fic, nikita, cuts both ways 3/4
Title: Cuts Both Ways 3/4
Fandom: Nikita
Characters: Michael, Nikita, Alex, Amanda, Percy, Birkhoff, Owen.
Rating: PG-13 for this part. May increase in future chapters.
Summary: "He leaves Division in the dead of night. He says no goodbyes, he lets no one know that anything might be amiss." -- Michael discovers the truth about his family's death first and goes rogue well before Nikita meets Daniel.
Author's note: I thought this would be the last part but it got long. Next part is definitely the last part.
Love, like a blow to the head has knocked me down and I’m bleeding
… … …
“Percy is sure Michael is dead.” Nikita says to Birkhoff, late one night, a few weeks after the debacle in Montreal.
“You don’t think so?” Birkhoff asks quietly, and he finishes typing another line of code into whatever new program he’s writing, then turns to face her. Nikita shrugs and settles herself down onto his couch, pushing the empty bags of potato chips and red bull cans off the edge and onto the floor, and fluffing up the cushions beside her.
“I don’t really know.” She confesses, and she wishes that Birkhoff was blasting his deafening techno music so that there is something to fill the deep silence that seems to stretch between them. “It just doesn’t feel right. Maybe he’s just hiding again, maybe he’s hiding that Owen fellow. He had one of the black boxes, maybe they’re figuring out how to use that information.”
“They won’t be able to. Not easily.” Birkhoff says, and he has a certain look on his face that makes her think maybe he shouldn’t be sharing that with her so freely. Nikita knows that she doesn’t know everything that goes on here, Birkhoff knows things she doesn’t, but it goes the other way as well. No matter how omnipresent Birkhoff claims to be, there are black spots in his intel.
But honestly it’s not important. “I don’t have any evidence. Just a weird feeling about it. I don’t feel settled, nothing feels complete.”
“Well, I guess we’ll see soon enough whether your gut is right.” Birkhoff says, and returns back to his coding.
Nikita leans back on his couch against the fluffed cushions and just breathes. The last few weeks have been hard, they’ve felt harder and more stressful than the last few years, somehow, and every time she thinks about why, her stomach rolls and rebels against her. She finds herself hiding from Percy more often, as though he can somehow read her thoughts and knows that she has been doubting everything.
Michael is dead, supposedly. He’s the one who killed her fiance. She should be elated. Percy certainly is, though he isn’t showing it in the regular, normal way that most human beings do-- he’s walking around Division with more confidence and more zeal than ever. But she isn’t. She wanted a chance to speak with Michael again. She wanted to ask him about Daniel, about why he killed him, why Daniel was ever a target. And then, she wanted to be the one to kill him herself. Or she wanted to be the one to forgive him. Or she wanted to do both at once. She’s never been able to decide exactly what she’d do if she saw him again, because she knows that there is more to the story than she’s been given.
Nikita watches Birkhoff type frantically away at his work station, surrounded by his mega computers, with their flashing lights, hypnotically red, yellow, blue, green, flashing away. He seems so absorbed in whatever Percy has told him to do today, she thinks it’s hacking the CIA, but she hasn’t been watching too closely. She thinks to herself that this mess of a man right here is probably her only friend, which is something she never would’ve predicted when she was recruited to Division nine years ago, and the man on whom she’s come to rely so heavily.
She pushes herself up from the couch and begins rifling through one of Birkhoff’s other workstations, pushing aside the rest of his food scraps and spare computer parts until she extracts a laptop from the pile, and she takes it back with her to the couch.
A few weeks back Birkhoff partitioned a section of the server off for their own private use (what Percy doesn’t know about won’t kill him) and she uses it to access the security footage of Daniel’s death. She’s watched these ten minutes of footage countless times, so many times that she knows exactly how the wrinkles in Daniel’s shirt sit across his shoulder, and she could replicate the exact splatter of blood that is spread across Michael’s cheek. She can list exactly what each man is wearing. Daniel is in his pink shirt (real men wear pink) and neatly pressed navy suit pants. The jacket he’d been wearing all day is hung in the crook of his elbow, and the same hand is holding his briefcase while he rifles in his pocket with his other for the keys to his apartment. She watches every time how his watch (the one he inherited from his Grandfather, that he had to manually wind every day so that it kept perfect time) catches on the lip of his pocket before he pulls out the keys then disappears into the security camera’s blind spot just outside the apartment door.
