Disclaimer: Burn Notice is not mine, this story has been written for fun.

A/N: This is going to be a short story written in the hope that it will cleanse my muse of all her Carlos issues. I'm sorry to any of you who like the guy, but after 7.02 I just wished Jesse and Sam would have moved out of the way and let the fight happen. I realize Michael attacking her new beau would not endear Fiona to her previous boyfriend. But that doesn't mean there aren't other people out there who can show her Carlos is nothing more than a pale imitation of Michael Westen.

My thanks go out to Jedi Skysinger for reading thru and managing to find the time to fit in a BETA during her hectic day. Also a big apology to all the people who made the mistake of asking me my opinion of Carlos and Fiona, I am sorry for my tiny - okay, massive overreaction.

Let the therapy commence...

A Pale Imitation

Part one

In the early hours of the morning with a tropical storm raging outside, Fiona Glenanne was suddenly woken by the sound of something heavy smashing down her front door. Jerking up into a sitting position, she was already pointing her H and K 9mm handgun at the door to her bedroom as she heard even more noise coming from the ground floor of her new house.

"Madre de Dios, what the hell?!" Her companion sat up, rubbing sleep from his eyes. Carlos Cruz leapt out of bed and was half way out of the door as Fiona was reaching for the rumpled white dress shirt laying on the floor next to the bed. "You stay there, Fi. This ain't gonna take long." Her lover gave her a smile filled with bravado and ran out of the room.

"Jayzuz feckin' hell!"

Fiona heard a thick Irish accent let loose with a string of expletives and, after letting out a cuss word or two of her own, she gave up on the shirt with the fiddly buttons and reached for her jeans and T-shirt instead.

"Hands up!"

"An' who tha feck ar' ya, ta tell me whot ta do?"

Fiona groaned as Carlos and the intruder shouted over each other and then increased her speed, as the sound of a sudden crash was followed immediately by a bang and then the heavy thud of a body hitting the floor.

At the bottom of the stairs, she switched on the lights and stared at the sight which greeted her. Her brother Seamus bleeding all over her floor from a messy looking wound to his side standing over the unconscious body of her semi-naked boyfriend.

"Shay! What the – ?"

"Oh, don'cha be givin' me no grief o'er this, sweetheart. Yar man har started it." He pointed then to his blood covered shirt. "An' dis, dis is all yar fault."

"My fault!" she shrieked at her second oldest sibling. "How does you leaking blood all over my polished floor become my fault?"

She threw him a clean towel to stem the blood flow while she checked on her boyfriend. "What did you do to him?" she growled, as she felt a large knot forming on Carlos' skull.

"I gave tha lad a wee tap, thot wa' all an' he fair fainted on me."

Fiona looked up and noticed the Glock 19 semi-automatic in her brother's right hand. "Lucky for you he's going to live; which is more than you will if you keep bleeding on me floor."

Apart from the lump on his head, she could find no other injuries. She was positive Carlos would wake up with nothing more than a headache. So for now her boyfriend could be left safely to sleep off the blow to his head whereas Seamus was in need of at least a few stitches. She got to her feet and pushed her older brother towards the kitchen to where she kept her first aid kit.

"Take yar shirt off, an' then explain ta me why yer accusing me o' being tha cause of ya bleedin' like a stuck pig." Catching up on one of siblings brought out her brogue for just a moment.

With his shirt thrown into the sink, Seamus stood leaning back against the counter top while his sister cleaned away the blood from a deep cut in his side, scored by a passing bullet.

"I wa' passin' by, on me way ta a meetin' in Cuba when a dozen o' more of Greyson Miller's closest friends decided ta pay me a visit." He sucked in a breath as Fiona's skilled fingers walked over his ribs searching for any more damage. "We fought 'em off an' I came straight o'er ta give ya tha good word... Between Miller an' tha CIA nosin' around our business, ya've managed ta cause a right shit storm fer tha lot o' us... So, I called Liam, an' I got tha all clear ta sort dis mess out fer good."

Fiona hid her feelings behind a stony exterior as she carefully began to sew up the wound to her sibling's side. She had a new house, a new job and a new lover. She was finally clear of all the chaos Michael Westen had brought into her life, and now Seamus Glenanne was about to turn Miami into Belfast on a Saturday night. She blinked rapidly trying to remain calm.

