Tagging: Nikita, Birkhoff, Owen, Ryan, Roan, Jaden, Amanda.
Ships: Mikita for now.
Rating: M. (For all sorts of mature shenanigans; violence, death, dark themes and sexual hijinks.)
Here I am again! It's been nine days since I finished Ever Nor Never Goodbye, and I honestly couldn't stay away from writing another multi-chapter story. In fact, I'll be uploading another one in a matter of hours. For the longest time I couldn't decide what I was going to write, so I decided I'd be writing two! (Because I can.)
If you're new to my writing, hey! Welcome! Enjoy the ride. I warn you in advance: I am quite sadistic to my characters. Thank you for taking interest in me!
If you're already familiar with me, hey! Welcome back! I love you lots and loads.
Now on to the story. I hope you'll all enjoy what I've got in store for you this time. :)
There is something fundamentally wrong with working on a Sunday.
Nikita sits slouched in her chair, feet propped up on her desk, paper cup in the hand that still has chocolate clinging to the digits—she didn't choose to conform to stereotypes; coffee and donuts would be irresistibly delicious even if she weren't a cop, damn-fucking-skippy.
And it's Birkhoff's fault anyway.
In spite of the coffee machine having been brewing non-stop for the past hour, the office has yet to fully wake up. They're all small eyes and lazy yawns, idly flicking through paperwork and halfway back to sleep. They closed the blinds over the tall windows in the ancient red brick walls, but it doesn't stop the sounds of the world from filtering in.
The clock slowly ticks up to nine am.
She has been thinking about all the reasons why no one should be allowed to work on a Sunday for the past forty minutes, and she has quite the list. Not that Lieutenant Fletcher will listen... "Crime doesn't stop just because God rested on Sunday," he has said numerous times.
She used to not mind that her job extended to the weekends, that she never had genuine days off, just an afternoon here and there. But Michael...
She sucks the remnants of her breakfast from her fingers and groans.
Across from her, on the opposite side of two desks shoved back-to-back, Birkhoff rolls his eyes and mutters, "Not again."
Nikita raises an eyebrow, tilting her feet so she can look between them. Her partner levels her a steady gaze through round glasses.
"What?"
"Nikki, you do this every time."
She huffs. Silence follows for a full minute, silence but the sputtering of the machine in the corner and the muffled noises of a department that seems to be a lot less zombie at this time a day.
Then Birkhoff stands up, dropping his tablet on top of her desk and grazing his fingers along her bare shins before sitting back. "Look, I know Mikey's been giving you a lot of crap lately—definitely gets him in the running for the 'worst fiancé of the year' award, if you ask me... But you gotta leave that at home, man. You can't let his bitch boy problems ruin this for you. You love your job."
She sighs, a tired smile quirking the corners of her mouth up. "Guess you're right." A beat later, she adds, "I hate it when you're right."
"Joke's on you for taking years to get over it."
"Joke's on you when they find you and your smart ass in a ditch."
"Babe, you can't handle this ass."
"Oh really now? That's not—"
Their bickering is interrupted by a sudden "Donuts?!" from the open entrance doors and in walks Caroline, carrying a tray of veggie shakes and brown-bagged lunches. Her blue eyes are narrowed at Nikita, and she immediately sits up straight, sneaker-covered feet landing on the floor with a thud.
"I'm sorry?" she squeaks.
Suddenly the office bustles with activity, printers spewing out pages, phones being torn off their hooks and numbers pushed in hastily. Caroline might not be of a higher rank than them, but her presence works even better than Fletcher's does. She's like a mother to them, and no one wants to disappoint her...
She works most effectively on Nikita though. After all, Cece's her actual mother.
(Adoptive mother, but who cares for technicalities?)
Food is put down in front of her, Nikita looks up with big eyes. "You'll make a healthy person out of me one day, Cece," she mutters, tip of her shoe scuffing against the floor.
She feels herself grow smaller under her mother's gaze, scrutinizing and a little bit judgmental. In her mind she hears old discussions about how she's been slacking with her nutrition for the last three—six—how many months? Her mother means well, and any other time they'd be joking at the expense of one of her colleagues: Owen is nursing a hangover at his desk in the corner, it would've been reason enough; instead, Birkhoff has put her in a precarious position.
He gets her out of it, too. He makes a wide gesture of putting the phone down and pulls Nikita up to her feet. "We've been summoned."
She pecks her mother's cheek and then ducks underneath her arm, finding her footing as she runs towards the door. "But today is not that day," she casts over her shoulder, and then she's gone.
Liquid relief fills her veins with a warmth that spreads to the very tips of her body when she slumps against the elevator wall, the doors closing firmly shut. "Saved by the B."
"You don't have me to thank. 147 at First Baptist."
She should think about that, about the sighting of a person with a gun (aka, a code 147) at a church, out of all places, but instead she thinks about what's been on her mind all day. "He wants a kid."
Birkhoff's lips purse together to stifle his laughter. His shoulders shake with the unreleased sound, and her glaring pins him to the surface.
"I'm serious. He wakes me up and goes, 'I want to have a baby with you', like, dude, what the fuck!?" She pulls an elastic band from her shorts' pocket and goes about tying her hair up, shaking her head as she continues. "As if we haven't had an argument about this a thousand times before."
"So he does it before work, again?"
"Exactly! I'm not a morning person to begin with, but lately he seems to get joy out of ruining my mood completely before I've even gotten showered. He wants to get married soon, get the whole family to come down to Detroit and... I don't know, he's just so frustrating sometimes."
"Just remember he's kept up with your shit for a while now, and he loves you, and all that shit."
