A/N: This series chronicles those who are left behind the in the BN universe and will cover events up to Asset Management. There is a companion story on the M page which will chronicle the similar events after said tale. The story of Michael leaving Samantha should be up in the next day or so on that page.

Much love and thanks as always to Amanda Hawthorne, Purdy's Pal and Daisy Day for reading through and keeping me sane these last few months. Love to all the Burner Girls on FB and Twitter and many thanks to everyone who kept reading and reviewing while I was off the boards all these months.

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Miami, November 1984

The first thing that caught her attention was the front door being closed quietly. Someone was sneaking in or out. No one in her household was considerate enough to not slam the door when they weren't trying to be stealthy. Then there was a thunderous crash in the living room.

Now what?

She continued hanging up the shirts she was pulling from the dryer. Frank was very particular about his shirts and, although he insisted she use a laundry line to save power, nothing like a dryer tumble would get them the way he liked them without having to take the time to iron them. She detested ironing.

Besides, there had been too much broken glass, broken furniture and broken bones in her household for Madeline Westen to get terribly excited about the sound of a body hitting the floor or table being knocked over. She could hear the sounds of pills tumbling inside their respective plastic bottles and, since there was no cursing or further noise in the wake of the medicine table being up-ended, she assumed she was safe to continue on.

What was Nate up to now?

Ever since his older brother had advised her youngest son that he was going to have to get some actual training before he could even dream to taking him on, Nate had thrown himself into martial arts classes and thrown himself on the floor—a lot.

She sighed. Her baby boy tried hard, but he just didn't have Michael's coordination and no amount of training was going to make up for the six year age difference between her boys. Nate at eleven was never going to be a match for his brother at seventeen.

"Nice try, kid."

Michael!

She abandoned her task and rushed toward the front of the house. Her oldest child had been gone for over a week. It was the longest he had ever disappeared with some kind of word. As she came into the room, she saw Michael was wearing new clothes as he stood over his kid brother, who was lying on his back next to the over turned TV tray which he'd presumably encountered on his way to the floor.

Maddie took a brief moment to wonder from what store he'd shoplifted his new attire. Even his casual wardrobe had been upgraded over the last two years. She'd seen quite a few labels show up in the laundry that hadn't come from K-mart and the jobs she knew he had didn't cover the cost of such.

"Look who I caught trying to sneak in," Nate announced proudly, even though he was flat on his back.

"Get those bottles picked up," she ordered and then turned her gaze onto firstborn's face as he finally met her eyes. What she saw left her rooted to the spot.

Michael had two faded black eyes, a bump still evident on the bridge of his nose and a deep cut on his chin that had obviously needed stitches it hadn't gotten.

"What happened?" she gasped. "Were you in a fight?"

"Sort of," he shrugged. "More like the Charger was."

Her eyes flicked quickly to the dining room windows which looked out onto the driveway between the house and garage. There sat her husband's car, looking black and pristine in the mid-morning sun.

Her eldest had taken it, so he had said, to go a trip to Orlando for the weekend. Since Frank was also supposed to be away on the business trip for the whole week, she'd agreed. She hadn't really wanted her son go to all the way to Orlando in what would probably be a stolen car. What Michael hadn't told her was he didn't want to run the risk of using a stolen car either because of contraband he'd be carrying. Being relatively new to the gun running trade, he hadn't wanted to take any more chances.

Madeline looked back him, worry beginning to mix with disapproval. "You were supposed to be back on Monday! I was worried sick, I was calling all the hospitals. What if your father had come home while—"

From his position on the carpet, gathering the wayward bottles and placing them back on the small wooden tray table, the youngest Westen made a cutting motion under his throat "kkkeeeekkk!"

"Nate!" she reprimanded before surging forward to gather Michael's face between her palms. "Honey, tell me what happened," she demanded.

Michael rolled his head to the side and out of her grasp, taking a step back. "I was on my way back when I got rear-ended. I was stuck in traffic with nowhere to go, so I ate the steering wheel."

Madeline looked in open confusion from the battered face of her son to the obviously undamaged trunk of her husband's latest pride and joy. Since none of them ever used the seat belts in the car, that wasn't even worth mentioning.

"I had it fixed," he retorted as if that should have been obvious.

"In Orlando?"

"What was I gonna do? Bring it all the way back here on a hook? What d'ya think took so long? "

"Who do you know in Orlando that fixes-?" His mother queried, but as soon as she said it, Maddie knew the answer. "Michael, your father told you not to have anything to do with that kid from Lauderdale."

"Kid?" he snorted in response. "He's 23!"

"Oh, and that makes him a man," she huffed. "He's bad news, Michael. He got run out of town, for gods sakes. You're lucky you only got in a car accident instead someone shooting the windows out of your father's car!"

