Fic: Feel a Little More Alive
Title: Feel a Little More Alive
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Diana, Peter
Spoilers: None
Summary: How Diana and Peter might have met; Diana assists on her first operation for the FBI while she is a trainee at Quantico. Day Eight of my Twelve Days of Ficmas challenge, and the strain is showing o_O
Warnings/Triggers: None
Word Count: ~3100
A/N: The Title is a lyric from "Vaporize" by Broken Bells. This was written for the "hearing loss" square in my hc_bingo card and I am finally done with that - whew!
Special thanks and cherries to surreal_44 for helping flesh out the case aspects of the fic. All mistakes are my own, though, as I dashed this one off whilst severely sleep-deprived.
----
Pain. Throbbing, unrelenting pain. That is all she was registering. She opened her eyes and experienced…nothing but confusion.
The light was bright, too bright. The sheets covering her were scratchy, too intense on her fevered skin. The room she was in smelled of bleach, bleach and antiseptic and…urine?
She finally managed to keep her eyes open against the bright glare. LeRoy was in the room, talking to a nurse or doctor - someone in blue scrubs. She couldn’t hear them. She couldn’t hear much of anything, actually. And her head hurt like a mother-effer.
Suddenly she remembered what had happened and she groaned to herself. Her career was over before it had begun.
----
Two days earlier, Diana Berrigan woke up in her dorm at Quantico, as she had on every other day for the last eighteen weeks. She went for a run, showered and then set off for driving skills training. On the way, she received a message from her advisor to report to him for a special assignment.
She waited in his office for twenty minutes until he finally could see her. Agent Russell LeRoy was a balding, middle-aged man, powerfully built and mild-mannered. This outward appearance masked a fiercely competitive and determined agent, a fighter who advocated for the agents-in-training under his care.
“Diana,” he greeted. “So nice to see you again so soon. Please have a seat.” She took a guest chair and sat forward, back straight and her attention fully on her advisor. “I’m sure you’re wondering why you’ve been called in. Simply put, I have a little opportunity for you.”
“Sir?”
“How familiar are you with the Bartholdi family?”
“Organized crime family out of NJ,” she replied. “They’ve got their hooks into numbers, drugs, prostitution.”
“And now, credit card fraud and identity theft. The White Collar unit out of New York thinks they’ve got a case and are about to launch a full takedown operation on a location up in Centreville. They’ve asked for some local help, and the Director asked me to recommend two of our best and brightest. I’ve chosen you and Lance Jonson.”
Diana couldn’t suppress the smile on her face. “Sir, that’s tremendous news!”
“Don’t get too excited, Berrigan. You’re likely to be stuck getting coffee for the agent in charge, but it’ll be some good exposure for you both. You’ll report to Special Agent Peter Burke tomorrow at 10:00 hours. Here’s a file on the case for you to review. I don’t need to tell you how important it will be for you to…what?”
“Know my shit,” she said. This was LeRoy’s catch phrase and it had been drilled into her head over the last several weeks. Agents who trained under LeRoy went far, and she knew she’d do well to follow his advice.
“I’ve gotten you off classes for the rest of the day. Study that file, report for duty tomorrow, and don’t fuck it up. Make me proud.”
“I will, sir.”
Diana returned to her dorm and pored over the files twice, then grabbed her laptop to do some additional research. Despite several open cases against them, no law enforcement agency had been able to make any charges stick on the leaders of the Bartholdi family, but apparently this time was different. Key evidence had been obtained through wiretaps and from a confidential informant. It was all almost over except for the takedown, which was happening within days. And Diana had been invited to the party.
She spent the rest of the evening researching known Bartholdi associates and re-reviewing the file. When she finally dropped off to sleep, it was with visions of handcuffed perpetrators dancing in her head.
----
“Here are the blueprints for the site. As you can see, we’ve already set up surveillance sites here…and here… And we believe the main data storage area is in this cold room…here.”
A young Agent named Jones was presenting the situation on the ground, as a preamble for assignments being handed out, and the tactical plan being reviewed. Diana sat next along the wall next to her classmate, Lance Jonson, in a crowded conference room with about thirty agents from all parts of the agency, from tactical response to electronic surveillance to data analysis. She and Lance were friendly rivals, each vying for the top spot in their graduating class. While Diana wasn’t sure where she wanted her first assignment to be, Jonson was hoping for a coveted slot working for Agent Burke.
Special Agent Peter Burke - already a legend in his time, with an entire week dedicated to his cases in the cyber and white collar crime curricula - stood with his hands on his hips in the front corner of the room, his sharp eyes missing nothing. At one point, he caught Diana staring at him and pinned her with a glance. She returned the look for a moment, straightening her back and raising an eyebrow, then returned her attention to the speaker. She didn’t see the smirk that briefly played over his lips.
