"Calvin to Hobbes, Calvin to Hobbes…" Fawkes' voice had crackled over the wireless headset and he had grimaced. His partner, the comedian.
"Next time I pick the names, got it?" He'd replied, a slight growl to his voice.
Darien had chuckled lightly over the connection and Hobbes could just imagine him shaking his head at his partner's lack of humor.
"Oh come on," he'd said, "you mean to tell me you don't like being named after a stuffed tiger?"
Hobbes opened his eyes and gazed past the destruction before him, he'd been sitting in the van, listening as Darien quietly relayed the set up of the terrorists and where the hostages were located. Hobbes had taken the information and passed it along to the authorities already on the scene.
Then the headset had gone suspiciously quiet. The last thing Hobbes had heard before all hell had broken loose was a resigned "Aw, crap" from his partner.
There had been a muted growl, like the roll of a distant thunder. The blast had followed, ripping the building apart and sending glass, metal and concrete outward in a terrific shower of debris. The shock wave had knocked Hobbes back in his seat as the van's windows had imploded, debris raining down and adding to the damage on the vehicle.
Hobbes had ripped the headset from his head and bolted from the van, horror wrenching his gut into a painful knot as he viewed the wreckage through the settling dust. He sighed heavily and glanced around him, buildings immediately surrounding the museum had sustained some damage as well; windows had been blown out, holes had been punched into the front and sides of walls, even cars parked along the street had fallen victim to debris raining from the sky.
To Hobbes, it looked like some horrible war movie brought to vivid and terrible life. All around him, rescue workers and television reporters swarmed and pushed; one group trying valiantly to save lives while the other group tried to document everything and anything that would guarantee them a huge viewing audience later that evening. The reporters reminded the agent of vultures circling a fresh kill, he wondered idly if anyone would notice if he pulled out his gun and capped a few of them.
Hobbes was jostled from his reverie when an object of his musings, a leggy brunette in a red power suit, shoved a microphone into his face. Behind her, a cameraman hovered just over her right shoulder like some kind of surreal, one-eyed monster.
"Sir, can you tell us what happened here?" She gazed at him with brown eyes that tried to convey sympathy, but failed miserably.
Hobbes glared at her, "Why? Something wrong with your own eyes?"
The brunette frowned at him, but persisted, "Perhaps you could tell us in your own words what you saw?"
The agent folded his hands across his chest and narrowed his eyes as he continued to glare at the over-anxious woman. "My own words? You want me to use my own words?" he sneered at her, "Fine." He raised a hand and gestured for her to come closer and she took a hesitant step forward.
"Boom!" Hobbes shouted suddenly, throwing his arms into the air and causing her to jump back in surprise, almost knocking into her cameraman.
"Boom, boom, boom!" he finished angrily, once again folding his arms in front of him. "There, how's that for my own words? That should be good for your sound bite!"
The brunette dropped her mike, "I'm only trying to gather eyewitness accounts to make this story more human," she said, a touch of reproach in her voice.
Hobbes dropped his hands to his sides, unconsciously balling them into fists of rage. "You want to make this story more human," he replied, his voice low and dangerous, "then you and the rest of your vulture pals can pick up a shovel and start digging!" He took a step forward, "We've got people trapped in that mess behind you; mothers, fathers, children, friends …" he trailed off as he thought of his partner lying buried beneath hundreds of tons of dirt and debris.
Hurt, dying… dead.
"Darien?"
Thera's timid voice brought Darien back from the precipice of blackness; he was feeling extremely light-headed and very lethargic. His left arm had gone completely numb and there was a constant buzzing in his ears. He didn't know how much longer he would be able to maintain consciousness when it was an epic struggle to just try and inhale.
"I'm here, " his ragged voice was barely above a whisper. Around him, the groans had become still and the ensuing silence was ghostly, eerie.
"Do you hear something?" she asked, hope evident in her voice.
Darien truly didn't trust any of his senses at the moment, but he strained his ears anyway and was surprised when he was able to make out the steady growl of heavy machinery in the distance. "Yes, I do," he replied at length, allowing himself a small smile as he closed his eyes.
"Are they coming to get us?"
Darien's smile grew into a grin, "Yes they are," he told her.
(And not a moment too soon.)
His head felt as if it had become disconnected from his body and everything from the neck down was a wall of intense, throbbing pain. Darien was fairly certain that, in the dark, two planets were parked on top of him.
Above him, the giant mass of rocks and dirt began to rumble and shift, groaning ominously. He heard Thera emit a startled yelp at the sudden movement, and he wondered if she was sitting atop the wreckage above him. Loose bits of debris tumbled loose from their precarious position and fell lightly on his face. Darien closed his eyes and turned his head to the side, but the dirt got into his nose and mouth anyway. An involuntary cough shook his body and a blast of pain ripped through his upper chest and caused him to gasp in surprise, pulling even more dirt down his throat. He couldn't stop the anguished cry that echoed in the stillness.
"Darien?"
He couldn't speak, not even if he wanted too. Darien couldn't catch his breath enough to form even one vowel and the burning fire in his chest made even thinking an impossibility. He was dying, he decided.
"Darien?" Thera's voice had raised an octave and he could hear that she was bordering on becoming hysterical. Her only other source of human contact in this grisly tomb was in danger of being cut off.
Darien closed his eyes and gritted his teeth, "I'm here," he forced his throat to say, his voice raw, "I'm here, Thera."
"Are you hurt? I heard you scream."
"I'm okay," he lied, "Thought I saw a spider."
Above him, the mass shifted again, moaning and groaning like a large beast about to awaken. Despite the nausea that rolled around him, Darien turned his head away from the falling debris again, he would rather risk vertigo than coughing again.