"Yea, well, at least I got finished before—" Michael suddenly swallowed whatever he was going to say and turned towards Nate, who had completed his task and was obviously getting ready for round two of the wrestling match. "C'mon, kid, let's see if you can spot any defects in the paint job."

The eldest Westen boy pushed the younger in front of him and past their mother. "Hey, Ma, could you make me a sandwich?" he asked back over his shoulder as he directed Nate towards the back door." I haven't eaten since yesterday."

Madeline knew it was a ploy, but she also knew he had her. When had she ever refused to feed him as hard as it was to get him to eat? Grumbling under her breath, she pulled out a cigarette out of the pack on the kitchen counter, lit it and then moved towards the refrigerator.

-000-

Michael had actually wolfed down two sandwiches and polished off a bag of chips, though truthfully Nate had eaten the majority of the bag. Their mother stood in the living room, smiling indulgently at the sleeping figure on the couch while glaring at his younger sibling. She didn't need anything more than the expression on Nate's face to know he was planning on doing something to his older brother while his guard was down.

"Leave him alone, Nate. Your brother's exhausted."

"There's nothing on," he complained, looking between Michael's slack profile and the television.

"Why don't you go wash your father's car and get all the bugs off? That will make Daddy happy when he gets home."

"Okay…" he conceded after a moment. It would easier to cool off with the hose than gamble how hot the old man might be when he got home. Much better, Nate decided, to be out of the line of fire and in his father's good graces whenever Frank Westen returned home from his road trip.

She didn't need anything other than the fact that her son was sleeping in a vulnerable position to tell her how worn out he was, sitting with his head thrown back onto the top of couch, his mouth almost hanging open . His mother watched him for moment longer before begrudgingly getting out the ironing board. She loved her sons with all her heart, but there were some days where it just seemed like nothing would ever work for either of them.

Michael's arrival meant she had missed her opportunity to pull the warmed shirts out of the dryer and now they had to be ironed. Madeline was fuming internally as she reached under the cabinet below the sink and went to fill the appliance from the bottle of distilled water she'd retrieved from there. Mrs. Westen would never make the mistake of using an iron containing municipal tap water on another one of her husband's shirts ever again. Her left ear still rang sometimes because that exacting lesson.

Everything about this particular task just annoyed her; it had for over a decade. Maddie had long ago stopped connecting that sentiment with the beating Michael had been given for burning their old dining room table and his father's shirt when the six year old had gotten up before both of them to try to help her get all the laundry done.

()()

The lady of the house had decided to make spaghetti. As long as she didn't get distracted and stood by the stove, constantly checking the pasta for doneness and making sure she didn't burn the sauce, it was one of the few dishes everyone in the house agreed was edible. Fortunately, there wasn't much you could do to screw up sauce from a jar. Once she'd determined which brand Frank approved of through torturous trial and error, it was safe to serve if she kept an eye on it and didn't let it overheat and burn.

With Frank not yet home, Michael asleep and Nate engaged in washing the Charger, it seemed a safe bet she would be able to stay attentive to her cooking. As Madeline blew another plume of smoke into the air, she prayed that her husband's business trip had gone well and there would be a calm evening, to which a good dinner would hopefully be her successful contribution.

She had been standing over the sink, filling the pot with water for spaghetti and checking up on Nate's progress with the car, when the front door crashed open.

"Yer dead meat, boy!" she heard her husband snarl. Rushing into the living room, she arrived just in time to see her eldest dodge the blow that Frank had aimed at his son's head. Fortunately for Michael, the noise and the coffee table in front of the couch had slowed his father down just enough for him to evade the roundhouse punch that had been intended for his jaw.

The down side in dodging that blow was that it left him with his head and upper body flat on the sofa and Frank didn't hesitate to wrap his large hands around Michael's throat before his older boy could maneuver away.

"Who the hell d'ya think ya are, gettin' me tangled up in that mess with them boys up in Broward?! Who tol' ya could drive muh gawd damn car, anyway?"

Mrs. Westen, who had been circling the combatants looking for an opening to intervene, now pulled back. She had only told her son that he could use his father's car because Frank was supposed to have been out of town. How had he found out that the Charger had even left the driveway?

"Can't tell you….if you keep…. choking me…." Michael ground out.

The senior Westen released one hand, allowing his firstborn some air, but immediately used his freed-up limb to cuff his offspring hard upside his head. "Whud the hell were ya doin' getting involved in transportin' hardware with them boys in muh fooking car, ya jackass? Ya think everyone in this town don' know whose car that is? Were ya tryin' t' git me killed, ya little bastard?"

