Title: Burned Bridges
Warning: none really, it's all made up after the time frame of "Good Soldier" so if you've seen that, you're good.

Genre: Drama/Spy stuff
Rating: PG-13 (ish)
Word count: 10,434
Characters: Michael, Fiona, Sam, Lucy & a bunch of OCs

Author's Note: After discovering this show and falling in love with it I kinda started to wonder what happened to Michael before the Burn came. Like why does he refuse to commit to Fiona, or anything else for that matter. What happened to him that made him so isolated? This is what I figured out. This is a sequel to Before The Burn so you might wanna read that first, it's a nice package deal, like bookends.

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters of Burn Notice, if I did I'd be a freaking happy girl wouldn't I? Don't bother suing me, I've got less than a burned spy does.

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Michael Westen nervously tapped his fingers against this thigh as the elevator stopped one more time on the floor just below the one he wanted to get to. Sam had called him twenty minutes ago to let him know that Carla looked like she was finally going to make her move. She'd been meeting with people for days now at the hotel and Michael thought it was all leading up to some sort of assassination but he just couldn't put his finger on the truth of it all. Carla was definitely up to something shady though and if it was something that he could stop he would.

When Carla had contacted him to offer him a position in whatever covert section she worked in Michael had dismissed the offer immediately. All he wanted was his old life back, or at least some of it. He'd never get back everything he'd lost, Afghanistan had taken care of that once and for all, but getting his job back would be a good start. Carla was persistent though and her offer was sounding better and worse all the time. Her methods were obviously well beyond anything that was sanctioned and Michael wasn't entirely sure that she was even working for the US government. For all he knew she was trying to take the home team down. But she was offering him a way to get back in the game and after all that had happened recently, it didn't sound that bad.

What was really stopping him from taking it was the fact that he was still loyal to his country. No matter how much crap they'd put him through over the years he would never change that. So he'd decided to figure out who Carla was before even thinking about saying yes to her. But Carla was a sneaky woman and it seemed like every time he got one step closer to her she pushed him another three steps back. Michael however, wouldn't be put off that easy, he loved a challenge and Carla was definitely that.

He finally made it off the elevator and into the room Sam had been living in for a week while he watched Carla meeting with a lot of different characters. "Hey Sam, what ya got?" he said as he walked into the room.

"Well, our girl's been having a lot of meetings lately. Bunch of foreign types," he pointed out the window to the patio below where Carla was even now speaking with two hulking men that were obviously of Middle Eastern descent. "I can't name any of them but they all look like heavies. Anyway, I thought now might be a good time to go check out Carla's room." He grinned and told Michael about the master key and the facial recognition software on her door before handing him a headshot of the head housekeeper.

Michael found several things in Carla's room; including pictures of several known assassins including the man they'd been watching who was going by the name of Bill Johnson. This could mean any number of things but Michael took photos of all of it and got back out before Carla returned. That information all got put aside for a while as Michael finished the job he'd promised Fi he'd do for Campbell. What a mess that was. How did he ever get sucked into doing a job for his ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend?

When Fiona had arrived in Miami because Michael was still carrying her number as an emergency contact in his wallet, he hadn't really thought anything of it. Sure they had been romantically involved in the past but that didn't mean there was anything left between them. In fact, he was pretty sure she still hated him. When he'd gone undercover to infiltrate the IRA he'd found a confidante in Fiona. She was sympathetic to his plans, mainly because even though she'd always be loyal to the principles the IRA held dear, she didn't always agree with their methods, which was pretty odd once you got to know Fiona's idea of a good time. But she'd been willing to help him and they'd fallen for each other, a fact that surprised Michael more than a little because he'd sworn he would never let anyone get that close to him again after Raina. And when things went sour and his cover was compromised he left her, with no warning, no explanation, just vanished into the night. She had been pissed at him for that too, until he'd explained to her that he did it to protect her. She still hadn't come out to say that she'd forgiven him but he could tell.

So when she decided that he needed to commit to her he freaked out a little. She should have known by that point that Michael's only priority was to figure out why he was burned. And when he told her that she decided that if he wouldn't drop it she'd leave him. So he did, and she did and now their relationship was cool at best. But the look that she'd given him the other night when he'd been feeding Lesher that load of crap about finding himself made him think that maybe Fiona still cared a little, even if she was hanging all over Campbell to try to prove she didn't. But Fiona deserved to be happy for once and Michael just couldn't give her that.

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When everything started to hit the proverbial fan Michael lost control. The panicked voice of his mother on the phone started it off. The cops were taking Nate away, she said, and Michael felt the steel trap snap into place around his life. Carla was taking steps to ensure that he would do exactly what she said or his family and friends would suffer for it. But he couldn't ride to the rescue just yet; he had to stop the sniper from taking out his target. And then the trap got tighter as he realized what Carla was doing on the pier. He sent Sam to find the sniper and see if he could be stopped that way. Fiona was running interference while he made a break for it to go retrieve the key card from his apartment. And then the chase was on.

After he'd lost Carla he steered the motorcycle towards his apartment and tried to put the pieces of this crazy puzzle together. Why was Carla interviewing more hired goons when she already had a sniper in place with a target? Why was she trying to throw Michael off by showing him that she was bold enough to take out someone in broad daylight? And who the hell was the target? None of it made any sense from any angle he examined it. He pulled up to the apartment with his mind still in a whirl and climbed up the stairs.

When the phone rang and Sam told him about Johnson's untimely demise one more piece was added to the riot of information already spinning in his head. The chaos of it all was almost enough to over power the nagging thought that something was terribly wrong. Luckily, Michael's training and attention to his gut instinct kicked in with just enough time for him to throw himself over the railing of the stairs as the booby-trapped door exploded.