She'd stolen a Division car, disabled the GPS, removed the tracker and stomped down on the accelerator as hard as humanly possible. The car raced down the street, skidding slightly but Alex never faltered, tears stuck to her face and her vision blurred as her chest heaved with the struggle she was having to breathe evenly.

He was gone.

Another person she loved was gone and it was her fault.

She'd suspected it for days now – that Amanda had done something to her but the thought was too awful and invasive to bear so she had pushed it to the back of her mind and ignored its hammering presence. And because of it, he was dead.

'Dammit!' she half screamed, pounding her fist into the steering wheel. There was a crack and the wheel was dented from her unadulterated force. Her knuckles were grazed and stained with blood – hers and what had been his as she'd scrambled to find an exit wound, a last hope that he could survive this.

Eventually, the sky fell dark and the cold snuck in. Alex was still trembling and the lack of light wasn't helping her case. She gave in, pulling over on the side of the road and carefully parking behind a clump of trees so that if (or rather, when) Nikita and the others came looking for her, they wouldn't find her (or, not so easily anyway).

There were emergency supplies in every Division car, including a blanket, some long-lasting army food as well as a weapon and ammunition. Alex retrieved everything from the secret holding locker underneath the back seat, loading up the gun and curling up underneath the blanket. She didn't eat. She still felt like she was going to be sick. If the others didn't find her, she knew she would be okay. Stealing things was easy enough and she had enough money at hand to tie her over for at least a day in a city. There was a wallet she kept in her back pocket at all times. Reaching for it, a small photograph slipped out of the black, worn leather.

Him. (And her).

At his apartment one evening, just as the sun was setting. Actually, it was the evening before the morning he had told her he was possibly to be deployed again. She was curled up under his covers, sifting through some paperwork for a recent mission she had to hand in when he surprised her by whipping out a camera.

'Wha – the hell are you doing?' she demanded but her lips had curved upwards in a smile.

'Snapshotting this moment with a gorgeous girl,' he'd replied with a wink, flopping down beside her, snapping another photograph.

'Ugh, no!' she mumbled, nuzzling her face into the crook of his neck to hide herself from the camera. At the time, she'd been unaware that he'd taken a photo of her like this but this now was evidence that he had. His eyes were so full of adoration that Alex's heart ached. That was the time before his life almost ended, before his death was faked to bring him home alive.

And now, there was no false pretenses to his body left at Division.

The tears that she thought she'd run out of spilled over her bright blue eyes, rolling down her pale, tired cheeks and her whole body started to shake again. The photograph sagged and the colours ran at her constant-flowing tears. All she wanted was his warm arms around her, his neck rested on her shoulders, his soft voice promising her that everything was okay – everything was going to be okay.

But it wasn't. It was never going to be okay again.

Alex's eyes drooped and she clutched the photograph tightly, sinking into the chair and pulling the blanket over her shoulders. She allowed the tears to trickle over her lips and seep into her shirt. She didn't care anymore.

She dreamt of him.

Nightmares at first, and she'd wake up screaming, breath ragged, begging to be back at his apartment with his arm strung loosely across her waist, comforting her and kissing away the tears.

But instead she found the blackness of the night and the coldness of the air and the emptiness of this goddamned car.

After a while, the sleep she fell into was deep and peaceful and easy. He was there, still. They were in Russia, in her house – her bedroom, specifically, both sitting cross legged on the bed.

He wore a pale blue t-shirt and jeans. His hair was ruffled and untamed, chocolate brown eyes boring into hers as a small smile graced his boyish features.

She sat in track pants and a tank top Nikita had lent her months ago. Their knees were touching and he was tracing patterns on her wrist.

'Come back to me,' she said finally.

'You know I can't,' he replied quietly.

'I don't care. I don't want to live without you.'

'Alex,' he said softly, 'you're a fighter. You lose people and you always pick yourself up and keep going. Don't make me an exception.'

'But you are!' she cried. 'You know me! You know everything about me better than anyone else. You love me and you've been willing to put your life on the line and lose it for me.' She broke down. 'You did lose it for me.'

'Hey, hey, hey, look at me,' he said firmly, taking her face in his hands. 'I died because I loved you and that is the only way I've wanted to go for months now. You are the only reason I had to be alive. But I wasn't yours. You have Nikita, Michael, Birkhoff, Ryan – all of them. Go home, Alex. They need you.'

