Sizemore. Larry, I'd like you to meet Senator Jamieson."

The large man with the mane of brown hair that was busy turning gray had held out a meaty paw and given him a bone crushing hand shake. This was the final moment, a graduation of sorts. His mentor was introducing him to the most connected and corrupt man in all of the United States. He was handing over the reins, so to speak, and letting him fly free on his own. He never saw him again after that day.

"You just go on an' call me JB, sonny. Me and Mr. Cranston heah have known each other too long to be standing on ceremony now. Ah understand that you have quite a talent fer the work that needs to be done. Ah've always appreciated talent an' Ah knows how ta reward it. We do understand each other?"

Mr. Sizemore shook his head. Must be the drugs they had him on... He'd never had trouble losing focus like that before. Getting lost in the past with the Senator had distracted him from what the man was saying to him in the present. He was actually almost sorry about Breeland getting killed. His partner had proven himself useful during their time in the USSR, which was in the process of falling apart. Larry had been looking forward to helping give it the final push and capitalizing on the situation on its way down.

"Well, Ah needs ta git a going, son. Ah just wanted ta make sure muh favorite company man was okay."

"Appreciate your concern, Senator," and with that, he ended the call. He had almost bought the farm this time. It must have been a really close call for all the demons of his past to get loose, coming out to dance in his head. But they were locked up where they belonged again and he was Special Agent Larry Sizemore of the CIA again, as well as the world's best free-lance assassin that nobody ever talked about.

He stared at the three off-gray walls of his room in a secret field hospital hidden in the confines of West Berlin. He hadn't actively thought about the man who had saved him for a decade, but his lessons in tradecraft were so ingrained in his mind, it was like "Old Fritz" was there, talking in his head all the time.

Those lessons had started immediately. They had weighted down the bodies of Ferguson, Nokes and the last actual friend he would ever have and set them adrift in the deepest part of the river he could reach.

The mystery man had assured him the current would do the rest and then he had disappeared. The young kid he'd been had stood on the banks, shivering in the early spring chill in his wet clothes, wondering if he was insane to be waiting there for a stone cold killer instead of running for his life.

Then he decided that he was crazy and that being sane had not brought one good thing into his life. He had determined then to fully embrace the destiny he knew was waiting for him in the darkness. No one was going to have power over him again. He was going to be the one dishing out the pain from now on.

The Shadow had returned with the tools to clean up the evidence, sending that into the river as well, and oversized but clean clothes for his new apprentice, who hadn't hesitated to peel off his past along with the bloody clothes and send them into the water's depths as well.

As it turned out, Kent Allard, or at least that was the name on the mail at the nearby flat, had been on the grounds of Wilkinson's scouting Ralph Ferguson. He'd had a second contract to fulfill from the people who had wanted the man's state trooper father dead. His new mentor had directed to him to clean up while he was acquiring appropriate clothing for his new charge. Thanks to his contribution, the contract was finished earlier than Allard had anticipated and they had a little time before they needed to pack up the rental and move along. That day, he had become Henry Amaud, the first of many cover ID's to come.

It was years before he had the full picture. He'd been taken under the wing of a CIA master assassin and operations specialist, whose career spanned from the Agency being born out of the OSS until the day the man had been disgraced going into the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Old Fritz had once let slip that he'd seen to it the Kennedy family had paid for that betrayal. The fact the Company had been including his mentor in their unannounced LSD experiments on unknowing participants had only recently come to his attention.

"You've exceeded all my expectations," Mr. Cranston had declared as they were on their way to the meeting with Jamieson. "I'm proud of you, Kid. You are my legacy to the Agency for all they've done."

The man who had saved his life, who had raised him, taught him the trade, made him the spy that he was, that man who had handed over all his Company contacts as well as all his freelance contracts, he had disappeared out of his life just as abruptly as he had entered it, never to be seen or heard of again.

The door to his right opened and he was surprised, but somehow not at all surprised, to see someone from the Directorate of Operations office in Washington DC standing there. He knew who Patrick Meacham was. He had met the man several times throughout their mutual careers at the Agency and they'd done some very successful and profitable off the books operations together over the years also.

