*snort*

*chokes on coffee*

*coughs a lot*

...Seriously? Seriously? Oh, come on. Ex-thief, here. Not the greatest ex-thief ever, either. I was working on my third strike--for a crime that I did not in any way commit, thank you very much, though it really should have been for the act of burglary I was attempting, not the stupid frickin' Good Samaritan act I pulled that landed me in that whole mess--what was I talking about? Oh yeah. I was working on my third strike when I, uh, I guess you could say I flipped sides.

Prison, by the way? So not pleasant.

So, um, yeah. Like I said, now I'm not the one getting arrested--most of the time--I'm the one arresting other people instead. Or letting Hobbes do that. He likes to put the cuffs on people. Oh jeez, not like that, get your minds out of the gutter. It was really weird at first, y'know? It still is, sometimes, but at least I get to use a lot of the same skill sets. For various reasons.

*looks shifty*

...my life is so weird.

Uh, when you say run, are we talking literally or metaphorically here? Because, me, I excel at metaphorical running. I am the king at running away from things. My family. Responsibilities. My life. Whatever isn't working for me at the moment, my first response a lot of the time is to run first, figure it all out later.

Okay, these days, I usually don't get the chance to run very far. Robert E. Hobbes is a lot more tenacious in that department than Kevin or my aunt and uncle ever were. But even Kev always found me, eventually, and pulled me out of whatever hidey hole I'd found for myself.

But, metaphorically, it's been a while since I ran like that. I...I don't need to so much anymore. Or I've gotten better coping skills, I'm not sure. I mean, when everything in your life is hell anyway, there isn't much point in running, is there?

If we're talking literally running, though, that was this morning. First after a perp, then from a perp. The guy had a gun. I should have expected the gun, but I didn't, and there it was. One of these days, Hobbes is gonna have to give me weapons training. And the Fatman is gonna have to authorize me a gun. I'm not carrying a hammer around all the time, man.

Badly, mostly.

...what, you want details? I tend to yell a lot. Just ask Hobbes. (Not that he doesn't do his fair share of yelling in stressful situations either.) I run away rather than try to cope. (Sometimes, running away *is* coping.) I go crazy. (Okay, that's not so much by choice. Most of the time.) I steal stuff. (Or at least, I used to. Now I just, like, swipe Eberts' stapler when he's not looking, and that's not so much a response to pressure as a way to *create* pressure because holy crap, Eberts does not like people messing with his office supplies.) These are the ways I respond to pressure.

...Okay, I respond in other ways too. Sometimes, they are even productive and get the job done. But, y'know? My life is pressure. Literally; I can feel it building in my head every few days, ticking away like the timer on an ugly blood-red bomb, if I don't get the switch that freezes the timer. It never quite stops it, but at least I can get that short reprieve.

It's a stupid question anyway. How would you *expect* somebody to respond to pressure?

I would just say no to drugs, but I kinda can't. Because the alternative is worse, and that just sucks.

I usually say no to foreign governments who only want me for my gland, secret organizations, crazy people, and bad guys. Or, well, I usually try to. These days. I didn't always say no to the bad guys; hell, I was a thief, I suppose technically I was a bad guy. And trying is not always good enough; I will not list all the secret organizations, foreign governments, and crazy people who have in the past couple years gotten their claws in me. Sometimes literally, but...that's really not worth going into.

I say no to pretty women a lot these days. I don't really want to talk about that. It's depressing.

I should probably say no less to the Fatman. He is, theoretically, my boss. I should definitely say no to Hobbes more; the crap he gets me into sometimes, I swear--okay, okay, he's reading over my shoulder and telling me I'm the one who gets us into crap all the time, not him, whatever, we should both say no to each other more often.

I don't say no to Claire or Alex Monroe. I know better.

...the hell? What makes you think I cry? 'Cause I don't. I yell, I holler, I even on occasion scream in pain--hey, you would too if you had the occasional needle jammed into the back of your head or something--but I do not cry.

...okay. Okay, okay, okay. I cried when my mom died, when I was a little kid. I might've cried when my uncle died, but I think--I don't think I did, by that point. I cried when my brother died, briefly, because I had no time because I had to run away before a bastard of a villain caught me and used me, and I've cried at his grave since then. I, uh, I might have cried or almost cried sometimes when I thought Bobby or Claire was dead.