"Sometimes it sucks that defending him is in your besties contract."
"I know, right?"
Nikita flops into the passenger's side of Birkhoff's car, pulling her side arm out of its holster to put it in her lap. Her fingers run across the barrel absently as she listens to debrief over the radio. Traffic whirls around them, and she plays a game of 'find a car without any dents' to rid her mind from her personal life's frustrations.
There's nothing as distracting as those, she knows from experience, so she's really trying. It's difficult but she pulls it off at least decent enough that by the time they park under the willow trees of a nearby block her fiancé is only the third thing on her mind, after musing about who'd be running around with a gun nearby a church and how she was going to make things right with Cece.
"N-Squared, target's on the move." Owen's voice sounds static on the radio. Birkhoff would usually mess with the radio settings until the sound is crystal clear, but they don't have the time. They both slip out of the car quickly, pushing a Comm into their ear as they start running towards the building that towers over everything in their sight.
"Talk to me, Owen," Nikita commands, fingers tightening around the handle of her gun. It feels familiar against her palm, the right kind of cold and heavy.
"Two o'clock. Armed with a rifle. Very dangerous. He seems to be headed inside, so proceed with caution but intercept before he can mess up mass."
"We have a poet among us," she quips to Birkhoff, who grins quickly before he goes all serious on her. That's her cue to sprint, eyes flickering across the space until they lock on a tall man sneaking through the shadows cast by the church.
Shit.
She knows that man. The smell of acid and burning flesh fills her throat so vividly it makes her choke. Every time she blinks she sees his face in front of her, and she swears she hears his agonized screaming ring through her ears.
Roan.
He got away last time. She's not going to make that same mistake again.
Her body tilts forward slightly as she goes the fastest she possibly can. Wind whips her hair back. The hilt of her dagger digs into her ribs.
A shout. In her Comm. Owen.
Birkhoff ducks and avoids a bullet.
Nikita leaps forward, onto Roan. Knocks him to the ground. Slams her elbow between two of his ribs. Takes enjoyment from the sound of bones breaking.
Suddenly she's on her back. His eyes are cold. Ice cold. Ice.
She shivers when the tip of his gun prods against her chest bone.
Stupid.
She's so stupid.
Screaming. The crowd of church-goers dissipates.
Birkhoff pounds the underside of his gun against Roan's jaw. He rolls off, and Nikita lunges at him.
A shot.
The pain pierces through her abdomen. It squeezes every bit of oxygen out of her. Her head swims in an ache that splits through her.
Her breathing slows down. She chokes. Warm liquid pools around her waist. When she coughs, it trickles down her chin.
She tries to drag Roan with her into the darkness, but her hand falls limp next to her.
The last thing she feels is an empty bullet shell underneath her elbow.
"She's coming back to us. Get her intubation out."
The first thing she feels when she wakes up is panic. Her body doesn't respond to her trying to rip the tube out herself. She gasps for breath when it finally slips out, leaving her throat raw and aching.
When she murmurs something, her mouth feels cotton dry.
"Nikita, can you hear us?"
Her foot twitches in response to a tiny little prick, and she sees a vague little light before her eyes roll back and complete stillness takes over again.
When she next wakes up, she is painfully aware of her head throbbing. Her skin itches where needles are nestled into her flesh to tap into her veins.
A gentle hand brushes over her forearm, movement coming to a halt when a rise in the heartbeat monitor shows Nikita's speeding up pace until it's a frantic rhythm that roars with warning signals to her treating doctors.
"Nikita, calm down."
Her head pounds with names, until one sinks in. Jaden.
"Where am I?" Her throat burns with the effort of speaking.
"You're in the hospital, sweetie." There's a choked back sob, insistent fingers digging into the sides of her wrist. "Don't force yourself. The doctor will be here any minute."
She is slipping back to sleep but she fights it, unable to move or open her eyes, but conscious enough to keep her mind from shutting down again.
A confident tapping of footsteps, the hand disappears with its warmth from her arm.
"She talked, Amanda. She used coherent speech! That's a good sign, right?"
"That's a great sign. Nikita?"
Her head moves towards the source of the voice she feels a strange connection to. Her eye lids stay firmly shut when she tries to move them, even if for just a little bit.
"Nikita, can you wiggle your toes for me?"
She does as she's told, feeling uncomfortably disconnected with her body, locked in her head with only a vague idea of everything below her neck.
"Do you feel this?"
"Y-Yeah."
"Can you follow the light for me please?"
When her eye is peeled open, light shining too bright, it's all the fight she has left and she floats away again.
She needs one more time to make it right. When she wakes up next, she is able to open her eyes by herself, and she needs a moment to adjust to the darkness.
In an arm chair by her side Jaden's curled into the arm rest, asleep with her head propped up on her arms. On the footrest of her bed sits an attractive woman, white lab coat around her slender shoulders.
"Good evening. Can you tell me your name, sweetheart?"
"Nikita Mears." Her voice croaks. Her throat feels like sandpaper rasping against her vocal chords.
Even though the lamp above her spreads light through the room her surroundings feel glum. It doesn't show of much visits; no flowers, no gifts, not even a bottle of water and a pair of glasses. Everything is bare and cold.
Nikita's body feels heavier because of it, gravity tauntingly pulling at her limbs.
The woman shifts closer, setting a hand on top of her sheets. Her smile doesn't falter, but her voice does drop an octave, drips with something achingly close to sympathy. "You have just woken up from a coma, Nikita. While it shouldn't be a higher priority than your recovery, I feel you should know... You've been unconscious for a very long time."
"How long?"
"...Six years."