Tagging: Nikita, Michael, Alex, Birkhoff, Ryan, Sonya. More to come, but secret for the element of surprise.
Ships: Undecided. I'm going to see where the story takes me and I will listen to readers' input so let me know what you want!
Rating: T for now, for blood and language. Will change to M later on for dark and twisted themes, sexual stuffs and more of the usual.
Wootar16 asked me if I could bring Sean back alive; I wish I could, but to keep the fic realistic, I sadly cannot. I can have him be missed though, which he is!
I'd just like to give a general shoutout to everyone that reviews—I reply personally to every registered account, I can't reply to guest reviews; but I love all of them equally and they make my day. So thank you.
And about the previous chapter: the brown eyes were a mistake, for some reason I thought Aaron Stanford had brown eyes, which, apparently, he doesn't.
| Chapter 3 | June 6, 2015 / Washington, DC |
I took a walk around the world
To ease my troubled mind
I left my body lying somewhere
In the sands of time
Alex stretches when the cab whisks away and she stands in front of the house that's been her home for two years now, suitcase at her right, keys dangling from her left hand. The flight was long and the heat only makes her sleepier. She knows that sleep is only a few minutes away.
When the door swings open Ryan is the first to acknowledge her. With a grin he walks up to her and wraps her up in his arms. He smells like he always does, she realizes as she buries her head in the crook of his neck—Hugo Boss and Ryan, very distinguished and very personal.
She pokes a finger in his side to get from out of his steel grip.
(She doesn't really mind being hugged by him. She remembers a time when they were on anything but friendly terms. Shooting him is still one of the things she regrets doing the most, next to getting Sean killed and letting Nikita go.
They've come a long way since, and now he feels like an older brother. Things are, almost, good again.)
"Where's Birkhoff and Michael?" she asks when Ryan is not only the first but also seemingly the last to greet her. The house is unusually quiet.
"Seymour's visiting Sonya and Michael's… I actually don't know."
That is never a good thing to hear. She drops everything she's holding and runs around the set of white leather couches and through the door that leads to the grand staircase. "Michael!" she shouts, taking the marble stairs two at the time.
When they first got there, on their house hunt, the house had felt like perfection. It was spacious enough to hold trained assassins, technology addicts and a retired CIA analyst; enough rooms, a ginormous backyard, a big enough garage to allow a place to all of their cars. It had reminded her of her house back in Russia for a while before it became a place entirely in its own right.
And the way Birkhoff had decorated it, showing off the money he'd earned in weeks' time, because there was no more watching eye… well, it stopped looking like her childhood home a long time ago.
Now, however, as she rushes up the stairs she wishes it weren't so big.
She has crossed two hallways when she hears the distant thump thump thump and her heart rate slows down significantly. Michael used to disappear often, only to come back with bruises he refused to explain. Every time they couldn't get tabs on him they scattered in a wild goose hunt of sorts.
Knowing that he is just working out is a huge relief.
She halts on the threshold. Michael is pounding his fists into a boxing bag, a sheen of sweat covering his skin, muscles flexing right below the surface. (She holds her breath and watches for a little bit longer before she makes her presence known.)
"Oh, hey," he turns around and through his pants manages to mutter: "welcome back."
"Thanks, you don't have to hug me." She laughs but it fades quickly when she notices the weights thrown across the room. "Michael…"
"Don't say it."
"You were doing so good."
"I said 'don't say it'!" He comes threateningly close then and she can practically see the anger coursing through his veins, feels the heat waving off of him.
She sighs and her shoulders drop. "I'm sorry."
That always has the wanted effect because Michael's features soften, go from "set in stone" to "teddy bear". He fidgets in his place before tipping her head up and catching her gaze. "I'm sorry."
"It's okay. Just… go shower, okay? There's no need to practice until exhaustion. Not today. I brought souvenirs."
Michael leaves for the shower with a huff and she waits until she hears the clattering of water. Only then does she return, shouting to Ryan that everything is okay. Five minutes later she is finally back in the living room and drops face-first on the couch.
Her tiredness has completely vanished, whisked away by the fear that settled momentarily in the pit of her stomach.
