A/N: Well, we've reached the final chapter. Enjoy!

Chapter Ten

2011 – Banff

After Oksana's escape, Nikita took a brisk run up through the woods, a wild, looping trail that would make it impossible for Division to find her in the dark if they bothered to pursue her. All the while, the glowing towers of Banff Springs loomed like a lighthouse in the distance offering her safe passage home. When she was finally sure she was secure, she made a phone call.

A half hour later, Nikita and Owen rendezvoused outside of the pool house. He was leaning in the shadows, one foot propped behind him against the wall like a Hoover-era FBI informant. The only thing wanting was the cherry of a lit cigarette to pierce the darkness ominously. "A little melodramatic, don't you think?" she suggested.

Owen shrugged as he emerged into the light, his gun tucked at his hip. "Nice to know a dive off a cliff doesn't even break your stride."

"Yeah, well, I couldn't have done it without your help. I'm glad you came, Owen," she conceded.

He made no attempt to conceal his boastful grin. "I knew I'd get you in the end."

"And it's because I'm so thankful that I'm going to ask for one more favor."

His grin slipped away immediately. "You want me to track Oksana."

"I wouldn't ask but—"

Owen put up one hand and pressed his lips together, looking over his shoulder into the pool room as a family splashed each other mercilessly. "You don't need to explain. I know you've got things to take care of. The one thing I've always been good at is not asking questions." He returned his gaze to her and said, "Say goodbye to Alex for me."

Nikita smiled. "I will, but she'll probably just celebrate."

"Seriously? Those are going to be your parting words to me?"

"Goodbye, Owen," she said, grabbing his biceps and planting a soft kiss on his cheek. "And thank you."

"I'll call as soon as I find her."

Nikita nodded and watched as Owen jogged into the blackness, vanishing like the cleaner he'd been trained to be. It was all very implausible that she should be allies with the man who killed her fiancé, but necessity and revenge had a way of creating strange bedfellows. Sometimes the lines that divided some people brought others together.

She extracted her smart phone from her pocket again and found a message waiting in the shell program she had left running. "We're headed back to the U.S.," Alex had typed.

"Tonight?"

"Now. We leave in fifteen. Everyone's regained consciousness." There was a pause, and Nikita pictured Alex smiling smugly. "Mission was a total failure. Percy wants us back ASAP so we're taking some big wig's private jet back."

"He lost a black box. He's going to be on a rampage—watch yourself."

But it wasn't only Alex she was worried about. Michael had headed up the operation, and knowing him, he would accept 100% of the failure. Granted, the box was tightly encrypted with Birkhoff's own master level of security, but with enough time and determination, Gogol would have its victory. Nikita had put Michael in a tight spot. Hopefully, with Owen's help, she could rectify the situation and save Michael's future. She owed him that.

"Sorry I didn't get you that intel." Even though Nikita couldn't hear her voice, she could tell Alex felt the keen sting of failure.

"Division's always been need-to-know only. We'll fix this, don't worry. Owen's already gone after the box."

Alex didn't respond for a moment, and Nikita guessed she was probably rolling her eyes. "When are you coming back?"

Nikita stared at the words. Since Division was leaving, she was free to stay as long as she liked, but now what was the point. Tonight she would stay to strategize, decompress, reflect—and, if she had time, wallow for a minute or two. Tomorrow she would begin anew—she would be Nikita on a mission again.

"Tomorrow," she assured. "Leave me a voicemail when you land. Ditch the phone after that. I left a new one under the toaster display at our meeting spot."

"You can never have enough toasters," Alex replied.

They said their goodbyes, and Nikita signed off. She was now alone again in her world. She hiked back toward the entrance of the hotel in time to see Alex, followed by the agent who had been disguised as the waiter, get into a black town car and drive away. Twenty more minutes elapsed, and no one else followed, so she returned to the hotel through a side entrance, heading straight for the closest lounge. After the day she had, Nikita deserved something stiff to drink.

