Disclaimer: I'm not rich.
"Uh Mike? I know this is your party hear but in this situation I'm thinking we should say, hell no! You with me brother?" Sam said.
Jesse raised his hand, "I am."
"Yeah, see the thing is," Michael said, adressing the agents. "The last shrink we dealt with planted my mother's boyfreind, cut Sam off, tried to kill Jesse, blew up the British Consulate, framed Fiona for murder and terrorism, forced me to run private black ops missions, and was single handedly responsible for destrpying my life. We're not to eager to talk to a government psych analyst," he explained to the agents. "No offense kid." Michael told Sweets.
"Totally none taken." Sweets assured him. Sweets had seen the part of Michael's file that said he was like Booth minus the humor, and he was trying very hard not to be terrified of the burned spy.
Gibbs had no such qualms, "You, and your whole team are going to have to take the examination or we won't be able to work with eachother legally." he told Michael.
"Legally? When did we start worrying about legally?" Michael asked.
"Since me and the squints are all part of the FBI and Agents Gibbs, David, McGee, and DiNozzo not to mention Dr. Malard and Miss Shootough are all a part of NCIS and the FBI and NCIS are both government agancies in charge of inforcing the law." Booth pointed out.
"The squints and I, Booth," Bones corrected him.
Booth didn't acknowledge her correction. Instead he continued to stare at Michael. Booth was excellent at reading people, it was one of the things that made him such a good FBI agent, and Michael's ability to pull a total poker face no matter what the situation was annoying him. He wanted to know how Michael's thought process worked, and as much as he hated to admit it, Sweets was good at his job.
Michael was weighing out his options. He could either say no and forsake government help witch could be immensely valuable to the success of the operation, or he could spend over three hours of boaring mid numbing psychological evaluations from a kid who looked like he had just gotten out of school and roll into this mission with all possible help from two diferent government agencies.
Fiona rolled her eyes, "We don't really need government help Michael." she told him quietly. "I say let them wonder about what's going on in our pretty little heads while we go and figure out who's killing off distantly realted members of your family with automatic weapons. I have plenty of C4 in the car." she suggested.
"I'm not really looking to torch the countries capital Fi." he told her.
"You're no fun Michael," Fiona complained.
"Mike, I'm with Fi on this one," Jesse told him.
Michael closed his eyes and forced his jaw to relax. He took three deep breaths and felt his heart beet slow slightly. He opened his eyes again, "We need their resources."
"Mike-" Jesse started.
Michael cut him off by raising his hand, "Hear me out Jess. We do these evaluations, but we play it close to the vest."
"No Chatty Kathy's I get that, but we gotta give these guys something or we're gonna be until Christmas." Sam pointed out.
"How about we go the Landon approach?" Michael suggested.
Sam and Jesse both nodded their agreement. Fiona shot Michael a questioning look with her eyebrows raised. It was her 'you-had-better-explain-now, look.
Sam caught the look and decided to explain so Michael didn't have to. "It's this technique a guy name Jack Landon came up with. The guy went totally psycho after a mission and he knew he wasn't going to make the psyche grade but he was a brilliant son of a bitch so he figured out how to get a hold of the psycologically safe answeres and memorized them. So when he went in for the interveiw he had all the perfect answers for the shrinks."
"And you all know the safe answeres do you?" Fiona asked skeptically. They all nodded. "Good, so who feels like sharing with me?"
Michael, Sam, and Jesse exchanged looks and Fiona could see the silent arguement.
Fion sighed, "Fine, I'll just do my best. I'm perfectly stable."
Sam covered his laugh with a cough that turned into a chocking sound and Fiona glared at him.
Michael turned and raised his voice so that the agents could hear him again, "Fine. We'll do it, but my mom stays here with Charlie."
Gibbs looked at Booth and he nodded. Gibbs turned back to Michael, "We can do that." he told him.
"Good," Michael said. "Now let's get out of here. I don't want to waste anymore time than I have to." He started to walk forward. "Fi, give Charlie to my mom. I think four years is a little young for a first visit to the J Edgar Hoover Building."
Two and a half hours and three interviews later, Sweets was considering putting in for a pay raise. Sam and Jesse had answered the psyche assessment questions with answers that were almost word for word accurate from the psychology handbook. Not to mention the fact that they were delivered with not to small an edge of mockery.
Fiona Glennane had given answers that definitely indicated attention deficiency, violent tendencies, and a lack of impulse control but her psychiatric health she was fine.
Now he was staring at Michael Westen after delivering the standard psychiatric check. Michael had deadpanned the answers without even bothering to make eye contact. Sweets needed to figure out more about Michael which meant watching him to ask the right questions.
Michael's eyes took another flip around the room and Sweets picked up on it. He had noticed that it was almost a constant movement for Michael. His eyes never rested in one place for longer than about fifteen seconds.
"Why do you do that?" Sweets asked.
Michael's eyes flipped over to the psychologist for a moment before they moved away again. "Do what?" he asked.
"Move your eyes from place to place. You never focus your eyes on one point." Sweets replied.
Michael shrugged. "Habit."
"How did that habit develop?" Sweets pried. He was sensing an opening in the defenses.
Michael considered for a moment before deciding to tell the truth. "Training. Operatives are trained to go into situations and find all the exits, weapons, threats, surveillance, and points of weakness."
"So why do you keep on checking? This room hasn't changed." Sweets pointed out. Michael just shrugged again. "Your file says that you are good at tactical analysis. What exactly does that mean?" he pried.
"It means I'm good at seeing angles. I see what people want and use it to make them act how I want them to. It also means I'm good at figuring out the dynamics of a situation and using them to my advantage." Michael explained.
Sweets nodded. Psychologically the eye movement made sense if Michael thought of things in terms of angles and connections. Moving his eyes between objects was his way of affirming connections to be manipulated and controlled. It also told him that Michael would never be backed into a corner. He would have back up plan, after back up plan, after back up plan, and every single one of them would be viable.
Now Sweets only had one more question. "Why do you do what you do Mr. Westen? You don't work for a government, and your only personal connections are never more than one phone call away from helping you. You've found the people who ruined your life. So what else are you doing this for?" he asked.
Michael sighed, "What does anyone do anything for? When I lost my government job I stopped pulling a pay check, living costs money. No identity means I can't exactly fill out a W2." Michael sighed deeply. "My skill set is pretty specific, and their are lot's of people who will pay for a person with specific skills to solve their specific problems, and they don't have a problem with paying for it."
Sweets was surprised at the way Michael spoke about what he did. His voice was cold and completely devoid of emotional depth. When Sweets found his voice he said, "That's pretty harsh."
Michael looked Sweets straight in the eyes. They always changed color, but to Sweets they were flat, icy, dark blue, and dangerous. The sight froze Sweets in his tracks.
Michael looked at him for another moment before saying, "That's life." he let out a sigh. "Are we done yet? I have some angry killers I need to go see."
Sweets nodded mutely and Michael left. Sweets looked down at the papers and he felt like it was someone else doing it, as he saw his hand trace out his signature in dark blue ink.
A/N: Hey! Sorry about the time lag but I had other work I had to do. I'm thinking the next chapters might involve a not so dead Larry and maybe some angry Russians. Review for me!