A/N: I watched most of this show a while ago, and I am rewatching it and greatly enjoying it. The chemistry between Michael and Nikita, as enemies for the first part of Season 1, is incredible.
They are in Chile, in D.C., halfway around the world and back again—it's a tired routine, certainly, but Michael's throat seems to close up every time.
Kill Nikita.
He sends out the strike-teams, opens fire, tosses explosives like so many deadly darts. By all rights, she should be dead by now.
But try as he might—vivid and sharp as his mind has always been—Michael can't quite bring himself to imagine her cold and still and…empty.
It is always when Percy gives the command (again, and again, and please God again tomorrow, live to die another day), that he remembers her most clearly. The inscrutable quirk of her lips—skeptical or amused or affectionate. He's never been as quick at reading her expressions as he wants to be.
He remembers her lips, her eyes, her hands. Her light, hard, dangerous form. Nikita is a thousand things to a thousand people, but there was a time when he nearly let her be everything to him.
Someday will be her last day. He wonders if he'll be the one to pull the trigger (though he holds back, every time, tempting fate). He wonders if he'd rather it end that way.
Maybe he'll be the one to find her, blood pooling in the little hollows of her throat, upturned face no longer meeting him as an equal or a rival or a friend, in this or any world.
Kill Nikita.
It's the mission. She's a traitor, to him as well as to everyone else.
He swallows down every memory of her and sends out the team. He tells himself he'll take the shot when it's the right time, and there is only a small part left of him that prays it never comes.