Madeline looked from the rage infused visage of her spouse to the fury filled eyes of her child and knew the answer as well as they both did.

"Transporting hardware?" she stammered. "What are—"

"Stay the hell outta this, woman. I'll settle up with ya later!" Frank interrupted before she could finish her sentence. He turned his attention back to his progeny, tightening his grip on the teenagers' windpipe with both hands once more.

"That kid ain't just tied up with the mob, ya gawd damn fool idiot, he's got Special Forces after his ass too. Do ya think I tol' ya t'stay away from him jus' t'hear muhself talk? Ya wanna git us all killed?"

Michael's response was a choked wheeze.

"Frank, stop it!" Maddie demanded, circling around behind him and pulling on his arms, her oldest boy's respiratory distress spurring her into action. "Stop! You're choking him, he can't breathe! Stop it!"

"Ya think ya kin wreck muh car and git away wif it?" The angrier his father was, the thicker his native Georgia accent became. "Ya ever touch muh car agin…"

"Frank, damn you, let him go!" Michael's mother began to rain blows on her husband's back with one hand as she continued to tug on one of his arms with the other, her son starting to turn blue.

"Mike fixed the car!" Nate blurted out. The other Westen boy had snuck into the room as soon as he'd heard the shouting commence. He'd slowly crept from the safety of the kitchen to the nearby scene of his daddy squeezing the life out of his brother while his mother beat on the old man to no avail. But Madeline saw that her youngest had kept his distance, prepared to bolt on a moment's notice.

"Ya stay outta this, too, boy," Frank growled, but he paused long enough to look out the window and take in the undamaged vehicle sitting cleaned and gleaming in the driveway.

That was all distraction Michael needed. He raised both feet up and caught his sire squarely in the stomach with a double kick that sent both this parents crashing back into the coffee table and sprawling onto the floor. Staggering to his feet, he drew in a couple of ragged breaths before the eldest bolted out the front door with his sibling hot on his heels.

()()()()()

Madeline sat at her dining room table wrapped in her nightgown and bathrobe, smoking naturally as well as sipping on some bourbon. It was early in the afternoon, just after lunch time, but she felt justified in her choice of libation and her current state of dress. The ache in her body, both inside and out, necessitated the drink and her total lack of sleep and her shattered nerves required the balm of nicotine. The house was empty and quiet for once. Of the three males who resided here, only Nate had actually gone where he was supposed to, assuming he did in fact go to school.

Frank had been gone before she had gotten up for the first time this morning. When he had returned, her husband put the new coffee table he had purchased where the old one had stood without a word. She'd had Nate clean up the remnants of the broken table after her youngest had returned from tailing his brother over to Marvella Watkins' place. Madeline had waited with some trepidation as she handed him a cup of coffee, waiting to see If his good humor from last night had remained or if there was a rant about why the coffee table had been destroyed in the offing. Her body ached where she had broken his fall for him last night and she didn't think she could take another round of abuse this morning. Instead, Frank had set the cup aside and kissed her with a passion that hadn't been evident since they'd been dating. As he had walked her back to the bedroom, she was relieved that his mouth and his hands were definitely not hurting her on purpose this time.

The bone-weary blonde took another sip from the short glass and shook her head. Trying to keep up with her spouse's ever changing moods was exhausting. She inhaled deeply from the last of the cigarette she'd been smoking and exhaled even longer before snubbing out the butt in the overflowing ash tray. Frank preferred cigars on the whole and they took up a lot more room in the ceramic circle. She looked from the papers that Michael had dropped on the table to the new furniture in the living room and back.

When the senior Mr. Westen had stormed out of the house yesterday in the wake of his son, she'd had no idea where he'd gone. Maddie had guessed from what he had said before he left and what he said when he'd returned that he had been showing the Charger around town in all the right places to all the right people to let everyone know that the rumors he had been involved in an accident, much less a gun running deal, were unfounded. She knew that his "business partners" included some of the less than reputable men from the community as well as any number of low level "wise guys." South Florida was an open territory after all and every good Italian restaurant in the area had a very particular clientele.-

Apparently, Frank Westen had successfully concluded whatever business he had been about all week as well because he had come home inebriated, but in a celebratory mood. They'd had a pleasant dinner out, sans Michael of course whose name was never mentioned, and then he had sent Nate off with a handful of cash to the movies, suggesting a midnight matinee or two. Frequently, Frank's private trips often included side "commerce" and she could usually tell when he came home whether he had been mixing business and pleasure. But, based on his mood and how sore but sated she was this morning, there had been no involvement of the oldest profession in this particular professional venture.