"I had no choice, Seamus. I was about to rot away in – "

"Ya broke our mammy's heart, talkin' ta tha law... An' whar' tha hell tis McBride? Wa' it him thot had ya give away a friend?"

She covered the wound with a dressing and then stood up straight, her arms crossed over her chest. "Miller was never a friend, more of a business acquaintance, and not a very good one at that. What happened – it's too complicated to explain." She sighed and walked back into the living room, picking up one of her lover's clean t shirts from where it lay on top of a pile of neatly folded clothes. "Put this on and then help me get Carlos onto the couch."

Seamus looked the younger man over critically. "If yer gonna keep dis one around, sis, yer gonna have ta teach him ta look after himself. I tell ya, sweetheart, I took him down in two moves. Ya keep spittin' in tha face o' men like Miller an' this un is gonna end up six feet under."

"I –" She stopped trying to justify herself to her brother. Instead she nodded towards his freshly stitched up side. "So what happened?"

"Aw, I got word thar wa' a storm brewin' an' tied up in one o' Delaney's boathouses. Then seein' how we wa' stuck in Miami, I thought we'd go have a few drinks at Benny's an' wait out tha storm. We'd just walked off tha jetty when, all o' a sudden, somebody starts shootin' at us." He paused and looked around, his eyes lighting on the bottles of spirits sitting on a shelf across the room. "Have ya got any Jameson's o'er thar, sweetheart?"

Fiona pursed her lips and then went to pour him a large Irish whiskey. She knew it was no good pushing any of her brothers and Seamus was only slightly less pig-headed than Liam and Sean. With a drink in his hand, he got back to his story.

"So, after we've traded a few shots, an' I got this little nick an' Pat gotta load of splinters in his face from a ricochet, Dara an' Brendan, went an' got hold o' one o' Delaney's RPGs an' as ya can imagine thot ended tha dust up."

Fiona closed her eyes for a moment while she counted to ten. She could guess at the damage done to the dock and how Jojo Delaney was going to react to a strong police and FBI presence around one of his properties. "How do you know it was Greyson Miller? It could have been somebody you've upset, or Jojo has enemies."

"Because, one o' them shouted out they wa' after Fiona Glenanne an' tha nice fat bounty Grey Miller put on har head... Exactly how many bounties have ya got on yar head at tha moment, Fiona?"

She was saved from answering by Carlos letting out a long moan and struggling up into a sitting position. "What the hell!" He looked rapidly between where Fiona sat at his side and the tall, muscular intruder standing at ease drinking the whisky he'd bought Fiona a week ago and wearing one of his T-shirts.

"Carlos, this is my brother Seamus." Fiona smiled at her boyfriend.

"Your brother?" he asked, gently touching the tender lump on his head.

Seamus Glenanne stared back, his pale blue eyes sparkling with good humor. "He's not quite tha full shillin' is he, Sis?"

"What?" Carlos managed to push past Fiona to get to his feet. "What sort of brother breaks down a front door and comes in with a gun in his hand?"

"Carlos, I think you should leave," Fiona announced. "Seamus has come with some – disturbing news, I have to go and sort out a little problem – it's family related." She was becoming stuck for the right words. Carlos was good with a gun and they had been in quite a few sticky situations together, but this was different.

"Hey, you have a problem, I'm here for you." Carlos took hold of Fiona tenderly by the shoulders, staring into her eyes. "I can handle myself."

Fiona shot her brother a look as the older man snorted his disbelief.

"Okay, then." Seamus clapped his hands together. "We best get this sorted. Fiona, sweetheart, if ya can tear yerself away from yar lover boy, an' tell me whar ya keep yar C4, we'll get started."

Carlos stepped back. "C4? What are we blowing up?"

"Every fecking bounty hunter who is going after our Fiona. Ya have a problem wit' thot, sonny?"

Fiona shook her head as the new man in her life looked from her grim expression to the jovial one on her brother's face with growing awe on his scruffy countenance. If Carlos Cruz thought he really knew who Fiona Glenanne was, he was sadly mistaken and his education was about to begin.