A/N: This takes place right after "Revelations". You know, the episode where Matt gets his invite into the Illuminati. It's short, because it's a drabble written for a drabble community on Livejournal. My inspiration word was "instinct" and the story had to be between 100 and 500 words. Enjoy!
Duck
By: VincentM
His first day partnered up with Martin Hacker at the FBI, Matt Bluestone received a vivid lesson in instinct. A routine surveillance turned into a not-so-routine gun battle. The bullets flew, his new car getting the brunt of the unexpected submachine gun fire. Frozen and terrified, more than a little green, Matt stood for a second too long like a fool, his body telling him to do one thing, his brain shouting another. Hacker pulled him out of harm's way just in time to avoid ending his career prematurely.
After the backup arrived and the cuffed drug dealers went on to their new prison cells, Hacker pulled him aside.
"Instinct," he'd said. "Always trust your instincts. They're the part of you that's shouting, 'Duck, you idiot, duck!' and you better damn well learn how to duck when that happens. You ignore your instincts, try to fight them, and you're dead, and quite frankly, I don't feel like training a new partner, got it?"
Matt got it. He learned to trust his instincts, following gut feelings and hunches as though they were legitimate facts. His instincts got him thrown out of the FBI in the end, unable to let go of his pursuit of an organization that everyone around him insisted didn't exist. It didn't matter. Matt knew what his instincts were telling him.
His instincts told him to go to New York. He did not regret the decision. His instincts told him that his new partner at the NYPD, Elisa Maza, was hiding something from him. He wasn't wrong about that, either.
As he watched Hacker walk away from him, disappearing down the sunny New York street, Matt had to admit his instincts had failed him this time. He never imagined his partner, his damn mentor, held the secrets to his life-long quest to prove the existence of the Illuminati. His instincts still told him he should have punched the other man out, but common sense tempered that urge.
The Illuminati pin glittering in his hand felt hot against his palm. He looked down at it, hefting it to test its weight. When he looked up once more at the back of Martin Hacker, the man who'd given him the pin as well as his first lesson in instinct, his hand tightened in a fist around the metal symbol, the sharp edges digging into his skin.
His pin. His proof. His invitation to become part of those he sought for so many years.
His instincts were telling him something, now.
"Duck, you idiot, duck," he said softly under his breath, then slipped the pin into his pocket and headed back into the Precinct.
-The End-