Owen stepped out of the shower and dragged a towel through his wet hair, steam still billowing around him. It was quiet on this side of Division; the recruit wing had been empty for years now, but Owen knew better than to forget where he was. Home, he thought cynically. Where he had learned to kill.
He would only be here until Ryan and Michael set him up at a safehouse, hopefully no more than a couple of days. But it couldn't be soon enough. Owen slung a towel around his hips and opened the door to the hallway. The familiar fluorescent lights still brightened the hallways, but their loudness, once a constant reminder of his imprisonment, had somehow dimmed. The place felt haunted.
Owen rounded the corner and collided with a small yet forceful figure, throwing him out of his reverie. Brown hair stuck to the damp skin on his chest as he reached both arms out to steady her. It was Alex.
She looked up at him in confusion, pushing a strand of hair out of her eyes, and Owen's dick twitched under the towel. Fighting for control, he let his hands fall from her arms.
He crossed his own over his chest and maintained eye contact, praying she didn't notice his growing erection.
"What are you doing back here?" He demanded, his voice sounding harsher than he'd intended. It didn't do to catch a guy right out of the shower.
Her eyes flicked away nervously. Nervously? Where was his snotty little high-heeled interrogator from three days ago?
"Sometimes I come down here to think," she said quietly. She made a move to step around him, then stopped dead and stared at his chest.
Owen glanced down to see what had caught her attention and saw that her stare was fixed on the butterfly tattooed on his right clavicle.
Alex shook her head as if to clear it and straightened.
"Sorry," she mumbled.
Owen peered down at her curiously. Something was off. He'd known her less than a week and could still recognize that.
As she moved around him Owen grabbed her arm. She looked up at him, startled, finally meeting his eyes, and Owen knew what was wrong. He'd seen the same look reflecting back at him through the mirror countless times over the past few years.
"Alex, are you high?" His grip on her arm suddenly felt tight, even to him. He loosened it slightly, but still held on as she tried to jerk away from him.
"Get off of me!" she yelled.
She pushed away from him and he let her. Her eyes were like fire under the haziness of whatever drug she was on.
"Put some clothes on," she snapped, her eyes moving over his body in disgust. "Nikita's looking for you."
Owen didn't turn around as she stormed angrily down the hallway, her boots echoing against the cold harsh concrete. He shrugged inwardly. Alex intrigued him, but her situation was none of his business. They barely knew each other.
Besides, he had more important things to deal with at the moment. Namely, the now rigid member jutting out from between his legs.
He sighed in annoyance. Even assassins were still human when all was said and done.
The drugs she had taken that morning were starting to wear off and Alex was getting pissed. She entered the main conference room and saw Sean look up from across the room where he was bent over a computer screen with Sonja. Alex looked away to avoid his penetrating gaze and made a wide detour around him to one of the sparring rooms. She needed to hit something.
Five minutes later she was channelling all her anger into a punching bag. It felt good to release it all.
She didn't even understand the anger that had been eating away at her for the past two weeks. Instead of enjoying Nikita's girlish excitement over her engagement to Michael, Alex felt herself disgusted by it.
Maybe it was just jealousy. But that was something Alex had never once felt toward Nikita. They were like sisters, and besides, it wasn't as if Alex herself was hurting for any male attention. She felt herself remembering Sean's kiss, but her lips didn't tingle the way they were supposed to. Instead, she felt more and more annoyed with him as each day passed. The way he belittled Nikita and Michael... the way he'd been treating Alex herself, like she was some fucking china doll that would break at the least bit of provocation... Alex slammed a fist into the bag and met with resistance.
Michael peeked around the punching bag, one eyebrow raised. "Wanna talk about it?"
"No," Alex snapped.
But she was glad that he stayed. Glad that he just held the bag as she punched and kicked, without chastising her about putting stress on her shoulder. Glad that he didn't ask about Sean, or her mother, or the fact that Nikita had stayed at her apartment twice this week already because the nightmares from so long ago had returned, and Alex couldn't stand to be alone at night.
Nikita was worried about Alex. She'd mentioned the nightmares to Michael, but she hadn't told him everything.
Strangely, Nikita felt found herself thinking about Amanda. For all her evil and manipulative ways, Amanda would have come up with the perfect explanation for why Alex's past had suddenly come back to haunt her again. For why, after coming into her own two years ago and finally finding some sense of self-worth, Alex was starting to think of herself as damaged goods again.
Nikita sighed in frustration. Everything had been going so well. Now it was all starting to crumble again.