"I wonder how many more years it's going to take," Ryan muses out loud and she looks up in time to catch a sad expression flicker over his face.
Two years. The last two years have been crazy. Working for the United Nations, she has done a lot of good things to even out the bad that she did when in Division, to wipe out the sour aftertaste of the Udinov name, the burning ruins left in the wake of her father's legacy. She has seen beautiful parts of the world and attempted to right the wrongs done to humanity.
But without Nikita, every victory feels like it's missing something. Alex constantly feels like the most important person in her life is missing, and it only took her a few days to figure out that it wasn't Sean she was missing.
(Although she does miss him. Especially at night, when she lays awake in a bed that is too big for just her, when she drowns in her sheets and wishes to have that protective arm wrapped around her waist back.)
The world feels scarier without her friend being there to stretch a wing above her head. Because she is convinced, more convinced than she has ever been, that Nikita has a set of invisible wings and a halo that illuminates the world when it's dark.
Her chest constricts when ice wraps around her again. She hasn't felt this way in a while, made a point of keeping thoughts about Nikita to a minimum because of this exact reason. If getting clean in that makeshift sauna five years ago was torture, then she can't find any word known to human kind to describe what happens when she thinks of Nikita and the gaping black hole she left behind.
She props herself up and sighs. "Yeah, me too."
There is sound of stumbling out in the hallway and both she and Ryan reach for a gun simultaneously. Then Birkhoff grunts loudly, curses below his breath and the two of them relax again.
Alex is the first to get up (Ryan seems pretty unwilling to), and she kicks her suitcase aside before she rattles off all the locks and swings the door open.
The world stops. She feels it hitch and then unhinge and then just stop; it stops spinning on its axis and she stands, head reeling, and then it all comes crashing and her throat produces a strangled whimper, close to nothing she thought humanly possible.
Nikita.
Tears are rolling down her cheeks mere seconds later and she leaps forward, holds onto Nikita like life depends on it despite—with shock she realizes Nikita is covered from, pretty much, head to toe in blood. She reeks of things she can't decipher and she is unconscious.
But all of it doesn't matter. Not right now. She trembles in her spot as she clings to Nikita and vows to never let go.
Suddenly arms wrap around her—no, around the both of them. Ryan's tears drop down to her shoulder, she vaguely registers, at least.
Her senses are utterly, undividedly overwhelmed by Nikita being back.
"What is happening out there?" Michael's voice startles her back to consciousness. At least, that's how it feels. When she steps aside, one arm still firmly locked around Nikita's (scarily thin) frame, Michael's facial expression drops.
He stands in front of them faster than she has time to process and lifts her up. The sounds he makes are even more humanly impossible, and he's choking back sobs that rack his shoulders nevertheless when he holds her tight to his chest.
Birkhoff ends up being the voice of reason that ushers them all inside because staying outside won't do anyone any good, and then they flock together in the infirmary.
Nikita looks horrible, draped over the metal examination table with bright light throwing weird shadows over her, with dark red smeared across her skin, but Alex doesn't remember ever having been more happy to see a person than she does now, tear-filled eyes never straying from the woman in front of her.
They all spend the next two hours in the infirmary, helping out. It takes torturously long to scrape every last bit of blood from her body and out of her hair, but they take their time nevertheless because no one can know for sure what kind of injuries rest underneath.
And, not unexpectedly, every now and again they need to pause because nothing could have ever prepared them for how much this shakes them.
Because it does, it shakes all of them. Michael cries without shame, the entire time. Alex is reduced to a sniffling mess by the time they have cleaned up Nikita fully.
Her skin is tainted by purple and yellow, by the imprint of fingers on her hips and a bullet hole in her shoulder (Michael does a great job at removing it despite how completely heartbroken he looks), with her ribs sticking out because she looks like she hasn't eaten in weeks.
Birkhoff needs to break a bone in her arm again to set it correctly and the snap of the bone is lost in a piercing scream when Nikita jolts awake.
After all I knew it had to be something
To do with you
I really don't mind what happens now and then
As long as you'll be my friend at the end