[OOC] Profile
Your name/crazy internet handle/whatever: Spider
Personal journal: http://red-shed.dreamwidth.org/
Email: jenkin.coal.co@gmail.com
AIM: zippy plow
Characters in Taxon (if applicable): n/a
Character name: Samuel “Sam” Axe
Genre (TV/books/etc): TV
Fandom: Burn Notice
Birthday (if applicable): n/a
Canon point: Up to date; end of S4.
Why this Character and Canon point?: Sam Axe is a man who takes what life throws at him -- as a washed-up career man and a covert operative both, one of his main skills is adaptability. Put Sam Axe in Miami, Mt. Everest or a space prison, and you can bet on him working out who to know and where to find the drinks. At this point in canon, he's acclimated from his previous existence (living off sugar mommies and FBI informant scraps) to being part of Michael Westen's team of ragtag enforcers. It's an easier point to accept yet another curveball in his life. To be honest, Sam Axe doth protest too much if he says he values a cushy lifestyle above anything else. He loves the cushy lifestyle, but he likes being relevant more.
Taxon might even prove a pretty familiar set-up -- at first, and the "at first" is where the fun lies, pushing Sam to adapt to something sort of unadaptable. Hey, like he's never seen the inside of a foreign prison.
Programmed Possession: In Season One, Sam’s girlfriend Veronica gave him his dearly beloved blue-grey ‘08 Cadillac CTS, replete with new-car smell. The car was totalled at the end of the season, but Sam mourned it passionately ever after. Leather interior, beautifully looked-after. Is not the totalled wreck that Michael left it. Referred to affectionately as “the Caddy.”
Abilities/Weaknesses:
Sam Axe is your intel man. His main ability is his intelligence-gathering in all its forms -- for one, he has the uncanny knack of getting people to talk, getting people to do him favours, making fast friends with everyone. He's old Sam Axe with the loud shirts and the gold necklaces; people tend to tell him things of their own volition, because he's great at putting you at ease. Even if word-of-mouth is his favourite resource of choice, he's a watcher of people, a reader of people, and will use any avenue he can to get the goods. He has an amazing memory for little detail. Is also shameless about getting resources.
Being ex-Navy SEAL and ex-intel operative -- and having been these during the Cold War -- he's a good man for operations on a shoestring and the sneaky way of getting stuff done. He's not Michael Westen who can bring down ten mafia members using half a lemon and some string, but he's really well-versed in military and spycraft tactics, psych warfare and interrogation. He is not, however, a gadget man; Sam Axe is invested in tactics that involve Sam Axe and human resources, not what you can make with a cell phone and some putty. Guns, okay. Fine machinery, no. Talking, yes.
Sam is military-trained, cunning as hell and incredibly persuasive, but he runs on a rail: he'll put a lot into plan A but never have a plan B. He does not go above and beyond: it may be pragmatism to pick a point where you stop and don’t go further, but good luck getting Sam to do something he thinks is out of his expertise or yours. He’s got his best interests first, and even if you can trust a promise you’ve got to have him make it -- or else you may find your interests are, at times, unpleasantly sold out. He has a weakness for a pretty face, an inflated belief in his own charm, and is easily swayed by a free lunch. And to be honest, he’s not the fighter he was ten years ago.
Psychology/Personality: Sam Axe, the man who loves cocktails, ladies with beach houses and sleazy Hawaiian shirts -- he would probably describe himself as the actual type of man you get after twenty years’ solid service as a covert operative; scratching a living off a crappy military pension, much too aware of the awards given for all-American service and the fact that you will never really be a civilian ever again. Except that he wouldn’t, because Sam Axe is also a champion sugarcoater of the truth and deliverer of what you’d like to hear.
To get his breaks, Sam is someone who’s spent a lot of time selling-out; everything costs something, and he’ll easily offer up his dignity. On the outside he’s a charming, slightly sleazy good-time boy with noisy shirts and crunchy gold jewellry, the type of guy who’s always ready for a drink and the finer things in life; pretty women, nice cars and good food, preferably paid for by someone else. At fifty-four he seems like a man living off square-jawed good looks going to seed and loud, unsubtle charm, basically a harmless parasite who can talk a lot and in another ten years’ time will be doing the bingo rounds. He is perennially easygoing and cheerful and a little embarrassing. You can get the measure of him in ten seconds. He may remind you of a fun uncle.