She watches the next 7 minutes, as nothing happens in the halls. The security footage has no sound, so she has no way of knowing if a microphone would’ve picked up anything that happened within the walls of Daniel’s apartment. If they had yelled at each other, if you could hear the struggle. The walls of the apartment complex were thin, she and Daniel had been able to hear the neighbours above them cook dinner to salsa music, and the neighbours to the side make passionate, noisy love after they’d finished watching Grey’s Anatomy.
Then Michael emerges suddenly from the same corner Daniel had disappeared into. Unlike Daniel, who was casually returning home, Michael sprints down the corridor, dressed all in black, though the soles of his shoes have a small section of red rubber inset into them, most likely the brand, and instead of waiting for the elevator he slams through the emergency exit door and into the stairwell to make a speedy exit. Only once during his escape does he look behind him, and that is as he opens the emergency door, when he glances back down the corridor with a stoic expression on his face. Nikita freezes the footage on that one frame, and tries to read the lines of his face. What was he thinking, as he ran away? Was that regret? Was it anger? Was it success?
She couldn’t say.
Frustrated, she pushes the laptop to her side, and returns her attentions to Birkhoff, who is still studiously working amidst his detritus. She waits until he seems to have paused for reflection, and she interrupts him quietly.
"We're going about finding him the wrong way." Nikita says, and rubs her tired eyes with the balls of her hands. "He's too good at hiding where he is, if we haven't had any luck for the past five years, we're certainly not going to find him now, and if we assume that if Owen is with him now, Michael will be keeping him out of sight as well. Or at least teaching him how to hide from us in the same way."
Birkhoff turns to look at her but doesn't reply, instead he reaches for the luke-warm coffee resting beside his elbow and takes a sip.
"We need to start thinking like him.” Nikita goes on, “What's the one thing we know he wants."
"To take down Division." Birkhoff says immediately. "He hasn't exactly been quiet about that."
Nikita shakes her head. "No. Well. Yes, but what I mean is we don't know how he's going to do that. Maybe he'll use the black box somehow, now he has access to one, but he wants something more than that."
"What?" Birkhoff asks, frowning a little.
"He wants revenge. He wants to kill the man who killed his family." Nikita says bluntly, because that is what she wants as well, and they both know it.
"Kasim Tariq."
"Yes." Nikita nods, and snatches up the laptop once again. She quickly launches ShadowNet and searches the terrorist's name, and in an instant a summary of information they have on the ex-Division agent is in front of her. "I assume we have an intelligence trace on him." She asks, and Birkhoff is already typing away at his own computer, and tracking down any new information of his own.
"Yep, though it's been pretty quiet these last few months from what I can see. There's a note here saying he has ties to Gogol, which is probably why."
"Gogol." Nikita repeats, and files that away to process later. "Send me everything you can find on Tariq." She says perfunctorily, knowing that for her, Birkhoff would do it anyway. They have worked closely enough these past few years for him to be able to safely anticipate her every whim, and vice versa.
"Done." And sure enough, her computer lets off a little ping notification to confirm.
"Thank you." She says, and opens the secured file. "Can you restrict access to you and me only, please? And if anything new pops up, or we get a confirmation of his current whereabouts. Let me know straight away."
Birkhoff pauses for a moment, and Nikita panics for a second, wondering if she’s asked too much of him. If this need for secrecy is too much for Birkhoff to handle. But then Birkhoff answers: "Sure thing, Nikki." in an almost cheerful tone, and she knows that he is her best friend.
… … ...
Looking after Owen is nothing like looking after Alex. In fact, on the whole, Michael finds that living with a recovering drug addict far easier than living with this acerbic, barely tolerable man. At first Michael writes Owen’s attitude off as grief, mixed in with physical pain-- the bullet wound to the man’s leg took a while to heal, and Michael’s skills as a surgeon left much to be desired.
