Save Me
A/N: Based on a writer's prompt "Save Me: I'll write a drabble about my character saving yours or vise versa." No spoilers for any particular episode or season.
Summary: Nikita accomplishes the mission once again, but screws up the exfil. Takes place during early season one.
Music Inspiration: "You Want Everything" by Snowmine
When Nikita wakes, her hand immediately goes for the knife in her boot; the only problem is, the knife is gone and so are her boots.
Clad in nothing but her undergarments and a sweltering cocoon of quilts, Nikita is stripped entirely of her defenses. All she can think is, it's a good thing modesty has never been one of her greater virtues.
She slides as silently as she can from the bundle of blankets, wincing as the mattress squeaks with her shifting weight. The noise causes a stir from the next room over, and Nikita quickly rolls from the bed to crouch in a catlike stance behind it. The sudden movement is dizzying, her muscles quaking from the effort, and for a moment she wonders if she was drugged. It would explain a lot of things.
She darts for the adjacent master bathroom, but she barely makes it two feet before the release of a handgun's safety-catch stops her in her tracks.
Her eyes rove the room for anything she could use as a weapon, and her gaze settles on the gleaming metal handles of a pair of scissors, half concealed by the tattered remains of her sneak suit.
"Turn around," says the wielder of the firearm, and while Nikita would recognize that gravelly voice anywhere, she doesn't feel any less wary.
She obeys the order, hands still lifted innocently above her head, but she keeps the location of the scissors stored in her memory. If she's careful not to knick any organs or arteries, she could probably incapacitate Michael long enough to make a run for it.
After all, no one catches up to Nikita after she's slipped free.
"Hello Michael," she says, taking the heavy moment to note that his clothes are rumpled, his eyes slightly puffy, and he has lines of fabric imprints across his left cheek, "Sleeping on the job?"
Michael's lips quirk ironically. "I'm not the only one," he replies, and gestures toward the bed, "Get in."
"You could at least buy me a drink first," she flirts, her voice slightly raspy as her parched throat protests. She bats her eyelashes and tries to use the fact that she's in her underwear to her advantage, but Michael's all business today.
"Only if you get back in bed and try to rest. I didn't fish you out of Lake Eerie and nurse you back to health just for you to die from stubbornness," he says, his expression hardening with the severity of his words.
The mission gone wrong flits through her mind. Nikita recalls jumping from the rented helicopter just as Roan blasted it from the air with a RPG-7. She escaped the blast, but not the tumultuous grasp of the riptide.
She can vaguely remember the frantic gripping hands she thought were trying to choke her as Michael pulled her from the harbor and forced the water from her lungs. If the bruise on his temple is any indication, Nikita landed at least one nasty hit before unconsciousness stole her away.
"Why save me?" she asks sourly, "If you turned my body in to Percy, you'd earn more than a few brownie points... Unless that's still the plan."
"Don't be dense, Nikita," Michael says, and levels the weapon in his hands, "Get back in the bed or I'll have to tranquilize you."
Nikita takes a shaky step forward, and gradually lowers her arms from their surrendered position. "Chill Michael," she says placatingly, her voice growing dustier, "Just let me walk around a little. I'm not going to keel over from too much fresh air."
Michael purses his lips, and seems to consider her words for a minute, before tucking the M9 into his waistband with a sigh. "Go to the kitchen and wait for me. I'll grab you something to wear."
"Oh, but our conversations are so much more fun like this," she says jokingly, but does what he tells her.
First thing she does when Michael leaves the room is search the drawers and cabinets. It's clear from the contents (powdered milk, canned vegetables, dried jerky) that this is a safe house, probably somewhere in Pennsylvania, not Michael's personal home.
It's unsurprising. If she knows anything about Michael at all, it's that he's the same as her. Probably sleeping on an army cot in a sparsely decorated, meticulously kempt apartment somewhere near the perimeter of New Jersey.
If he's at all alarmed by the sight of her digging through the safe house's supplies, he doesn't show it. He enters calmly, carrying a bundle of cloth in his hands, firearm securely fastened in the newly buckled holster at his hip. She intuits this as less of a sign of trust than a preventative measure -it would be marginally more difficult for her to swipe the weapon from him in hand-to-hand combat.
"Find what you're looking for?" he asks dryly, setting the folded clothing items on the corner of the four-seated dining table.
She presses her fingers along the inner lining of the silverware drawer and discovers a false bottom, something she notes without acting on. "No, not really."