This is the tip of the iceberg -- Sam is living in a world where he’s no longer an operative given total freedom in the Cold War ops battle, isn’t packing heat in Panama or East Germany. He’s past his prime and living in a world that, at the best of times, isn’t kind to military men past their primes. Sam is aware that no matter where you go and what you do life is cheap and nobody cares, and although of the Mike-Fi-Jesse-Sam quadrangle he may come off the approachable, kind one he’s probably the toughest of all four. Sam is hard-boiled and cynical, and he’s only survived this long by placing Sam Axe as Priority One. He’s also surprisingly bitter and self-aware that he is an ageing washed-up Navy SEAL whose career went down the drain in the new millennium, and the only person to get him back into any kind of usefulness is Michael Westen. Mike is also Priority One, as is (a little more baffledly) Fiona Glenanne, Michael’s other lieutenant; Mike’s concerns come first. He’s more than able to play the part of poisonous friend or try to steer Michael towards what he sees as the best-survival-hope for Michael’s future, even if it means leaving other people in the dust. This explains early antagonism towards gun-happy Fiona and, later, gung-ho Jesse Porter. There are a lot of things Sam Axe is not prepared to die for, and not prepared to let Michael die for either.
Sam is a man whose real friends in life are generally either dead where Sam survived, or in better positions than Sam Axe. He’s been going it alone a very long time, and understands there are practically zilch people willing to really stick their neck out for you when the chips are down. Sam looks after Sam (or looks after Michael). This isn’t to say that he’s not genuinely interested in other people, their fears and happinesses, to find them endearing and want to help them, and reliably do so -- it just means he is and he still doesn’t really trust you. But you won’t know it, because he’s funny old Sam Axe and you tell him about your love life problems and he’s your buddy, isn’t he.
His biggest fear appears to be dying alone and uncomfortable without any of his creature comforts. In fact, his biggest fear is to stay behind bars until use and old age accept them and all chance of valour has gone beyond recall or desire -- and if there’s ever someone you wouldn’t generally compare Sam Axe to, it’s Eowyn of Rohan. Though you could introduce them! They don’t make ‘em like that any more, apparently.
And to lose relevancy with Michael Westen -- or to lose Michael Westen -- well, Sam knows what he values in life. It’s just that he wants it to look like what that is is “mojitos.”
History: Sam Axe was a favoured son of the American military -- a Navy SEAL and military intel operative who served primarily during the eighties and nineties, helping make the world safe from Communism in the Middle East and the Soviet Bloc. In his thirties he met up-and-coming agent Michael Westen, and became fast friends with the much younger man. They lost touch when Michael became more established with the CIA, but they served together in numerous armed and not-so-armed conflicts.
He made it up to Lieutenant Commander as part of the chain-of-command before leaving service. His career came to an abrupt end in the early half of the 2000s, and in such a way that was a little ignominious; no dishonourable discharge for Sam Axe, but certainly exile to Miami and a paltry military pension with a little on the side for informing to bored FBI agents. Life went abruptly from forward recon to being a complete nobody, but Sam Axe was never one to land anywhere barring four feet -- he muscled in to become a solid Miami fixture, even if knowing a guy who knew a guy now meant the local man-bag-carrying money launderer and the mailman. It was easy living netting himself a steady supply of wealthy divorcées and watching girls in teeny little bikinis zip around on teeny little rollerblades -- and then a burned Mike Westen came back into his life.
Originally operating as the guy paid to inform on what ex-agent Westen was up to, Michael and Sam fell back into their friendship a little awkwardly; when weighing up what looked better, rich older women and stability vs. helping Mike Westen vs. the squillion people who wanted him in meaty chunks -- he chose Michael Westen. (Though it hasn’t stopped him still dating rich chicks and demanding free lunches on the side.) He’s gone from antagonism with gun-runner Fiona Glenanne to, as time’s gone by, devoted friend (if still argumentative); reliable friend of the family to Maddie Westen; still-not-sure but-getting-there to Jesse Porter, latest in the crew. He’s lost girlfriends -- one to the admission that a whirlwind marriage wasn’t divorced, when the question of a wedding came up. And connections; the FBI don’t love Sam Axe like the used to (if they ever did).
His life has become a little subsumed by Mike’s interests and what’s going on in his life, which is a status he shares with Michael’s on-off girlfriend Fi; and although he’s come way too close to death than he ever would’ve liked, there’s no question that as choices go it was the correct one.