But then he heals, and the relationship does not improve very much, though at least they coexist as reluctant allies. They have enough in common to know they’re on the same side, but that’s about all they agree on. Owen refuses to give up the location of his Black Box, insisting that it is safer if only he knows it, and Michael refuses to give Owen details about Alex, though he couldn’t keep the fact that he had a man on the inside at Division secret for very long.
Not to mention, Owen still holds a grudge about Michael shooting him. Michael may have neglected to apologise for that. But the guy was a dick. He'll get over it one day.
In the meantime, they spend their days skirting around each other, like skittish, territorial cats. Michael reluctantly shows Owen the ropes, hands over some of his contacts (though not all of them, Michael's not stupid) so that he can get his own cash, ID, weapons, anything he needs really, while staying off Division's radar. They establish a method of communicating with each other so that when they separate (which will be as soon as freaking possible, as far as Michael is concerned) they'll still be able to keep in touch all while being far, far away from each other.
He finishes up a brief instant message with Alex, who's been keeping him updated on the fallout of his "death" in Division, when he realises Owen snuck in at some-point. Michael slams the laptop shut quickly, and glares at the Guardian. "I thought we agreed you'd stop sneaking around." He says lowly and gets up from his spot, ostensibly to take his now empty coffee cup back to the kitchen to wash up, but really it's to put him on even footing with Owen.
"I wasn't sneaking." Owen says, and the impatience that Michael finds so dangerous is there, hovering behind his words.
"Well you weren't going out of your way to make yourself known." Michael says, unable to keep the grouchiness from his voice. He snatches up the empty coffee cup and the plate on which his lunch had sat. "What do you want?"
Owen doesn't answer. Instead he steps over and opens the laptop, where the last few lines of text from Alex are still hovering on the screen: Percy is the only one who thinks you're really dead. Everyone else, though...
"Do you have a way of getting her out?" Owen asks evenly, "Because they'll find her eventually. They know everything."
"Don't you worry about that." Michael says dismissively. "I've got it under control."
"Really?" Owen says, raising a skeptical eyebrow. "Because we've been here for weeks, and I'm starting to get the idea you don't know as much as we always thought you did."
"We?"
"Well, maybe you know more now you have your little mole in there, but you've just been flying by the seat of your pants these past few years, haven't you?"
Michael lets out a wry, dry chuckle. "You're trying that tack are you?" He asks, knowingly. "You're trying to get me to doubt myself, so that I'll let you use the information off the black box."
"It's not like I have to ask for permission, do I?" Owen spits. "I'm the one who knows it's location, not you. I'm the one with the power."
"Yeah, And I'm the one who saved your life." Michael stabs a finger at the man's chest, hitting his sternum.
"Funny. I see you as the guy who shot me twice." Owen says.
Michael rolls his eyes. This conversation is going exactly the same way it always does, around in circles, with both of them arcing up, resisting the authority and expertise and opinions of the other. Frankly, Michael is getting tired of it.
"Using the black box isn't an option, until we have all of them, and you know it." Michael says. "If you're done creeping around for the day, we can keep debriefing each other, see if we can remember anything else we might be able to use against Percy."
Owen begrudgingly accedes the point and a few minutes later they're settling down across the table from one another with a pen and pad each.
"It's your turn to start." Owen says, twisting the ball point pen in his fingers. "Let me have em."
Michael quickly skims his notes, they've spent the last few sessions covering Owen's role as a Guardian, what it entailed, whether he knew of the other Guardians, where they were assigned, protocol, contingency plans to see if there was any way that the position could be exploited. Owen in turn had questions about Michael's time away from Division-- what he's spent his time doing. He spent more than his fair share of time picking at Michael to reveal his mole, but Michael had drawn a line in the sand on that one, til he completely trusted the other man. He wasn't even sure that day would ever come, to be quite frank.
Today he decides that he should probably be a little less intense in his questioning, maybe focus on their common ground.
"Tell me about Daniel Munroe." He says simply, putting his pen to paper. "He was my first real lead after I got out of Division, I was keeping tabs on him for weeks, but I could never figure out what they wanted with him. And you were there."
But what he thought would be a simple answer clearly is not as clear-cut as he thinks. Owen shoots a suspicious glare in his direction, and Michael wonders what possible nerve he's hit this time, Owen is so damn sensitive about every damn thing...
