Past Ghosts
by misscam
Disclaimer: Not my characters, just my words.
Author's Note: Post 2x23.
II
Haunted, Nikita thinks. A ghost, a haunt, a demon, a part of her. That's what Division has always been from the moment she left it, too firmly embedded in her memories for any exorcism to work.
And now she is back here, and by choice no less. Choosing to protect it, to help run it, to save lives that moments before would have murdered her without second thought.
It's no wonder Michael must think her a little crazy, even if he's not saying it out loud. As always with Michael, she never needs his words to know what he's telling her.
But he's still here with her, and now walking through Division's halls with her, watching her intently as she walks among ghosts.
The hallway where Percy once walked next to her and told her about a seduction she had to do for the good of her country and the bile at the back of her throat threatened to gag her. The nook where she once sat and felt her head hurt from trying not to think, and where Amanda wordlessly found her and simply watched. The door to her room as a recruit, the one she foolishly thought meant she could create something of her own inside and lock it.
Her room. It bears no signs of being so, but she knows it down to her bones. She can see herself here, memories so loud she is surprised they don't echo. She died here. She was born here.
"Welcome home, Nikita," she says softly, but the words feel strangely bereft of power anymore. As if making them true have made them no longer effective as a threat, as Percy would have wielded them as.
"It doesn't have to be, you know that," Michael says, and she turns to watch him leaning against the doorway on the threshold of her room. As he's done so many other times, the memories so vivid she has to smile at it.
"I know that," she acknowledges. Michael would make a home with her, one that is lined with picket fences rather than electric fences and with a nursery rather than an infirmary. He would, and she loves him for that.
But she'd like to make it along with him. Their home, not his home shared with her. Their home, without ghosts.
"I left Division, but Division never left me," she says and he looks at her, his face softening with understanding. He knows what it is like to be haunted, after all. To live with ghosts as your only company, to wonder if they ever let go. "It still haunted me. So many ghosts here."
He nods slowly, then smiles the faint amused Michael smile that used to warm her when everything else in Division seemed so cold. "You haunted Division quite well too."
"Good," she says, thinking of Percy's last word.
"And me," he says, and even as her lips curl up to smile, he's taken two quick steps and is kissing her. To reassure her or him, she isn't sure, but with intensity enough for the both of them.
She did have a few interesting fantasies involving Michael and her room back when she was a recruit, she can recall. If he did, she isn't sure, but he certainly looked at her sometimes as if he was imagining her in quite different circumstances.
But this, this isn't fantasy fulfillment, she realises. This is need. Need in him, and she wonders why. Maybe Division haunts him too, or maybe it's just who he was here most of the time that does.
When she takes a step back, he follows, his kiss becoming brushes of lips as she keeps walking and he keeps following. At least until she feels the edge of the bunk bed against the back of her legs and he pulls away slightly to look at her.
"Here? Now?" he asks, voice low and dark. "With all the ghosts?"
"Here. Now," she confirms, smiling a little devilishly. "With all the ghosts. Especially with Percy's."
He chuckles, she kisses the sound of it from his lips until it seems to reverberate inside her, and she is impatiently curling her fingers around the bottom of his t-shirt in preparation for pulling it off. She can feel the smooth skin of his chest against the back of her fingers, expanding slightly with every breath he takes.
He lifts his arms as she tugs at the t-shirt, and she lowers her head to kiss the exposed skin, moving upwards until she's kissing his lips and his tongue is brushing against hers. It becomes almost a pattern: kiss, remove clothing; kiss, shed clothing; kiss, fumble underwear off; kiss and just skin.
Skin, and she brushes her hands across it as he lowers himself on the bed and she lowers herself on him. His breath catches a little, but his hands don't pause, tracing the arch of her spine as she leans down and kisses him. Her hair falls around both their faces, almost shielding them.
She doesn't forget that this is Division, though. The sounds are still there. The feelings are still there. The ghosts are still there, and she imagines Percy walking in on this and bites down on Michael's lower lip a little.
Maybe next time they can do it in Percy's office. It probably won't get rid of the ghosts, but at least it would be something to haunt them with as well.
"Nikita," Michael whispers against her lips, and she closes her eyes to the sound. Yes, him too, haunting her for some many years until she had him, and then, then...
Then he wasn't a ghost and she opens her eyes as he tucks strands of her hair behind her ear and kisses her. Nothing to shield them. Nothing to hide behind.
Maybe that's the only way to get rid of ghosts. Face up to them. Stop running. Make ghosts of the past just past ghosts. Haunt them right back.
'This one is for you, Percy,' Nikita thinks, and then she doesn't think about him for a long time; Michael sees to that.
FIN