Burke was next up, calling out assignments to those assembled, naming team leads. “And today we have been gifted with the presence of two of the current Quantico class’s best and brightest to help us out. We have Diana Berrigan…” She raised a hand and waved; Burke nodded. “And Lance Jonson…” Lance raised his hand as well. “We’ll have specific assignments for these two, but they’re newbies, guys, so be gentle. No sending them to pick up your dry cleaning.” There were a few chuckles around the room and Burke continued, “Now, as for the timeline…”
Diana was assigned to shadow the team lead in the surveillance van, which she knew was a large part of field work, but it still had her disappointed. Jonson had been assigned to Burke personally, a fact she could just feel him gloating over as he sat next to her. When the meeting finally broke up and the teams were setting out for their posts, he couldn’t resist a little dig, “Well, I’ve got to go and meet with Agent Burke, so, I’ll see you later.”
She gave him a look. “Have a good time. I hear he likes espresso.”
----
Several hours later and Diana thought she might actually die. Agent Nate Schwartz was a 15-year veteran of the Bureau, and had spent the last ten on surveillance details, for which he was, not surprisingly, well-suited. He was of medium height, balding, with a paunch and a nervous habit of constantly checking that his fly was up. Diana noted his bad posture, cheap suit speckled with dandruff and badly gnawed fingernails and immediately wanted to run out of there. But she told herself this was a rare opportunity for a trainee and that it would prove to be a valuable learning experience. And at least he wasn’t staring at her tits. Over the last two hours, he had kept up a constant litany on the inefficiencies in the Bureau’s healthcare plan. Apparently, his wife was an asthmatic who needed a lot of prescriptions and blah, blah, blah - Diana was still distracted that anyone could share a bed with this guy.
At first, she observed the live feeds of the operation, switching from view to view and noting the formations the tactical team was using, trying to apply some of what she’d already learned to understand the set up. At one point, she noticed Lance trotting around in Burke’s wake, and felt a twinge of disappointment that it hadn’t been she who’d been chosen to assist the agent in charge.
1:00 arrived and Diana was on the edge of her seat as she watched the tactical teams take down the doors and sweep through the warehouse, followed by Agent Burke and his own team to make the arrests. She switched from camera to camera, wishing she could’ve been there. Within ten minutes, the entire operation had been concluded, and there was nothing left to do but bag and tag the evidence.
“Agent Schwartz, do you mind if I review some of the historical footage from the last two days? It might be useful to monitor the comings and goings?” Diana asked. She wanted to play around with the facial recognition software the Bureau had recently acquired.
He shrugged, and handed her a rack of DVDs. “The analysts have already eyeballed them and gotten all they could, but sure, whatever blows up your skirt, eh?” He colored as he made that comment, realizing too late it was directed at a young woman, but she just laughed and took the stack of DVDs.
Diana ran a few tests of the video through the program, but the renderings were taking forever, so she just ran a simultaneous feed on another monitor and paged through what content she had.
After thirty minutes, she noticed something she thought was strange. What seemed to be a routine delivery of office supplies to the warehouse space next to their target site two days ago looked suspicious. The van driver wore what from her perspective were entirely the wrong shoes to match his coveralls; they were clearly expensive and fashionable. She zoomed in and had her suspicions confirmed that there was something wrong- his watch was also way too expensive for a guy delivering multiple pallets of copy paper to what seemed to be an abandoned space. He also studiously avoided the actual physical labor, relying on people from inside the office to do the heavy lifting.
“Agent Schwartz, have you seen this?” She ran him quickly through what she’d noticed.
“The analysts have seen it, and if they’d have flagged it, we’d have checked it out. Don’t worry about it.”
“But this guy’s wrong. I can feel it.”
“Women’s intuition?”
Diana, who’d been trained by her childhood bodyguard Charlie to spot suspicious behavior, knew it was a bit more. “Something like that,” she said.
“Don’t you worry about it, kid, it’s fine. The site has been secured, the fat lady has sung.”
“Well, do you mind if I go to check it out? According to the blueprints, the east wall of that office butts up against the back of the target site, where the server room is supposed to be. There could be something to it, I think.”
He glanced at his watch, and rolled his eyes. Trainees - he hated them at this stage. “Sure, you’ve got ten minutes. Take this radio. I’m on channel 3. The tactical team is on 6. If you spot anything, I want you to come straight back here. Got it?”
She nodded and climbed out of the van.
When she arrived at the door where the delivery had taken place, she noticed the windows had been covered up with brown butcher’s paper from the inside. She skirted the edges, trying to find a place where the paper had fallen. She lucked out at the back corner of the building. She peered in through the window, her hands forming a shield around her eyes to block the sun and improve her visibility inside. The place seemed empty, but she noticed that a doorway existed between the two spaces. She decided to get a better look.
Looking around to be sure she wasn’t observed, she pulled out her lock picks and set to opening the door nearest her. Once inside, she waited a minute for her eyes to adjust to the low light and then moved cautiously in the direction of the doorway, suddenly wishing she’d been allowed to carry a sidearm. She eased up to the door and peered inside, finding a small room with a raised floor and several racks filled with servers and other equipment.
She allowed herself a moment of pride that she’d been right about the access to the cold room, but the thrill quickly died when she saw what had apparently been delivered the other day. There were charges set around the room’s equipment bays, with trigger points set at the far door. Whatever work had been done was apparently unfinished, as they had thankfully not completed the setup at the door she was standing in. But the sweep of the space would soon be progressing to this section of the building, and if the agents came through that door unaware, there could be serious injuries and the destruction of key evidence that they had worked so hard to get access to.
