A/N: Thanks for all the reviews! I'm excited to see where this story will go too! :)

Burning Bridges: Chapter 2

"Good afternoon, Alexandra." The doctor greets her as she sits down for their daily session. "How did you sleep last night?" She stayed silent as usual. "You do this every day." He sighed, "Remember what we discussed? If you wish to be released from this facility, you need to let go of your fantasies." She gave no response. "I'm here to help you, Alexandra. Let's talk about these characters again. Shall we begin with Nikita?"

"I've already told you everything I know." She says.

"Not everything, Alexandra."

"My name is Alex." She glares at him.

"Right…" He smirks at her. He looks over her files on his desk. "You've got to deal with your issues, Alex. It's the only way to move on and get better."

Alex continues to glare at him. She was tired of his questions. "This is pointless." She tells him. "I don't belong here. I have to go…"

"Go where Alex?" The man questions. "You never told us what your plan was. Why you were running away from home?"

"I told you, I couldn't go back there. Not after what I did to them."

"To Division?" He asks.

"Yes." She replies. "To Division, and Nikita… I can't go back."

"Alex-"

"No." She cuts him off. "Don't tell me it wasn't real."

"Not this again." He says. "You're being delusional. How can you possibly believe such a place exists in our world?"

"I can't explain it." Alex says. "It's something you have to see for yourself. I told you I could show you proof."

"You've invested too much time in this fantasy of yours. These characters you imagine seem almost real to you, don't they? Nikita, Sean…" He looks her in the eyes. "Sweetie, Sean never died because he never even existed. The same with Larissa. They're not real."

"They are real!" Alex exclaims. Tears welling up at the mention of his name.

"Sean." The doctor says his name again. He watches her closely as she reacts.

"No. No." Alex mumbles. She shakes her head, trying not to feel the pain of losing him all over again.

The doctor sighs again. "Often the root of a problem like this, lies within an emotional trauma."

"There is no emotional trauma." Alex tries to deny.

"How do you know?" He asks her, earnestly. "You said you loved this man. It's perfectly understandable to feel this way." He pauses to see if she was listening. "You never properly got to grieve over your father's death. Am I correct?" He asks. "I mean you were so young when it happen. Thirteen?" He shakes his head, sadly. "So young and so innocent." He stops to look her in the eyes. She was shaking in her chair, on the verge of tears. "How long has it been Alex?"

"How long has it been?" Sean asked. He turns to face Michael and Nikita in Ops. "I mean, since I died and Alex left."

Michael sighs. He pulls his gaze away from the map laid out on the round table. "We revived you about two days ago." He answers.

"It took longer than usual for that cocktail to wear off." Nikita says. "It was the best we could do with most of our support staff gone."

"So Alex has been off the grid for almost two…three days now?" Sean says, sadly. He hated the idea of her being apart from him. "Any ideas where she could have gone?"

"Shadownet is still down." Birkhoff says, walking into the room. He glances at the map on the screen. "Sonya is trying to reconfigure some satellites now. With luck we might be able to track where Alex went, but it's a long shot." He sighs. "Our girl ran away for a reason. If she doesn't want to be found, it's going to-"

"Be hard to track her, I know." Michael cuts him off. "But we will find her. We have to believe she's still out there, waiting to be found."

"Did she say anything before she left?" Sean asks. "There has to be some sort of clue we can use to figure out where she went."

"I checked the armory." Nikita says. "She took a Glock and some some extra ammo but that's all that seems to be missing."

"Well, besides a car." Michael says.

"What about her phone?" Sean asks. "Wallet? Credit cards? Anything traceable?"

Michael shakes his head. "We found her car ditched on the side of the road about a mile outside of town. Along with her phone. Looks like she took whatever cash she had with her though."

"We taught her too well." Birkhoff says. "She's covering her tracks, she doesn't want to be found."

"We'll find a way." Nikita says. "I'm not giving up until she knows the truth."

"You need to face the truth, Alex." The doctor continues to say. "You need to know that none of these deaths were your fault."

"I know." Alex lies. She leans in to whisper. "Look, why don't you just let me go? I promise I'll stay out of trouble… you'll never have to see me again."

"I'm trying to help you, Alex." He says.

"I don't need your help!" She shouts.

"Yet here you are!" He counters. "Confused and disturbed. Still believing you are some sort of hero. It's nothing more than pure fantasy, Alex."

"I'm not crazy!"

"It's crazy." Sean says, looking around an empty and destroyed Division. "As much as I hated this place, I never wanted it to end like this."

"I know what you mean." Nikita says, stepping up to him. "For years, my mission was to take down this place. Piece by piece." She sighs as she looks around the room. "With the help of Alex of course."

"And me." Michael says as he walks up to her.

"And you." Nikita agrees. She gives him a small smile. "It feels surreal now that everyone is gone." She says, turning to face Sean. "I always imagined it would end differently."

"How different?" He asks.

"Well, for starters, Alex would be here." She says sadly.

