Title: Darius
Author: Maureen S. O'Brien
Archive: Gossamer and others, please archive
Rating: PG-13
Category: V
Spoilers: MOVIE SPOILERS! BEWARE!
Summary: Darius Michaud's thoughts on his work.
Disclaimer: Chris Carter, Ten Thirteen Productions, and
Twentieth Century Fox own The X-Files.
Author's Note: What can I say? I liked the guy.
This is dedicated to all the JAG fans who only came to see the
CAG, all the Millennium fans who hoped he played Peter, and to
Terry O'Quinn, who always reminds me of the young Robert A.
Heinlein.

------------------------------------------------------
As we approach the helipad on the roof of the Federal Building, I can
see my boys and girls on the scene. Kesey's coordinating, calm and
cool for a kid his age. Good man.

I get out, get his report, tell him to send the dogs through again.
Twice with agents, twice with the dogs is procedure, followed by a
painstaking human search of every nook and cranny.

I check my watch.

No, that phase won't be necessary.

Part of me is glad for the boys and girls. Detail searches are a
bitch. It's hours of sweat and toil, usually for nothing. But then,
part of me realizes that there are worse things. Things that are going
to happen right across the street. Real Soon Now.

I walk to the roof's edge and look at that building. At the windows of
the FEMA Temporary Quarantine Office. Soon all that will be a thing of
the past. I scan it with my eyes, filled with the need to fix an image
in my mind of this average building in its original condition.

Then I see someone up on the roof. My eyes narrow as I squint a little
to see her.

A short woman with red hair. Special Agent Dana Scully. And since
she's not really the type to run off with a wild hair up her butt,
that means Spooky Mulder's in there, too.

I can feel my expression tighten. Damn. I had been so careful to put
all my boys and girls out of harm's way. Those two especially. Yes,
they poke their noses in where they shouldn't. But that's a good thing
in an agent. They'd been to Dallas before with the X-Files, helped us
catch some killers. They'd done equally good work this summer since
the X-Files closed and they were reassigned to a Domestic Terrorism
squad. A militia case had brought their squad down here this week --
this week of all weeks -- and Mulder'd done some good profiles for us
of the suspects, Scully'd shown the docs in the local chopshop a few
new tricks, and I'd secretly wished to God they'd go away before it
was too late.

Still, it was useful. After They put the corpses in the FEMA offices,
we could blame the whole thing on that militia group. Those boys'd
killed enough people for real that I wouldn't feel guilty about
tacking five extra bodies and a building onto their bill.

Just as long as we didn't have to add two agents. I shook my head.
Investigative instincts leading them right where the bomb really would
explode? They really were spooky.

I took another look at the other roof. Mulder and Scully were both up
there, not looking particularly busy. I checked my watch. There was no
way they could have found anything. So get out of there, kids. I open
my mouth to call them on the radio, so they know the SAC's seen them
slacking off across the street. Put a little fear of God into 'em.

I close my mouth again. That'd just get Mulder arguing and Scully
jumping to his defense, and we'd still be doing it when the bomb went
off. There. They're going back inside. Good. They'll go downstairs and
come back over here, and they'll be safe.

Less than five minutes later, I get a call from Dana Scully.

The fire trucks and the police cars and the bomb squad and I all rush
across the street. I curse inwardly. What kind of idiot are They
hiring these days? What kind of idiot would solder an agent in with a
bomb and expect him not to have some way to call in? But then again,
only Mulder or the Hardy Boys would have the dumb luck to try and buy
a can of pop from a bomb.

This is not an excuse for the people I work for. More importantly, it
doesn't excuse me in my own eyes.

I know what I must do.

Scully is waiting for us. She's managed to evacuate the building in
far less time than I would have thought possible. Good woman. Kesey
gets the torch, and I cut through the door myself, while inside my
head the clock ticks away.

I used to be the best bomb tech in the Bureau before I got sent
upstairs. The bomb techs from Mulder and Scully's squad have been
taking me out every night, plying me with drink and getting me to tell
stories. The rest of the squad tagged along -- even Spooky and the
Mrs.  For payback, I made them all tell some of their own. I even got
Mulder to talk about the New Spartan case earlier this year. The
others were fascinated.  Like everyone else, they'd heard about the
case through the grapevine and thought well of Mulder for it, but
Mulder and Scully didn't socialize much back in DC. But they both
wanted to learn more about the kind of guys who made bombs, and I knew
more than anybody.

Plus, They hadn't had to be on their backs all the time, so maybe 
Mulder and Scully had been learning to relax. It wasn't as if there 
was anything else they _could_ do.

We get in, and the bomb techs and I take a look at the bomb. Ten
pounds of astrolite, I say. A no-brainer. I already knew. I tell
everyone I can defuse it, and they all believe me. Why not?

Mulder protests the breach of tactics for a moment. I give him a
direct order. Scully drags him off. I listen to them go back down the
hall, and in the empty building, I can hear them go out the door.

I'm alone with my bomb, the bomb I made especially to destroy this
building. The bomb I shaped to destroy this building and leave the
rest of the block almost untouched -- a brilliant piece of demolition,
if I do say so myself. Making it went against all my principles, but
the fate of humanity outweighed even the lives of even hundreds of
innocents. Still, I prayed They'd find a better way.

Terrorists are idealists, I think, and I'm that.

And then there is nothing to do but watch the numbers count down.

They're all safe now. All my boys and girls; all the civilians.

All but me.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
mobrien@dnaco.net
http://www.dnaco.net/~mobrien/fanfic/