'I need you though,' she whispered and she sounded like a helpless child.

'I'm not saying it's going to be easy,' he admitted. 'You need to know how much I loved you.'

'I do know,' Alex began but he shook his head, pressing his finger to her lips.

'When you're ready,' he said, 'go back to my apartment. You know the safe in my room? The one I said had information that would expose my mother as a member of Oversight and how I needed it hidden to keep her memory in tact? Go and open it. You'll know how to when you get there. It's not your average lock.'

'What's in it?' asked Alex hoarsely.

'You'll see.'

'I don't want to wake up,' Alex mumbled. 'Ever. I want to be like this, here, with you forever.'

Sean smiled. 'I am with you forever. This is your dream, right? And I'm here. So technically...'

'Shut up, don't go all technical on me,' Alex snapped but she had twinkle in her eye as her gaze met his. 'If this is my dream, how do I know to go to the safe?'

Sean shrugged. 'You've been curious about it for months. But you aren't exactly going to invade my privacy without my permission, even though everything that is in that apartment belongs to you after my death.'

Alex's face fell at his actual acknowledgment of it. 'Sean,' she said almost inaudibly quiet. 'I never told you... God I never told you – I love you Sean, I need you to know. I don't care if this is my dream – wherever the hell you are now, heaven or whatever – just please understand that I love you so much.'

'I know,' Sean promised, resting his forehead against hers. 'I swear to you. Wherever the hell I am, heaven or whatever – I do know.'

Alex clutched his t-shirt in a tightly balled fist, edging closer to him, needing to be near him even if it was only a dream.

'It's not fair,' she said stubbornly.

'It's not,' he agreed, his arms wrapping around her exactly how she remembered them. 'I don't want you pining away and brooding by yourself. You'll drive yourself to insanity. Knowing you, you won't eat or sleep properly and you'll do something stupid – like relapse.'

'I'm sleeping properly now,' Alex brought up, ignoring the rest of his stern remark.

'Go home, Alex,' he begged. 'When you wake up, go back to Nikita. You need her.'

'Not as much as you,' she shot back.

'Please?' He did the thing she hated (but loved at the same time). He brought one hand to her cheek and pushed a strand of hair away from her eyes while his thumb hovered just over her skin for a moment as if he couldn't believe she was real.

She caved in and swore under her breath, opening her mouth to retort something back only to have him silence her with a kiss. She pulled him towards her immediately, reveling in the knowledge that even for these short moments of unconsciousness, she had him here. She curled fingers against his neck, smiling against his lips.

'I love you,' she murmured. 'I love you. I love you.' She couldn't say it enough because he'd never heard her say it when he'd been alive.

'I love you too,' he answered, kissing the tip of her nose. 'I loved you too. I always will.'

She was awoken with a jolt by the shrill ringing of her spare phone (her real one had been hit by a bullet somewhere in the gunfire). With a groan and a harsh wipe of the ever present tears on her face, she blindly reached out, grabbing the cold plastic and pressing it to her ear without realising what she was doing.

'Hello?'

'Alex? Oh my God – '

'Nikita, look...'

'Come home.'

As an almost exact echo of Sean's request, Alex felt her chest tighten, her breathing become irregular and she let out an irrepressible sob, crying into her hand to try and muffle the sounds. Nikita still heard.

'Alex, honey, tell me where you are, please. You can't be alone right now.'

'I want to go to his apartment,' Alex croaked. 'He...he had something f...for me there. But I can't drive...I can't even see...'

'I'll take you there,' Nikita said gently, 'just tell me where you are.'

'D...down the main road. When you g...get t...to the pine tree forest, I'm p...parked by the big tree to the l...left.'

'I'll be there in ten minutes,' Nikita said firmly. 'Alex, just use the emergency blanket, have a gun loaded and don't eat the food in there, it's worse than the prison stuff.'

Alex managed a tearful laugh. 'I loved him, Nikita,' she breathed. 'I never told him. And everything hurts because of that.'

'He knew Alex,' Nikita returned with a soft sigh. 'I promise you. He definitely knew by the end.'

A/N: So. Who else spent the entirety of half an hour crying like there was no tomorrow? I'm serious, I've never cried so much over anything fictional (except perhaps the ending of Harry Potter). At least he died with Alex. But this is a two shot and there is another chapter so please review and there'll be another one up soon.