Alex needed another Percocet. Or something stronger. Her shoulder ached, her head spun, and she just wanted to lie down.
She mopped the sweat from her brow and pulled the ace wraps off of her wrists.
"I'm gonna go home and rest for a while, Michael. Can you tell Nikita I'll meet her later? We were supposed to go grab some stuff for Birkhoff's apartment. If we didn't shop for him he'd be living off Code Red and Pirate Booty."
"Of course. Alex, are you sure you're ok?"
"Yeah, I'm fine. It's just my shoulder."
An hour later Alex was back at her apartment, stripping out of her sweat-soaked yoga pants and closing all the drapes before she collapsed onto the bed.
She was freezing, goosebumps standing out on her clammy skin. She huddled under the covers, reveling in the darkness, and soon drifted into a fitful sleep.
Alexandra was back in Russia. Dimly, through the fog of the drugs, she felt Dimitri secure the shackles binding her wrists to the bedposts behind her. The handcuffs dug into her already bruised skin, her bony wrists chafing against metal; emaciated, just like the rest of her.
Vlad came toward her with a syringe that looked none-too-clean, tapping air bubbles from it with a gold-ringed finger. She twisted on the dirty mattress, writhing toward the needle, wanting, begging.
"Perform well, my little Sashenka, and I will give you more," he said as the needle pierced the skin in her arm.
Vlad and Dimitri were gone, and Alexandra lay quiet and still, reveling in the drugs coursing through her veins. What sweetness. There. Now she could ignore the lice crawling on her scalp, the sweat on her skin, the rough hands that yanked her tattered underwear down around her ankles. She scarcely felt the man's cock as it pushed against her entrance. He cursed and spit on his hand, then rubbed the dampness over her, trying to lubricate her enough to find passage.
Irritated, he slammed into her painfully. Alexandra was lost though, lost enough to ignore this pain, and the pain that built as he pulled at her nipples. She was lost enough to ignore his primitive grunts, and the way the small metal bed shook, chains jangling, each time he thrust into her. She was even lost enough to ignore the heaviness of the man's spent form as he collapsed on top of her, his chest heaving, his breath rank against her neck.
Alexandra's world faded into darkness.
Nikita used her spare key to open Alex's apartment when the younger girl didn't answer her cell. The apartment was pitch black, but Nikita had no trouble finding the bottle of pills she had known she would find under the sheets kicked carelessly to the floor in Alex's bedroom. Angrily, she tucked the bottle into her pocket and strode into the bathroom.
Nikita found Alex on the floor of her shower, sobbing, unaware of how cold the water had become.
Nikita stepped in through the glass doors and turned the water off, then stooped to wrap a towel around Alex's shaking form.
"Can you walk to the bedroom?" Nikita asked her, trying to keep the worry from her voice.
Alex nodded weakly, still crying, and let Nikita drag her to her feet and into the bedroom. Neither of them said a word as Nikita helped Alex into some clean clothes and began combing the knots from her damp hair.
Nikita gritted her teeth as she worked through the tangles in Alex's hair. "Im going to tell Ryan to send someone else to Moscow with Michael."
Alex shook her head. "You need to be there with Michael."
Nikita wanted to ask why Alex herself wasn't clamoring for this mission, but she kept silent. "I'm not leaving you alone," was all she said.
"I'm not a baby, Nikita," Alex snapped.
"Wanna tell me what's going on, then?" Nikita said brusquely.
Alex sighed, and Nikita could see the tears pooling in her eyes again. "I wish I knew."
Nikita was combing a little too roughly.
Alex met her eyes through in the mirror. "I'll be fine, Nikita. I just need some time to figure things out."
Nikita was unconvinced. This agent retrieval was important, and she didn't want Michael going without her, but Alex was important too. Maybe she could send Owen with Michael. He would have Michael's back, she knew, but she wondered if he trusted her enough yet to do this for her. He was still coming to grips with the fact that Division was still standing; Nikita knew it was risky to push him for too much too soon.
"Nikita, I can hold it together for a few days at least," Alex said, interupting her thoughts. "If I need someone I'll call Sean."
Nikita snorted. "We both know that's a lie." She didn't even want to ask right now. The fact that Alex had been avoiding Sean all week was enough for Nikita to distrust him.
"Then Birkhoff," Alex said wearily. "I'll call him."
"Alright. We'll talk when I get back." Nikita stood, kissing Alex's damp hair. "Oh, and Alex? Stay away from the infirmary."