Disclaimer: I don't own anything even vaguely related to La Femme Nikita. Most likely, I can't even afford the fashions seen on the show, unless it's something worn by Walter or Birkoff. Better yet, just go for the SOTW. I could probably swing that.
Dedication: Hey, Circe. Dana/Melanie - for knowing I'd like Birkoff best.
Notes: Walter shares some old memories with someone in lieu of someone else.
Said and Done
"Walter?" Nikita stepped into Munitions, looking for the older man. She was feeling out of sorts and figured that a little time with Walter would set things right again. He didn't answer, nor did she see him out at his worktable. She began to wander through the back sections, running her fingers along the shelves. "Walter? You here?" She rounded a corner and nearly ran him over.
"Jeez, Sugar!" He clapped a hand over his heart as he spun around. "You scared me!" He smiled broadly. "What's shakin'?" He started to tuck the photo he'd been looking at into his pocket.
"Nothing much. What's this?" She reached over and plucked the picture out of his hand before he knew what she meant to do.
"Nothing! No one!" He exclaimed, reaching out to get it back. Nikita turned slightly to keep the picture out of reach, turning it over as she did so.
A blonde woman with pixie cut hair and warm hazel eyes smiled out at her. She was leaning a shoulder against the wall, looking sideways at the camera. She looked on the verge of laughing at whoever had taken the picture. Delicate, long fingered hands rested on top of her hugely pregnant belly.
"She's awfully pretty for being nothing and no one." Nikita handed the picture back. Walter appeared to be blushing, which was highly unusual. This could be interesting, she mused.
"Yeah, well. That's more true than you know, Sugar. That picture," he tucked it into his shirt pocket, "was taken right here."
"She was an operative?" Nikita stared at him. "When it was taken?"
"Sure was. Mostly just marking targets at that point. After all, who'd expect a pregnant lady to be part of a covert anti-terrorist operation?" He smiled slightly. "She hadn't even had any real field training." He led the way back to his worktable and began packing up. "But that's over and done with, Nikita. She had her training and went on her missions and eventually died on one."
"What about her child? What happened to it?" She trailed after him as he grabbed his jacket and started for the door. "You can't tell me you don't know. I know you better than that, Walter."
He stopped and turned to look at her. "You ever hear of someone leaving Section, Sugar?"
No, Nikita realized, he wasn't looking at her. She looked over her shoulder - toward Comm. Jason Crawford, Birkoff's twin brother, was standing beside an annoyed looking Kate Quinn. Slowly, Nikita swung her horrified gaze back to Walter. He nodded slightly and resumed his trek toward the door.
"That's Birkoff's mom?" She asked, stunned. "You knew her?"
"I've been here 35 years. I know just about every operative that's ever come through those doors. Yeah, I was there when Lisa was recruited."
"You loved her." Nikita climbed, uninvited, into Walter's convertible. On the other side, Walter froze for just a moment.
"Every red blooded heterosexual male in Section loved her, Nikita. Even a couple who weren't loved her. She was just that kind of girl." He climbed into the car, threw it in reverse and, laying down tracks, headed for home.
"In love with her, then. I can see it, Walter. You got the same look on your face as you did with Belinda." Walter remained silent. "Tell me about her?"
"She's long dead, Nikita. And both her boys belong to Section. There's no reason to." His eyes stayed focused on the road, but one hand came up to rub at them.
"Tell me because I miss Birkoff." She reached out and took his hand, holding it as she had once held her father's when in church, so long ago. "Because you miss Birkoff. And because you can't tell Jason any more than you could his brother."
He didn't even glance at her as he rubbed his thumb over her knuckles before taking his hand back. "She was a lot like you, Sugar. Able to get me to do just about any damn fool thing she could dream up." He smiled slightly. "A guy gets so he misses that kind of trouble."
Nikita smiled back. "You're dying to tell me. You just wanted to play hard to get."
"Worked, didn't it?" He pulled into the drive of a surprisingly normal house.
