Alex didn't know what to think. Her life seemed to be crumbling before her eyes. Death at every turn, the strongest of friendships slowly dissolving into nothing, and now this. This was something she didn't know quite what to make of. Normally she would talk to Nikita; her one confident, her one true friend. But after what happened in South Ossetia….now she didn't know what to do or who to trust.
She couldn't exactly pinpoint when it started. The fragmenting of her friendship with Nikita. It didn't happen in one day. It wasn't just the words of Amanda. Though those didn't help any. No, it started long ago. Here we go again. Yes that was it. It was their exit window, the end of Division, a path to a better life. A path Nikita blocked off from everyone when she pulled them all back in for her mission to save Division. No. Not Division, the innocent recruits who would have been likely killed if Nikita hadn't saved them. So why didn't Alex walk away anyway? Why stay and save what took Papa away? The recruits weren't her problem, she got out and survived, so could they.
She stayed because Nikita needed her to. There it was. The root problem in her friendship with Nikita. Friendship, hah! Who could even call it that? When Nikita called, Alex answered. That was there relationship. But why did she answer? She answered because Nikita was the only one to ever really give her a second chance, and a third, and fourth. From the flames of her ruined life, from her self-destructive ways, and from the pits of revenge, Nikita was there pulling her out. It was Alex's need to repay her debt to Nikita that drove back underground to Division; that drove the great Alexandra Udinov from her life of wealth and power.
But she couldn't place her reason for staying all on Nikita. She herself was at fault too. She had multiple windows when she could have run for the hills and never been found. She escaped from Vlad by herself; she could have left Division behind too.
But Alex knew, her not being found after escaping the brothel wasn't skill, it was all luck. She was high most of the time, and when she wasn't she was looking for a way to get high. Tracking a junkie was probably pretty hard seeing as she herself had no idea where she would end up each night. Ronnie was her downfall. She stayed in one place for too long and that was where Nikita found her. Nikita cleaned her up, made her look all pretty and gave her a mission.
But that mission was over now. Alex had gotten here revenge for her family, Hell, she even found her mother alive and got her to safety too. Now without a mission of her own, Alex felt more like one of Nikita's pawns. What was it that Ryan said, something about us all being pawns in someone else's game of chess? No wait. That was Percy to who said that not Ryan. Hmm interesting slip. Although it was getting harder and harder to tell the two apart these days what with the kill chips, shady deals for funding, kill missions, and now, even Percy's black boxes were back in the picture hiding away the governments secrets as leverage.
So Ryan definitely couldn't be trusted. Neither could Michael or Owen as they would do anything for Nikita. Birkhoff might still be worth trusting, but he is not as hard to outsmart as he thinks and his cockiness could be dangerous. That left Sean.
Well of course there is Sean. The only one to always have Alex's back, even when he still wasn't sure he could trust her. She had to tell Sean, he would keep it to himself until it was safe, if it was ever safe.
She could hear the footsteps coming down the hall and reacted instantly, shoving the item in her hand into the bedside table drawer in her old recruit room and sat quickly on the bed trying to look relaxed even though her heart was thumping in her chest.
Owen opened the door without knocking and stuck only his head in,
"Hey, briefings starting on base level. Heard word that Amanda is in London for some reason." Owen squinted and tilted his head slightly, "Hey you okay? You look nervous about something." He continued to give her a look.
He knows. No. He can't know anything, you don't even know anything for sure yet.
"Yeah I'm fine." Alex got off the bed and walked squeezed passed Owen through the door. She took a few more steps and then looked back, "You coming or what? I thought this was about Amanda, don't we all have to be there?"
Owen was still looking at her from the doorway. He blinked shook his head slightly, as if shaking away a thought and let go of the door and walked forward, "Yeah, of course. Let's go."
As Alex and Owen walked to the elevator at the end of the hall Alex could feel his eyes still watching here from behind. The heat on her back did nothing to stop the whooshing sound in her ears and the thumping in her chest. Alex started taking deeper breaths as she walked to calm her nerves. One useful tip from Amanda, perhaps the only useful thing she ever did.
Once they reach the elevator they looked at each other and smiled briefly and then they both looked at the floor and waiting as the elevator took them to the command center.