"What?" Owen finally asks, and stops twisting his pen between his fingers.
"Daniel Munroe. What was Division's interest in him?" Michael repeats, but this time he is a little less certain, because Owen now looks genuinely dumbfounded, and more than a little bit uncomfortable.
"You mean you don't know?" Owen asks, tentatively.
"No, that's why I'm asking. I know Division was interested, and it was all but confirmed when I ran into you, but..."
"I killed him that night." Owen says bluntly, cutting him off. "You weren't meant to be there, but we figured afterwards that you knew I was coming and had tried to intercept me. You didn't try very hard, but..."
It is Michael's turn to be confused. He tries to process this new information, to slot it in with what he already knows to be true: Owen was a Cleaner before he became a Guardian, and he was one of the best. Daniel had been in close contact with a Division operative in the months before his death. It must've been because he had some intel, or some connection that was a threat to 'national security' or whatever bullshit excuse Percy had given it.
"Alright." Michael says with a nod. "So after I got away, you killed him. That explains why no one followed me. I know I shot you, but I figured you had backup nearby, it always bothered me I got away so clean."
"No. There wasn't any backup, just me, and I had strict orders to carry out my mission at any cost." Owen explained. "He arrived home about twenty minutes after you and I fought. I killed him with your gun, set it up to look like a house invasion gone wrong."
Michael nods. This he all knew, from news articles and police reports. "Why was he a target?"
Owen's brow ruffles again. "He was engaged to a Division agent in deep cover, he was a civilian. Percy gave me the order to take him out himself."
This aligns so well with everything he knows about Division policies that he’s honestly kicking himself he hadn’t thought of it before now. The man had no real intelligence value, no connections to anything of importance. It’s really the only thing that makes sense. "Which one?"
Owen pauses for a long moment, "Nikita." He says finally, and Michael feels his heart drop out of his chest.
Nikita.
And everything just falls into place in front of his eyes. All those little things make sense, the hit on Daniel of course, but mostly Nikita, her reactions towards him and Birkhoff's animosity towards him. And then other things that Alex has mentioned, about the restructuring of Division, Nikita's rise within the ranks, and the strange fierce loyalty that Percy had fostered in her in the years he'd been away.
"They framed me for it, didn't they." Michael says, not really needing Owen to answer, because he already knows.
"Yeah. They had footage of you coming into the building, they spliced it together. With that and your gun and prints at the scene..." Owen trails off, "It was pretty convincing."
"It always is." Michael says with a sigh, and gets up from the table. "We'll do this later. I need some time to think."
"Take your time, man. Whatever you need."
… … …
At first she worried that she wouldn't be able to keep her little investigation away from others. The guilt weighed on her for a while as she wondered whether she was right to doubt what she knew, whether it was fair, whether it was just. She has always liked finding things out for herself, having the evidence laid out in front, clear and plain as day, without needing to doubt its integrity, but she knows that that is a luxury born of self reliance. Trust is something given and earned, and these people have trusted in her all these years and yet here she is, repaying them with...
With what?
But when she pulls on her tailored suit, with its slim-line, neatly pressed pants, and the corseted jacket, and she pulls her hair into a practical yet stylish pony-tail, it is as though she is pulling on armor. No, not armor, a costume: she is playing a character. Nikita, the faithful, trustworthy, loyal agent. The one who has never doubted anything, who believes the system she is working for is right and just and good.
The suit protects her from the suspicious looks, and it helps her bristle at Percy's subtle insinuations about her relationship with Michael, and helps her wave away Amanda's continued attempts to pry into her subconscious.
The suit keeps her safe, and it keeps her on guard.
She stands straight and tall beside a seated Amanda, carefully watching Alex conduct her first interrogation. It isn't going particularly well, and Amanda begins to bark orders through the intercom. "Positive incentives aren't working, Alex, maybe it's time to try a negative one?"
Nikita notes, and knows that Amanda does as well, that Alex is extremely reluctant to administer the shock-- the recruit eyes the little controller she has in her hand with skepticism and a little fear. Nikita knows that feeling, but knows that she is going to have to get over that fear sooner rather than later.