"A white picket fence, Walter?" Nikita asked, amazed. "I never would have guessed." She was a little less surprised to note lovebeads in the windows. Comforted by it, actually.
"I think Operations had it put in when I was on downtime a few years back. I'm not sure how far down the wood goes, but there's six feet of concrete." Walter opened the door and motioned Nikita through. "I've been thinking of leaving him a very helpless, very pregnant cat. Something so pitiful he couldn't help but take care of it. A boxful of kittens oughta pay him back. You want coffee? Scotch?"
"Scotch, it's been a long week. You're not serious, are you?" She wandered around his living room, comfortably furnished in a style that was all Walter's own. A few framed pictures of Walter and Belinda shared space with colorful desert paintings.
"About the fence or the kittens?" Walter stepped back into the living room and set the bottle and glasses on the coffee table. "Make yourself at home. Mi casa es su casa. I'll be right back."
Nikita nestled into a corner of the worn couch and poured herself a drink. Walter returned in moments with a photo album.
"You never saw this." Handing it to her, he settled himself next to her and filled his own glass. "If Paul or Madeline knew I had these, they've never said anything. All the same, I'd rather not find out if they know or not. You understand."
"Of course I do, Walter." She opened the faded blue cover to the reveal a picture similar to the one Walter had been holding in Munitions. Lisa Birkoff, already obviously pregnant, smiling for the camera. Two bright yellow baby outfits were draped over her stomach as she stood in a model's pose. "So. What's her story?"
"Story is, she set up and executed a string of robberies that the police never even got close to figuring out. She left little clues that led all over the place for them. One of our Comm techs, Jimmy, he read through the case files and tracked her down. From day one, Jimmy loved her for giving him the chance to play detective, and she loved the fact that he'd managed to catch her. Weirdest friendship I ever saw. He was gay as the wind." Walter added, seeing Nikita's raised eyebrow. "I swear they adopted each other the moment she walked through the van access doors." He tapped the photo.
"This was about eight months, give or take, after that. Jimmy took it. They were always goofy like that when they got around each other."
"What about their father? They weren't married?" Nikita sipped her drink and studied the woman laughing up at her. She looked too happy to be worried about someone on the outside.
"She never talked about him. I couldn't even tell you if she knew who it was. She didn't talk about her life on the outside. Except to say that it was fairly boring. Hence her little game." Walter downed his Scotch and poured himself another. "I met her on her first day in. She was nervous, but not scared. Kind of angry, maybe. Not a patch on you, though." They both smiled at the memory. Nikita was well aware of how she'd behaved her first few weeks.
"A couple months later, she walked in, sat down at my desk and took ten years off my life. Calm as you please she looks me in the eye and says "Walter, I'm pregnant." Then she bursts into tears. I've felt like an idiot before, but man….I'd kissed her check once, and I still almost asked her if it was mine, I was so turned around." He chuckled warmly. "I was useless for a few minutes, then she calmed down again, thanked me, and trotted off to Medical. I guess I'd managed to say something right. Probably pointed out that they weren't going to cancel her for something like that." Walter shrugged. "That's how she met Paul."
"Operations?" Nikita topped off her own glass and turned the page. "They were friends, too? That's hard to imagine." A blurry collection of black and white lines met her eyes.
"That's the boys' first picture. They were facing each other, all wrapped up. Nobody could tell if they were boys or girls. Sneaky, even back then." Walter grinned proudly down at the ultrasound. "As for Lisa…well, she had the strangest friends. As far as I know, Paul was having some stitches removed when Lisa walked in and told the docs what she'd told me. He'd had a kid outside, and that was still fresh for him. Guess he just couldn't resist helping her out. He was her big resource for that kind of thing. Not a lot of experience with babies herself, I guess." He reached out and turned the page.
Lisa glared daggers at Nikita from over twenty years ago. Paul sat holding her hand, apparently trying to keep her calm.
