This is my very first fanfic, so please go easy on me for now. If you come across any mistakes, I would appreciate if you let me know.
No Sean bashing intended (I think his a great guy), but I just can't help but see the potential between Alex and Owen.
Hope you all enjoy :) Title inspired by Gotye.
In case anyone is re-reading this I've done a bit of editing on the chapters.
Alex's POV:
Alex lay on her bed, starting blankly at the ceiling. It had been over a week since the mission to capture Ari and Amanda had gone sideways. Over a week since she had almost died. Over a week since she had last seen Sean.
"Michael asked me to do a job and I did it. That's all."
Sean's words and the way he looked at her, like he was disappointed by what he saw, were firmly embedded in her mind. It was a constant loop, eating away at everything that told her she was a strong, independent woman. But, it was the "you don't need to explain yourself" that really got to her. She had done her job - something that she was quite proud of and he had completely belittled that. He had made her feel like an inadequate child. He was the one that needed to explain himself.
Why couldn't he understand that Nikita, Michael and, even Birkhoff, were her family? That, by forcing her to choose, he was trying to take her away from the only people who had always been there for her, even when she thought they weren't. Why was it so hard for him to grasp the fact that she didn't want to leave them for the sake of something that she didn't even know was going to work out?
It had taken Alex by surprise when Sean had told her he loved her. Because, Alex wasn't foolish enough to think she was in love with Sean, not yet, but she did love him and the potential for it to become deeper was there. She couldn't find it in her, to fall for someone so quickly, not after all she had been through. It was hard for her to break down her walls, especially when it came to men, but for Sean she tried. She let him have a glimpse of who she really was - a broken girl who just wanted someone to love her unconditionally. And at the first sign of trouble he basically ran away. Instead of trying to work it out, he had chosen to leave her, and that hurt. Now all she wanted was for Sean to understand that after the life that she had before meeting Nikita, she couldn't turn her back on the women who given her a reason to live.
Which lead to the other problem eating away at her. She found herself struggling to find her place in the New Division. She knew she wanted to help Nikita get the Dirty Thirty and accomplish shutting Division down completely, but she had no goals of her own. Now that she had helped shut down Percy and the Old Division and reclaimed her heritage, she felt lost. She had nothing to call her own.
Then there was the shot to her shoulder. The wound became a constant physical reminder of the emotional pain that tormented her, throbbing every time she moved. She felt useless, because going on missions had given her a purpose. She couldn't even do that and it had driven her to make one of the most stupid decisions she had ever made. She had just needed something to dull her pain. The pills only helped with the physical, but it was enough, because it made her feel in control. And she needed to feel in control. So she kept taking them.
Turning her head, she stared at the bottle of pills on her nightstand. It would be so easy to pop the lid and medicate herself away from all a problems. At least for today.
Pushing up suddenly from the bed, Alex snatched the pills from her nightstand. Just one more. That's all she needed. Her thumb was posed to open the bottle when she caught her reflection in the mirror.
She was a mess.
Her hair was dull and lifeless, there were large black bags under her eyes and her face was chalky pale, but it was the look in her eyes that made her pause. They were half dead eyes, the light slowly, but surely, draining away. She knew from experience that it would only get worse, that soon she would be turning to harder stuff to keep her demons at bay.
Staring down at the bottle and then back to her reflection, she made a decision. She could either remain a scared little girl, who turned to drugs every time her life lost meaning or she could be the woman who Nikita trained her to be – the woman she wanted to be - strong, confident. She needed to start believing in herself again.
Decision made, she walked into her bathroom, flushing the pills down the toilet.
Withdrawal was going to be a bitch.