"She's a little green for this sort of interrogation." Nikita murmurs quietly, and she hears Percy come in quietly and stand behind her. She glances back at the man, who though she's wearing heels still somehow manages to loom above her. "You don't normally sit in on recruit training."
Percy quirks a single eyebrow at her, but doesn’t seem angry when he says: “Well you were the one who told me she was special. I wanted to see for myself.”
Nikita nods, and returns her attention to the monitors. She watches Alex goad the man -- turning the offer to let him see his family into a barely veiled threat is clever, but no one expects the reaction they get when the man launches himself from the chair, ripping apart the plastic cuffs, and slams Alex into the wall.
Amanda immediately calls the guards for backup, and Nikita turns on her heel, runs out the door and down the hall to the interrogation room. By the time she is there the guards are hauling the terrorist away and Alex is cowering on the floor, clutching at her throat and gasping for air.
“Alex.” She says, and pulls the girl’s hands away so she can inspect the damage, but Alex resists and slaps them away.
“Alex.” She says more forcefully, and grabs her by the jaw, forcing her to make eye contact. “I need to know if you’re hurt.”
The girl is frightened, but drops her hands, and Nikita gently caresses the bruised skin, checking for abraisions, any signs that the wind-pipe had been crushed, anything that could lead to permanent damage...
“It’s just bruised.” Nikita murmurs, and gently pushes a lock of hair away from Alex’s face. “You’ll be fine.”
“He was crazy, why wasn’t he properly cuffed?” Alex yells, though the timbre of her voice is not quite up to it after the abuse it had just received.
Nikita sees the beginning of a panic attack starting, and she knows that she needs to nip this in the bud before it gets out of hand. “Think, Alex. He couldn’t have metal restraints, not with the electric shock.” And picks up the small remote control that had been dropped in the fracas and returns it to Alex.
“I could’ve been killed.” Alex hisses, and seems to be on the verge of tears. Nikita shushes her automatically.
“Hey hey hey.” She says, making firm eye contact with her. “I won’t let that happen to you.” she promises, then lifts the girl to her feet. “Let’s get you to the medical bay.”
She stays with Alex through the exam with the doctor, and when that is done and pain pills are prescribed, she escorts her back to her room to rest.
“She’ll be fine for the op tomorrow.” She tells Amanda when they reconvene later that evening. “She’s a little shaken, but she’s dealt with worse.”
Amanda nods and adds a brief note to a file on her iPad. “You did a very good job of keeping her calm.” She says lightly, setting aside the tablet to reach for her tea. “Would you like some?”
“Sure.” Nikita says, and settles down in the seat across from the older woman. “She was going to hurt herself more if we weren’t careful.”
“True.” Amanda says, and pours the green tea into the two little ceramic cups, setting the pot back onto its tray. “You’ve grown into a more nurturing figure than I expected you would.”
Nikita isn’t sure how to respond to that, and she honestly hasn’t noticed the change herself. She accepts the little cup when it’s passed with an: “Oh?”
“Yes.” Amanda says firmly. “Ever since Michael left and you were promoted to help manage the recruits.”
“Well it’s what the role requires, isn’t it.” She reasons, and takes a sip of the tea. It is the perfect temperature, warm enough to fill her chest with heat but not so hot to burn her tongue.
“It’s certainly the way that Michael handled the recruits.” Amanda says, and though her tone is light, and her words are innocent, Nikita knows that there is nothing light and innocent in what Amanda is insinuating and she is suddenly angry she is being questioned and probed and judged in such a manner.
“Oh, well.” Nikita shrugs, calm and composed. “It’s an effective method for building trust, which is more than I can say for thinly veiled interrogations.”
Perhaps it is too far, she thinks, and watches Amanda’s face keenly for even the slightest facial tick or glimpse of emotion that would incriminate her forever.
But Amanda’s poise wins out in the long run, and betrays nothing. Nikita has to satisfy herself with Amanda’s words instead: “I suppose you’re right. Though look where your trust in Michael got you.”
Nikita sets her cup very deliberately back down on the table to keep from throwing it in the other woman’s face.
Amanda gives her the softest of smiles. “He betrayed us all, in the end.”