Madeline lit her next cigarette and refilled her glass. Michael had caught her coming out of shower, startling her with his sudden appearance. A few minutes earlier and he might have caught… no, of course not, he was watching the house to make sure that his father was gone. Even as a nine year old, he'd had sense enough to do that.

She had mixed feelings the amount of time he spent at Mrs. Watkins' house. She was grateful that her boy had a refuge instead spending his nights on the streets, which he did more and more frequently thanks to the tension that grew daily between father and son, but part of her resented the bond Michael seemed to have with Ricky and Andre's mother.

She had babysat Ricky as an infant way back when, taking care of both him and Nate. That meant Andre and Michael were always hanging around in some proximity of her house. Frank had taken up truck driving shortly after Nate was born and was home infrequently. It had worked out well, as Marvella typically paid her debt in food brought home from the diner where she worked at the end of her double shift. Everyone was grateful from the improved quality of the cuisine at the Westen household.

If she was being honest, Maddie might have worked out that the fact that Mrs. Watkins had kicked her abusive husbands to the curb, both Andre's and Ricky's fathers, and had chosen to work instead was at the center of her ill feelings towards the woman. Michael certainly had made enough comments both subtle and not so subtle about how he thought his mother should have handled her martial problems.

However, now Andre was in jail, soon to be tried as an adult, and Michael….

His mother picked up the recruitment papers again. Sighing, she put the cigarette down, only to pick up the glass again and take a large swig of the burning liquid contents. What would become of her son?

Every time he came in the front door, he was either fighting with his father or slipping away before the fight could start and he was getting better and better at being gone, but gone where, doing what? What had started as petty theft, boasting cars and shop lifting to help the family had turned into something more; schoolyard fights had become street fights. He was gone for nights In a row. Where would it end?

Madeline flipped open the papers and stared at the words that would make her firstborn the property of the US government. He was already selling weapons apparently, would it be so terrible for him to use one in defense of his country? But how could she let him go like that? Who would defend Nate? Who –

She remembered the look on her boy's battered face as he'd set the papers done in front of her on the table, ignoring her request to sit down and talk to her.

"If you didn't antagonize your father so much…"

"Ma, I antagonize him by EXISTING! There's not much I can do about that except die or leave. Here."

He threw the folded papers down on the table as she gasped at his words.

"This might accomplish both," the teenager declared. "All you have to do is sign it… and get him to sign."

"The Army, Michael? You can't be serious. Your father would never let you go into the Army."

Frank Westen had been too young for Korea, but too old for Vietnam and he had been an early adapter to the Rebel without a Cause mindset with a very healthy disrespect for the military, thanks to his own upbringing under the martial discipline of his drill sergeant stepfather .

"Yea, I get it. He'd prefer to beat me to death himself," the bitterness in her child's voice made her flinch. "I just thought I'd save him the trouble. Nate's old enough to steal his own groceries now."

"Michael," she reproached. "You know your brother looks up to you, you're his hero."

Her eldest made a disgusted noise. "Just cuz I bail him out all the time doesn't mean—"

"Michael, honey, please don't be like that. We need you here. We're your family."

"No, you need to—" He stopped and sighed in frustration, planting his hands on his hips and staring up above him as though his answers might be found in the patterns in the smoke encrusted popcorn ceiling.

"You know how this is going to end, Ma," he told her flatly, finally looking her in the face again.

"But, why the Army, Michael? You could—"

"You know when I left last night, I went to Miz W's and I talked to her about Andre," her son plowed ahead before she could interrupt. "And she talked to me about not ending up like Andre, not having dead or in jail being my only choices. She said she knew I was smart enough not to get caught like Andre did, smart enough not to get into a gang like Andre did and she said if I was smart enough for that, then I was smart enough to be whatever I wanted to be. You know what I want to be, Mom?"

"What, Michael?" His mother tried to keep her resentment under control over her first born not feeling like he could bring his problems to her. She had always assumed his love of Miz Watkins' house was due to its lack of adult supervision. But now, the guilt over not being there for him began to eat at her.

"When Dad was talking about Special Forces, he was afraid. He's not afraid of the wise guys or the cops or the assholes he hangs around with, but he was afraid of them. He didn't want any part of those guys. That's what I want to be, Special Forces, and I have to start somewhere. The sooner I get out of here, the better, before something really bad happens."

Madeline finished off her drink in another big swallow and then smoothed the document out, bending the creases backwards so the papers lay flat. She went to the kitchen drawer and pulled out two different pens, one blue, one black. The key to forgery of side by side signatures was different ink, made it harder to see similarities in the handwriting. . She took a deep drag of her cigarette to stop the trembling in her hand before she could write own name convincingly, never mind Frank's messy scrawl.

It wouldn't be the first time she'd forged her husband's signature; it would just be the most painful.