Without any preamble, she took a seat at the end of the bar and ordered a shot of tequila, downing it the moment it came. Warmth spread throughout her chest, like little fingers creeping along her ribcage. It was simultaneously gross and welcomed. Nikita ordered another.

Had it only been two days since she started this mess? Funny how time sat on you like an elephant when all you wanted was to make it through the day unscathed. But it was almost over now. Her memories of 2005 seemed like a blip on the radar of her life—well, all but the one she could remember with excruciating sensory detail.

Somewhere in the bar, a pianist played a bluesy tune. Glasses clinked and voices whispered secrets that would never have come out but for the booze. A woman laughed in the gallery. Nikita kept her attention focused on the pool of syrupy liquid awaiting her in the shot glass. She downed that one too.

A waiter approached her on the right, and her body tensed reflexively—great, she had trust issues with waiters now. He put a tumbler of golden liquid beside her hand. "For you," he said. She looked at his face; she didn't recognize it. As far as she could tell, it wasn't a Division agent.

"From?" she asked warily.

"He said his name is David." The waiter pointed under an archway toward a chair that faced one of the many windows overlooking Bow Valley.

Nikita's heart stopped. She couldn't see the man in the high-back chair, just his hand resting on top of a glass of his own. Couldn't be, she thought. He had gone home, hadn't he?

She accepted the glass and sauntered over to the chair beside her philanthropist. She crossed her legs and stared out the window. They sat in companionable silence, sipping from their tumblers, watching the lights in the valley twinkle. "Where's the rest of your team?" Nikita asked offhandedly.

His mouth shrugged. "On their way to Calgary, I imagine."

At last, Nikita faced him, her eyes wide with worry. He was making a huge mistake, and for what? If he had planned to bring her in, he would have known he certainly couldn't do it by himself. "You're not going with them?" she continued incredulously. "Michael, you'll already be in enough trouble with Percy. You should go back."

"Not yet."

"Oksana would call you 'stubborn like bull.' "

Michael nodded in agreement. "You know as well as I do that Gogol won't be able to read what's inside the box just yet. Division will have it back before Gogol can decrypt any of the files."

"That may solve one problem, but what about the other one?"

Finally he turned to her. He rested his glass on the table and tilted his head to the side. "What other problem?"

"This one," she said, motioning between them. "Staying here will only make things worse. It'll make you look like you're in bed with me." Too late to take back the unfortunate choice of words. Damn you, Freud, she cursed inwardly.

Michael raised his characteristic eyebrow, the corner of his mouth twisting up just enough to convey his pleasure at her faux pas. "I'm not worried."

"I am," she admitted. He stared at her, his face lit with sincere surprise. "I pushed things too far, and I put you in serious danger. I don't want anything bad to happen to you."

His gaze was serious. "Just like someone else here, I can take care of myself."

Nikita sighed, leaning back into the stiff back of the chair. "Why did you stay?"

"We have unresolved business."

Understatement of the century. "If you were planning on taking me back to Division, you should have brought back-up."

"I should have brought a whole army. That might not even be enough."

They shared a smile and then a drink in unison. Nikita emptied her glass and left it on the table, making a face. "What was that?"

"Straight Scotch. If you don't like it, then you pick the next drink."

She took up the challenge and signaled a waiter. "Two rum and Cokes."

Michael tipped his head to the side. "Playing it a little safe for Nikita, aren't you?" he baited.

Her response was a scowl. "Make it two bourbon and Cokes," she amended.

"Better."

While they waited for their second round, they shared another silence, but this one was stiffer than the first, more like the whiskey they'd just finished. Neither one knew where to steer the conversation now that their preliminary worries had been addressed. Much like the valley fanning out below them, insurmountable giants loomed ahead in the landscape of their minds.

When their drinks came, Michael was the first to break the ice. "You know, watching you jump off that cliff kind of felt like old times."

"Which old times? Like Rio or Monte Carlo?"

"I was thinking Manila."