“Aw, crap,” she breathed, and took a step back. Her heart hammered in her chest as she fumbled with the radio. Ignoring Schwartz’s request to communicate with him, she switched the handset to channel 6 and said…what exactly?
A moment’s hesitation - how exactly was she to move forward? “Shit, shit, shit!” she muttered, smacking herself in the forehead. “Get it together, DeeDee!” She depressed the button and just started babbling. “Er, hello? This is Berrigan. I’m in the building next door and I think there are explosives set up in the server room. Hello?”
There was a flurry of voices over the radio, chaos, shouts. Through it all, one voice cut through. “I want radio silence - NOW!” it said and they died away. Agent Burke. “Delay all progress through the building and retreat until we can verify this threat and get a bomb squad in here. Berrigan? Is that it?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Where the hell are you and what the hell is happening?”
She flinched. “Uh, I’m in the building adjacent. There’s a passage through the shared wall into the server room. I thought I saw, I mean, I’m pretty sure there are explosive charges set up around the servers?”
“You think, or you know, Berrigan?”
Crap. “I know, sir.” She wished her voice would stop shaking.
“I won’t ask how you know, Berrigan. Stay where you are, we’ll send a team -“ She moved towards the main entrance, which was closer to where she thought the other agents would be in through. “And don’t touch anything.”
She heard no more as a set of unseen charges positioned nearby were set off when she unlocked the door.
----
Diana tried to sit up in the hospital bed, but was prevented by someone pushing her gently back down. A nurse was talking to her, but she could hear nothing but a roaring in her ears. She shook her head, but it didn’t clear. She tried not to panic as she gestured to her ears and said, “I can’t hear you!”
The nurse nodded, squeezed her hand and left the room. It was some time later when she returned, a man in a lab coat in tow. The name stitched on his chest said Dr. Manohar. He examined her thoroughly, shining lights here and there, talking to her the entire time. She shook her head, “I can’t hear!” she was sure she was shouting.
The nurse returned with a steno pad and a pen and handed it to the doctor. He gestured to it and the nurse. He wanted her to do the writing. Both Diana and the nurse rolled their eyes, but the nurse took down the information the doctor was telling her and handed the pad to Diana. “You were in the building when it exploded. You have a concussion and separated shoulder. Your hearing should return, but we need to run some tests.”
Diana nodded, relieved. “Can you call my parents?” she shouted, and the nurse gave her the pad to write down the information.
By the next day, the roaring in Diana’s ears had been reduced to a muffled whine, and she could hear a bit, though not very well. The test results were promising, and the doctor had high hopes for a full recovery. Her parents were scheduled to arrive later that afternoon, and she was not looking forward to it. Her mother was a notorious drama queen who had already given her too much grief over her chosen career - this would just be more fuel for her fire.
She felt rather than heard someone enter the room. It was one of the nurses on the floor, whose lips were moving as she gestured behind her for someone to enter the room behind her. Diana swallowed when she saw who it was - Agent Burke. She sat up in her bed and smoothed the blanket over her lap.
He stood halfway between the door and her bed, waiting for the nurse to finish talking and leave the room. When she’d gone, he walked over to Diana, his face unreadable.
Diana felt her face color as he did; she was certain she was about to be read the riot act. She swallowed and looked up at him, expecting the worst.
Instead, he held out his hand for her to shake. She took it but could barely press back, she was so shocked. For the rest of her life she’d regret the anemic handshake she’d offered him when they first met.
“I’m here to commend you on a job well done, Berrigan,” he said.
“What?”
“Good job!” he said loudly.
“Gotcha?”
“Good! Job!”
“Oh,” she said and smiled uncertainly. She still wasn’t sure she’d heard him properly. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a small notebook and a Quantico pen and began writing. She thought he looked annoyed and wished she could hide under the bed.
He handed her the book and she read his neat scrawl. “Good job, Berrigan. Your actions saved lives.”
“Oh,” she said to him, feeling sudden warmth spreading through her. “Thanks.”
“What tipped you off?” he wrote.
“The video surveillance. I reviewed the tapes and saw something suspicious, so I went to check it out. Was the server room destroyed?”
He nodded. “We were able to recover some information. It’s not much, but enough.”
“Cream puff?”
He laughed, wrote, “Not complete loss,” on the pad and handed it back to her.
“That’s a relief. I thought I screwed the whole operation up.”
He shook his head no. “I’d like you on my team, if you’re interested.”
“Urine stain? What?” She looked alarmed.
He laughed out loud and took back the notebook. “Come work for me,” he wrote.
“Oh! Oh, OK.”
“What. Do. You. Say?” he said slowly and loudly.
“It’d be an honor, Agent Burke.”
----
Thank you for your time.
A/N: This is unbeta’d, so I’m sure it could be more accurate or you know, grammatically correct. I’ll have to edit and repost, but wanted to get this up for hc_bingo today.