Obviously, this whole mission had been a bigger fubar than he'd first imagined. First, a call from JB and now a visit from Meachem… had the management of the clandestine services branch figured out what he and Brick had been up to snatching the Colonel early or was something even bigger going on?

"Agent Sizemore, glad the government didn't have to lose all your valuable training and experience, shame about Breeland though. You two were a good team. Maybe you'd like to share why you decided to move up the timeframe for the rendition?"

Larry considered his options with a big smile on his face and then replied, "We were monitoring an escort service for another operation and got some actionable intelligence. You know how it is; guys get careless around a beautiful woman, let their guard down."

Mr. Meacheam returned the smile. "Let me save you the trouble, Larry."

He opened the folder he was carrying and handed over a two photographs. The blonde Amazon who had killed his partner and had nearly taken him out as well was staring back at him with a saucy smirk and cool blue eyes. She was wearing clothes this time, though the outfit exposed a lot of the cleavage he'd already seen completely uncovered. The second photograph was a complete contrast: no makeup, black hair pulled back in a tight bun, harsh expression set above a standard issue Soviet military uniform.

"Meet Natasha Chenkov, who succeeded in killing one CIA agent before he ever got a shot off and nearly finishing off one of the most wonderfully talented wet work specialists I've ever met. I'm still not sure how you managed to survive with nothing more than a couple of near misses and a case of septic shock. It was tough processing the scene, which as it turns out is a good thing for our side. She burned the ducha to the ground before the Company or the KGB could arrive to examine the scene."

Mr. Sizemore smiled even brighter and observed, "Looks like it was my lucky day."

"There was more to it than luck, I'm afraid." He handed over the photographs of the burned remains of what had once between the secret getaway of many members of the Politburo and the secret police. Photographs of the unfortunate KGB Colonel's corpse where followed what he supposed was once the body of his deceased colleague. "We've removed the ballistic evidence from the scene, but someone called in your location. You were followed and yet fortuitously somehow you're still alive."

Pro's don't just watch for tails and wipe off fingerprints. You wanna be sure you can't be traced? You rig all the evidence against you to go up in flames if anyone starts looking somewhere they shouldn't.

Larry shuffled the two pictures of Comrade Chenkov back to the top of the stack.

"In addition to body guarding the top brass in Moscow, Evelyn Salt was one of the Soviet Union's most effective double agents. She was taken as a child and raised by the GRU for one of their specialty sleeper units. We understand that she's a contractor now, but she still does a lot of work for the Russians and she usually doesn't leave loose ends like that, especially not American intelligence loose ends."

It's best to be unknown. It allows you to adjust to any situation and be whoever you need to be. However, there are certain advantages to being known. Reputations can be a powerful tool.

Evelyn Salt…? He had heard the name, who hadn't? Evelyn Salt had tracked him down and let him live?

"Yes, you see the problem. Until we're certain your cover is intact and you haven't been compromised, we're re-assigning you. Hopefully half a world away is enough to keep you in one piece and this mess contained. Because make no mistake, this is one colossal pig screw." Meacheam took back the pictures and shuffled them into the manila folder. "You'll report to the regional station chief for Bolivia as soon as you've been cleared by the doctors."

And with that, his superior headed for the door. His hand on the knob, the older man turned back and looked over this shoulder.

"Be more careful," he admonished before exiting. "We'd hate to lose you."

There's nothing worse for anyone that's been in the game to be up against a ghost. You can deal with an enemy you know, but an enemy you don't know? Could be a competitor who knows all about your operation… could be a foreign agent setting you up. Your only option is to disappear.

Larry Sizemore, cold warrior extraordinaire and former scourge of the Soviet Union, rotated his shoulders back while turning his neck from side to side with the corresponding cracking sounding loudly in the nearly silent recovery room. He took a deep breath and then smiled brightly at no one at all.

Time to work on my tan...