"You should sit down," he says through his teeth, clearly exasperated by her refusal to follow orders.
Nikita slides the drawer shut with her hip, and takes a few shaky steps toward Michael until she's standing close enough to smell the harbor on him. The heat from his body stirs something inside of her -longing, maybe. She feels like a recruit again, always accomplishing the mission but screwing up the exfil. She would be dead a thousand times over if Michael hadn't saved her.
"And you should put some clothes on," he adds in an almost whisper, and then clears his throat. "You have goose bumps."
She knows she should listen to him; she is bone weary. But she is also so angry, so defiant. Why do things have to be this way?
She smiles and leans in closer, watching her own reflection in his jaded eyes. "Oh Michael, always so protective," she murmurs, and grabs the clothing from the table behind him.
She walks away, and whatever culminated between them evaporates.
"How much do you remember?" he asks through a mouthful of green beans directly from the can. The gas stove works fine, but they both know anything can be used as a weapon if she wields it right.
"Before or after I hit you in the face?" she asks with a smile.
Kindness can be a weapon too, especially between them. Perhaps even the sharpest of them all.
He almost laughs; almost. "After."
Nikita searches her mind for any memories between the blackout and waking up, and finds very little. She had dreams, about Daniel and about Alex and living on the beach.
Then she remembers dreaming of the water, first icey and then scalding. Michael's voice pleading, Hold on Nikita! Just hold on! Her eyes opening, flashes of the showerhead spurting grey liquid over both their bodies.
He'd used the scissors on the night stand to cut her out of her waterlogged stealth suit and dragged her to the bathtub, where he turned on the tap as hot as it could go until her frozen, hypothermic flesh turned pink, and he begged her not to die.
Under Michael's heavy, almost guilt-laden stare, she lies, "I can't remember anything. Where does Percy think you are right now?"
"Why, so you can blow up that mission too?" he asks, and while it sounds like a joke, she can tell that he's actually serious.
"Roan was the only one to use explosives on that last one, actually," Nikita reminds him with a small smile, and takes a swig from her bottle of water.
"It's just basic reconnaissance on member of a New York mob that owes him money. I delegated the task to a contact of mine," Michael finally explains, the assignment clearly too small-time for Nikita to bother with, "I have more pressing matters to tend to."
Nikita swallows the last bite of her fruit cocktail, and licks the spoon clean. Without being asked, Michael slides another can across the table for her.
"What happens if Percy checks your tracker?" she proposes, peeling the metal lid off the tin. The overly sweet smell of preserved carrots fills the air, and Nikita can't help but think she could make a good veggie shake from all this if only they had ice and some rice milk. As if Michael would let her near a blender.
Michael drums his fingers against the table and hesitates before answering, "It doesn't matter. I'll come up with something."
Nikita sets her spoon aside and glares. "This is serious, Michael! You might be his favorite lapdog, but that's all you are to Percy. If he suspects you've been disloyal, he will kill you."
This time, Michael finally does laugh, but it's humorless. "He'll do worse than that."
"Then why?" Nikita asks, "Why do this much for me? You should have pulled me out of the water and left me there!"
Michael purses his lips and growls, "And then what? Hoped you survived long enough for a cleaner to find your body?"
"Yes!" Nikita shouted, throwing her hands into the air, "You...You can't do this, Michael. You can't straddle the line like this. You're going to have to choose a side, before it gets you killed."
She stands up from the table, suddenly feeling lightheaded, and heads back toward the bedroom to lie down. She sighs under her breath, "I just hope mine's the side you choose."
A/N: This is all I have of my one-shots series at this point. However, I have a full-length fanfiction in the works. So far I have 11,000 words typed and I have the rest of the plot planned out. So that may make an appearance soon. Any segments that I reject from that fic will be posted here as one-shots.
Originally this chapter was going to be part of a longer fanfiction, and the reason Nikita felt lightheaded was that Michael drugged her so that he could leave and meet Percy. It would turn out that Michael saving Nikita was actually a directive by Percy, but in the end Nikita and Michael would team up and overthrow him of course. It was going to be about four or five chapters. I stopped writing it though when I started writing my full-length fic.
The upcoming fic will be called Impact. So I hope you'll check it out once it's posted!
Thank you for reading, and please review. I would really appreciate it. And thank you very much to the Anonymous Reviewers, who I can't reply to!
-MT