That's what makes me cry, okay? People I care about dying. That's a pretty good reason to cry, don't you think?

It's a stupid question anyway.

My name is Darien Fawkes,
they call me Furious D--

...yeah, okay, nobody actually calls me Furious D. Nobody has ever called me Furious D. You have no idea how much this disappoints me.

I've never really been one for nicknames, you know? Hobbes likes to call me things related to the invisibility gland, or, well, call the gland itself nicknames--the 6 Million Dollar Gland is his personal favorite, no matter how much I tell him it's old now, find a new one--but as a kid, as a teen, I never really got too many nicknames attached to me. Other than "Really tall freak" or "The dude with the crazy hair," stuff like that, and I...don't feel a need to count those.

As for Furious D...what can I say? I was bored one day at work. I'm tellin' ya, if I'm not working on a case? I have nothing to do. Other than paperwork, writing reports or something, but I leave all that to Hobbsey and his dyslexia. One of these days, I swear I'm gonna end up watching soaps with the Fatman and Eberts. Crap.

Okay, this might sound a little weird, but I used to love to sleep.

I know, right? I know you're thinking, "Dude, you were a thief." So I loved to sleep during the day. There's nothing quite like going to bed in that grey hour just before the sun comes up, and then sleeping through sunrise. Seriously. I loved cracking an eye open, blinking at the sun, then turning around and going back to sleep.

I don't do that anymore.

For one thing, I work "normal" hours pretty regularly now. They don't allow for much sleeping past noon; Hobbes would probably knock down my door down if I tried. I've had to pay for enough damages from that sort of thing.

For another, I just don't like sleeping anymore. I have too many nightmares, too many memories that have become nightmares. I wake up more often yelling or holding a wrench than I do peacefully anymore.

There's probably something ironic there. I got better sleep when I was a criminal.

I've actually thought about this sometimes, you know? If my eight-year-old self could stumble across me, over twenty years later, what would he say? And the first thing I usually think is, "Dude, what the hell is wrong with you?"

I hadn't started snatching and grabbing when I was eight. Hadn't met Liz yet, hadn't turned into some kind of stereotypical disaffected teenage youth yet. I was still innocent enough and occasionally happy enough, despite mom dying and my older brother being a jerk and my aunt and uncle not understanding me at all. I could still play and have fun, sometimes even with other kids my age.

But, I mean, kids, they don't get adults, any more than most adults can understand kids. So why would it matter what the eight-year-old version of me thought of now-me? He wouldn't know.

I did use to imagine being a secret agent. Along with astronaut and fireman and scientist so maybe I'd get along with my brother and uncle. So maybe that factor, along with my ability to turn invisible, would make me look cool.

You know what's really pathetic about this whole question? The fact that I'm worried about appearing "cool" to my younger self. Jeez.

"The problem, of course, was that people did not seem to understand the difference between right and wrong. They needed to be reminded about this, because if you left it to them to work it out themselves, they would never bother. They would just find what was best for them, and then they would call that the right thing. That's how most people thought." --Alexander McCall Smith, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

Hey, man, I've been there. I have followed the path of least resistance most of my life. It was easy. It worked for me. That's how I ended up above-average in high school; that's how I ended up in my petty little life of crime. I didn't have to think too much about right or wrong back then. I mean, I knew what I did was legally wrong, but--so what, right? The people I was robbing, they all had insurance to cover the cost of the items I took, crap like that; it was practically victimless crimes.

(I say something like that to Hobbes or the Keep, and they just look at me. Jeez.)

These days, these days I'm stuck with right and wrong. I have to look at it every day, every time the Official threatens to cut me off from the counteragent, every time Arnaud pops his slimy little head in to say hello, every time Chrysalis comes up with a new plan for world domination. Every time I feel the quicksilver madness itching in the back of my head, I feel the urge to steal itching in my fingers.

Every day.

Right and wrong. They're choices, and I can pretty much guarantee you there are no guarantees, but every day I'm reminded about the differences between the two. And about the fact that I have to choose.