"Labor - nearly 30 hours of it. She didn't want to be alone, so we stayed with her in two-hour shifts until Operations realized that none of us were actually leaving when our shift was done. She just told us to stay with her and call when she had 'em. Probably because Adrienne knew she couldn't have moved us unless we were dead."
"So who's older, Birkoff or Jason? And where are you in this picture?"
"I was taking the picture. She'd have gone after Jimmy if he'd done it. He, by the way, passed out before it was all over. Jason's older by nine looooong minutes. He screamed until Seymour was born and laid next to him."
"Seymour. Huh. Why'd she pick that? I mean, Jason and Seymour?"
"Yeah, don't I know it. She made us call him that, too. She said she named them after a friend, and that happened to be his name. Poor kid. I told Lisa from the start that he'd be going by 'Birkoff' when he got to be a teenager."
Nikita chuckled. "I think it fit him better. Seymour is for little old men who wear fedoras and smell like cigars."
"That's the strangest thing I've ever heard you say, Nikita. And I've heard you say plenty of strange things." Walter laughed. "Not that you're wrong. Yeah, Birkoff was a Birkoff. But we all called him Seymour when he was little. Kind of a shock when he came back and we had to get used to calling him Birkoff."
"When he came back? I thought he grew up in Section."
Walter sighed softly. "He and Jason stayed in Section One until they were about two years old." He turned to a page near the back of the small album. Lisa was asleep in a recliner. Her boys were curled up on either side of her. One twin had his hand on the back of his brother's neck; the other's free hand lay on that outstretched arm. Their foreheads touched right over their mother's heart. "When Lisa was out on short missions, we watched the boys here in Section. They spent most of their time out in Comm. We thought that they just liked the moving lights from the computers. Jimmy was the one who realized they were reading code like it was a story. Couldn't read regular English, but they could tell you what a program was supposed to do and if it was working or not. A few weeks later, Oversight sent a couple of operatives in to get the boys. Lisa got back just in time to figure out what was going on. She stopped the boys, zipped up their little black jackets, and kissed them goodbye."
"She didn't know they were being taken?" Nikita stared down at the young mother. She knew that she wouldn't have been able to handle that. Couldn't just let them be taken without a fight. "How could that be?"
"She knew they would be taken. From the start she knew that one of them would be raised outside. She decided to be a part of that program. She didn't know which one, or when they'd have to go. It was easier for her that way, Sugar. I know she wanted to be there to say goodbye - Operations didn't want her to be there, but she needed it. Paul ran that mission. He's the one who got them back in time."
"What do you mean, she didn't know which one was going to stay in Section? You said she decided…"
"She decided to give one of them a chance at a normal life. But that meant condemning one to Section for the rest of his. She asked…She asked me to do it." He stood and walked to the window, staring out at the past. "I said yes. Jimmy was dying by then, he'd had cancer when she came in. Paul wouldn't have been able to. He never shows it now, but he loved those boys, Nikita. Maybe becoming Operations gave him the opportunity to distance himself from that. I don't know. But at the time, it would have been like asking him to decide whether or not he wanted Stephen to be recruited. So I did what had to be done."
"Oh, Walter…"
"I just flipped a coin. There was no other way to do it. I never thought I'd have to face them again. When they took them, I never thought they'd come back. I don't know where Birkoff was raised after that." He paused for a long moment, gathering his thoughts. "Lisa died on a mission three years later. Lot of casualties on that one. Paul was the only one who made it out unhurt. They stared grooming him for Operations right after that. Rumor was that Lisa would have been his right hand gal if she'd lived. Madeline was still pretty new, but she was Paul's material. Kind of like you and Michael, without all the love." He turned back to Nikita, managing a smile. "And a few years later, when Paul became Operations, he pulled the strings that brought Birkoff back home."
Nikita continued to stare down at the picture. They looked so peaceful. She looked up at Walter, not bothering to hide the sheen of tears in her eyes. "I'm kind of glad he did."
"Much as I hate to admit it, sometimes, Sugar, I am too." He lifted his glass. "To Birkoff?"
"Birkoff."
Their glasses clinked musically.