Nikita's eyebrows raised as she searched her memory banks. "Yeah, parachuting off a skyscraper is definitely something I'd prefer not to do again." Michael gave one of his quiet laughs, the ones that had charmed her from her first days as a recruit. "Feels like old times right now," she added.

His smile faded somewhat, the remnants of it huddling at the corners of his mouth. "What happened six years ago?" he asked rhetorically and then swallowed a mouthful of his drink.

Nikita's breath slowed. Every doubt, every regret surged forth through her hastily healed wounds as powerfully as if they'd been rent open only yesterday. "I was young and naïve back then."

"So was I. I honestly thought that I could forget being with you." Michael stared at her, his eyes offering an apology for something she had already forgiven.

Nikita put down her glass and swiveled in her chair to face him directly. "We could always finish what we started here," she teased suggestively.

But then a flash of his old stubbornness clouded his features. "You want me to just forget who we are?"

"No," she said, her hand reaching out to touch his, "I want you to stay in spite of it. Everyone else is gone, Michael. We can be who we are, who we were supposed to be."

The flash dimmed, and he lightly squeezed her hand before releasing it. "What do you want me to say?"

"Besides the obvious?"

His jaw tightened. "Nikita, I can't leave Division now. There's too much left to protect."

"That's not what I meant." Her words were quiet but potent, and she could tell from his averted gaze that he read her intended meaning clearly.

"I know," he sighed.

"Then why are you even here? If you don't want to be with me but you don't want to leave, then what am I supposed to do? I can't sit in limbo for the rest of my life waiting for you to figure it out."

"I don't know," he admitted in a low snarl. She could see the turmoil swirling in his green eyes. "The only thing I'm sure about is that I can't get you out of my system. I see your face, and I doubt everything in my life. And then there's this part of me that just wants you to disappear so I can finally put you out of my mind, so I don't have to worry every time I run into you that Division will kill you in front of me. We're just so…"

"Complicated," she offered when he couldn't find the right word.

He nodded. "So where do we go now?"

"We were never good with the honest questions, only the calculated lies."

Michael leaned across the table, catching her face in his hand. He pulled her gently to him and placed his lips on hers. In the six years since their last kiss, this one had matured. It was chaste, wistful even. It wasn't hungry or searching—it was a promise.

"I will come back for you," he said, his mouth still on hers. "And when I do, I won't ever let you go." His hand tightened in her hair, and she could feel raw honesty throb between them. He left his heart on her lips.

Michael pulled back, finished his drink, and stood up. "Goodnight, Nikita," he said, buttoning his jacket.

"Goodnight, Michael." She offered him one last smile before he disappeared.

Nikita spent the next half hour in the same spot. Her glass was empty, but she didn't feel the need for another drink. She watched as lights began to wink out in the homes below, parents tucking children in and lovers settling in for an evening together. For the first time in her war against Division, she saw something more important that Percy with a bullet in his forehead—she saw a future for herself. At last, she rose from her chair.

With no worries of Division interfering anymore, Nikita unearthed her belongings from behind the ice machine and returned to her suite. Somehow the room seemed more inviting upon her homecoming, perhaps because the ghosts in the walls had found someone else to haunt for the time being.

She made herself a fire and relaxed on the couch in front of it, the heat permeating her clothes and massaging her skin like a salve. Nikita pictured a carousel, the one she and Michael had been riding since they first met, always stopping right back where they started. Michael's promises of their future were beautiful, but they were also indefinite. Someday he would let his guard down. Someday he would make her his. Someday.

In the meantime, she'd just have to answer that knock at the door.

A/N: Boy, life with Mikita can never be easy. Just a wee bit o' hope here. :) I also want to extend a heartfelt thanks for those of you that followed me the whole way through this monster. Judging by my consistent daily updates, I was obsessed. Seriously, for those of you who don't know me, I'm a little OOC myself right now. In eight days, I pumped out 48 single-spaced pages. That has never happened in my life. Why bother sharing this? Just so you know if I ever do decide to write a sequel, it probably won't happen in eight days. Consider yourselves warned.