When the rumbling and shifting subsided, Darien could sense that his confine had suddenly become a lot smaller. When he turned his head back, his nose brushed up against an unseen smooth surface.
(This would be one helluva time to discover I'm claustrophobic.)
Around him, he began to hear people calling out for help or banging on whatever they could find to make noise. As he listened through the roar in his head, Darien could hear the distinctive sound of muffled voices along with machinery. Just a little bit longer, he told himself as he closed his eyes-
(Just hold on a little bit longer.)
Bobby Hobbes stood under a small canopy that had been temporarily erected for the rescue teams to come and catch their breath for a few minutes. "You wanna run that by me again?" he asked, anger causing his voice to quiver.
In front of him, Claire sighed heavily and shook her head, her blond hair blowing lightly in the breeze. "I'm sorry, Bobby, but I have my orders."
"Orders?" he took a step forward, "Orders?" He repeated, fairly shouting, "My partner's back there trapped beneath a freakin' building and you're talking to me about orders?"
Claire reached out to place a hand on his shoulder only to have it swatted away with a snarl and a pointed finger, "Fawkes needs a hospital with doctors and pretty nurses and complicated machinery." Hobbes turned away with a shake of his head, "I can't believe that the Official would actually…I can't believe that you…" his voice trailed off as he ran a hand over his balding head.
In the distance, the voices of the rescue workers mingled with the whine of heavy equipment as they laboriously removed the debris trapping the victims beneath. The sun was beginning to sit low in the sky, casting the scene in a blood-red glow.
Claire went to say something when Hobbes turned suddenly, his eyes bright with anger. "Fawkes is not just a…" he fished for the right word, "…a receptacle. He's an agent, but more than that he's my partner and my friend," Bobby folded his hands in front of him. "I won't let you do this to him, he's done too much, suffered too much for this damn Agency. It's about time you people start realizing that that's a person that gland is attached too and start treating him with more respect and less like a piece of freakin' government property that can be used and abused at whim!"
Hobbes sighed and shook his head, but his anger remained. "I expect that kind of treatment," he admitted, "I'm on my last leg, I got no more chances left so I take whatever is dished out, but aside from that this is the life I signed up for. I knew what I was getting into and what risks were involved. Fawkes he... he's just a punk kid that got handed the raw end of a deal and now has to live with the consequences of it. Hell, it wasn't even his decision to make."
Claire took a hesitant step forward, surprised at the depth of emotion she was seeing in him, she had always known that Hobbes had cared for Darien on some level, she had just never realized how much. It left her speechless. "Hobbes-" she began.
"I'm not letting you do this," there was a note of finality in his deep voice, "Fawkes deserves better than this, he deserves a fighting chance." He dropped his hands to his sides, drawing himself up straight and tall, "You want to take him back to the Agency then you're gonna have to go through me."
The two stared at each other for a few moments before Claire finally looked away, her eyes falling on the devastation that had once been a museum. As she quietly surveyed the damage, a part of her wondered if anyone had been able to survive that blast. That part desperately hoped so.
As Darien lay in the dark, quiet stillness with nothing else to do, his mind began to wander over the last few months and the new direction his life had taken. When he had first joined the Agency, he had viewed everyone associated with it as an enemy, someone to be despised and hated; and he'd excelled at that. He hadn't given any of them a snowball's chance, the nicer they treated him, the more suspicious and angry he became.
(Can you really blame me?)
He didn't really know when things had begun to change, but they had, and for the better. The partner he once viewed with condescending contempt had become one of the few people in the world he truly trusted. The individuals he had originally pushed away had turned out to be the one thing he had never had, not really anyway. A family, an honest-to-God family. Even the Official, with his over-bearing, demanding, callous attitude. It was strange, Darien knew, but he sensed a sort of kinship that existed between everyone at the Agency, from Eberts to Claire, and it was what he had been searching for his entire life. Funny how it had taken a top-secret government experiment to find it.
Above and around him, Darien was able to hear the loud grumble of the rescue equipment drawing ever closer as the rescue teams continued to lift mound after mound of debris from atop the trapped victims. Voices from above were calling out, almost singing, like surreal angels from heaven descending into the pit of Hell. Darien listened as those who were able called out in a desperate reply.
"Darien?" Thera called out softly, "Darien they've come for us."
Darien smiled in the darkness, they sure have.
"Darien?" Concern peppered the girl's voice at his silence. He pulled in a hesitant breath to calm her fears, but his chest constricted painfully, sucking out what little oxygen remained in his labored lungs with a wet choke.
"Darien, can you answer me?" Her concern was audibly evident and Darien could dimly hear a slight scuffling sound, as if she were trying to get to him.
(Hobbes!)
His mind screamed in sheer terror as he fought to catch his breath, agony coursing through his veins like fire and freezing his lungs. Vertigo snatched him in its vicious grip and Darien suddenly felt as if he were falling, tumbling out of control through the blackness and the pain.
(Hobbes!)
Someone was calling out to him in the distant night, he could hear them shouting to him, desperate for an answer. Who was it? Kevin? Hobbes? No, the voice was a female. Claire?
Through the haze of pain and confusion, Darien felt a soft, gentle hand on his cheek. The shock of actual human contact snapped him out of his panic and forced him to calm down. He stopped struggling against his own body and slowly managed to suck air into his burning lungs. His chest exploded with every breath, but the stale air had never tasted so sweet. Darien hadn't realized that Thera had been so close to his position, he wondered if the earlier shifting of the debris was the cause of her nearness. A blessing in disguise, he mused as he closed his eyes and relished in the feel of her cool hand resting lightly on his burning skin.
"Darien, I'm right here," she whispered.
A painful grunt was all he could manage and then he once again called out silently to a friend who couldn't hear him.