"So what's the plan now?" Birkhoff asks as he walks into the room with his tablet.

"I'm going to go find her." Nikita says, simply.

"Okay, but where do we start looking?" Michael questions.

"I think you should stay here." Nikita says. "Get a line on Amanda and Owen… the black box… I'll be back with Alex as soon as I can."

"How do you know where to find her?" Birkhoff asks. "Without Shadownet, I can't search street cams for her. It's going to be like finding Waldo."

"I'm going to start at the same place I found her four years ago."

"A lot has changed since then." Michael says. "When Ryan confronted Alex, she shot him."

"I've taken a shot from Alex before." Nikita counters, "I can handle it."

"Nikita…" Michael frowns at her. He glances at Sean.

"I'm coming with you." Sean says.

Nikita nods. "We're going to bring her home, Michael."

"I just want to go home." Alex says, staring out a window.

"And where is that?" The doctor asks her. "Where is home to you?"

"Anywhere away from this hell-hole." She turns to glare at him.

"We can help you Alex, we can take away your pain. You don't have to run anymore."

"If you take away my pain, then what am I left with? I'll have nothing left to hold on to."

"You'll be left with an open door, Alex. Freedom to feel again, to start over. To live a normal life." He says. "Don't you want that?"

She looked at him, conflicted. "It's too late to start over." She turns to face the window again.

"It's never too late, Alex." He smiles at her, knowing deep down a part of her knew he was right. "It is a nice day outside today." He says as he walks over to a door and opens it for her. She glances at him. It had been days since she felt the sunlight on her skin. "Why don't you take a stroll through our facility's many gardens and think about it for another day."

"It's a nice day out today isn't it?" Sean awkwardly says to Nikita as they walk along a sidewalk filled with graffiti.

"Oh that's right, you haven't been topside in awhile." Nikita realizes.

"Somehow I think being in Division was safer than these streets." Sean laughs as he looks around the gang-filled neighborhood. His face becomes serious for a moment. He stops and looks at Nikita. "Don't get me wrong, I want to find Alex, but part of me hopes we won't find her here."

"Me too." Nikita says. She glances down the street at a group of junkies standing around a make-shift fire pit. "When I found Alex four years ago, she was a wreck. She was homeless and addicted to drugs, just like those kids over there."

"You don't think she will turn back to drugs do you?" Sean asks.

"I don't know… the first time you left her, she relapsed."

"She what!" Sean exclaimed.

Nikita stops to look at him. "She never told you?"

"No." Sean says, feeling guilty. "I had no idea."

Nikita sighs and places a reassuring hand on his arm, "It's okay." She says. "I have to admit, I had no idea too." He looks at her confused. "I wish I paid more attention to her. I let her slip through the cracks, not once but twice. You saw the signs after South Ossetia and I didn't. It was so obvious, the way she was acting…"

"Nikita, you saw the signs too. She just didn't want to listen to us."

"She blamed me, Sean. For that girl's death. She wasn't even real."

"But if she was real, what difference would it have made?" Sean says. "Amanda may have given her the idea, but her actions felt natural to her. The result of her own choices, no matter how misguided." He sighs. "She wasn't aware that she was being manipulated. All she wanted to do was save her. An innocent civilian. It was the right thing to do, you know that."

"This is the right thing to do." Amanda says as the doctor walks into the room. She was staring out a window, overlooking Alex in the garden. "Look at her." She says glancing at Alex. Her back turned away from the doctor. "She's not responding to your treatment. I think it's time for something more therapeutic."

The doctor stood by the door. A long wooden desk separated him from Amanda. "As long as she is complying to the rules set in this facility and not harming herself or the other patients, we can't force her to do anything."

"That's a shame." Amanda says as she takes a deep breath and turns to face the doctor. Her hands reaching for something hidden underneath the desk. "She needs help now."

"Ms. Collins." He says, "I read about the work your father has done for others. His work was brilliant for his time, but that was many years ago. Alex doesn't need to build a wall, she's doing a lot better now. I know she wants to get out of here as soon as she can. She wants to move on and live a normal life." He pauses to see Amanda smile at him. Relaxing, he continues, "Just give me some more time. I can help her without going to extreme measures. I can burn her bridges down."

Amanda continued to smile at him while he watched her pull out a gun. "I'm sorry doctor, I'm afraid you're out of time." She says. He barely had any time to react before a single bullet pierced his skull. He dropped dead on the ground. Amanda sighed and walked around him. "You were right about one thing though. Alex does need to burn her bridges down. I'm going to be the one to help her do it." She smirks at the doctor's dead body. "Then like all broken things, we shall build a new bridge."

A/N: Uh oh RIP doctor dude. He really did care about helping Alex. Even though she really doesn't need help :P But hey at least Amanda wants to help too? Yeah... that's not good. Please Review!

To: Raven, you're gonna get your wish! Amanda&Alex interaction in the next chapter, I promise ;)