She doesn’t stay long with Amanda after that, but she doesn’t manage to leave the complex til late in the evening. The single strand of hair she’d wound around the lock on her apartment door is still in place-- she’s had no unwanted visitors today, so when she steps inside and closes the door behind her she finally relaxes.
Slowly, piece by piece, she removes her costume, her armour. She releases her hair from the tight ponytail. The shoes, tall heels for authority, are kicked off into the hall closet. The corseted jacket, now a little wrinkled from wear, is hung across the hamper in the bathroom, and is quickly followed by her blouse and pencil skirt.
She stands for a moment in her underwear in front of her bathroom mirror and surveys the damage for the day: bags under her eyes betray her exhaustion, knots in her stomach have banished any hunger she should feel, chipped polish from a vigorous session at the firing range...
There is still a small pink blemish of a scar on her left shoulder, just below her clavicle. She presses it with a firm finger, and deep inside the sinew and muscle of the joint she feels the ache that has been there for months, no, for years. For longer than Daniel, even. It’s been there since Michael left, really, and no matter how hard she tries to find him, to help him, to get her revenge, to kill him, to replace him, none of it has come close to healing her of the pain because it all boils down to one thing:
She misses him.
That’s what the costume is really for.
The suit protects her from the suspicious looks, and it helps her bristle at Percy's subtle insinuations about her relationship with Michael, and helps her wave away Amanda's continued attempts to pry into her subconscious.
The suit keeps her safe. It keeps her on guard.
They run the second part of the interrogation simulation the next day, and when it all goes pear-shaped, and Alex kills her interrogator-- the Division agent playing the part-- it is the pressed suit she wears that reminds her of her role. It helps her bring Alex back into the fold when the hysterical girl is panicking at the gas station and hell-bent on running away forever. It helps her recognise she’s being tested when Percy demands she ‘deal’ with the girl, permanently. And while it doesn’t come to that in the end, the pressed suit helps her cope when she sees that the trust she’s spent so long building with Alex is torn asunder so easily.
It keeps her alive.
… … …
It’s an innocuous little phone call that changes everything. Owen’s gone, out of the picture for now, tracking down other guardians and other black boxes, and Michael for his part is relishing his return to privacy and solitude. He gets himself back on track, foiling Percy’s foul plans where he can.
He is planning for his next mission, thanks to some info Alex managed to get out to him earlier, when his cell phone buzzes across the table. The display says 'Private Number'.
"Yes?" He says guardedly.
"Hey Mikey. It's Bobby. You told me to give you a call if I heard anything about Kasim Tariq. He's in Uzbekistan."
He moves quickly after that, in less than twenty-four hours he's checked into a hotel in Tashkent, and peeking through the curtains and the hustle and bustle of the street below. He never would've thought this morning that he'd be here, in this place, about to do what he's been planning to do for years. He knows Alex is worried, and rightly so. If things don't go right here, she'll be left without a safety net... But he can't focus on that right now. He sent her a message while he was on the plane, letting her know he'll be off the radar for at least a few days. That'll have to do for now. She's a smart girl, she can lay low for a while without him.
Michael hears a strange noise behind him, and he reacts instantly, unholstering the gun from his hip and whipping around, but the barrel of a silencer is already pointed at his head.
Nikita.
... ... ...
She gets an email with the intel update. Kasim Tariq sighted in Tashkent. Expected to make trade with Russian mob by the end of the week.
There is a P.S. note at the end from Birkhoff: Nikki. I've fudged your GPS tracker data and I'll cover for you for a few days. Do what you've got to do.
She doesn't waste any time. She hitches a ride on a military transport to Afghanistan and gets a transfer to Uzbekistan within an hour of landing in Kabul. She makes the assumption that Michael would have his own feelers out for intelligence and would've got the same info as her around the same time, but he would be restricted to commercial flights, and so she feels pretty safe in her assumption that she got here first. When she lands she pulls out the netbook Birkhoff furnished her with a while ago, and using the modified version of Shadownet he installed she hacks the local hotels (keeping it to 4 stars and above-- she knows Michael likes a certain level of comfort when he travels) and she finds a booking fitting her description: American. Made less than twelve hours ago. For one night. Cash.
A cab ride later, and after slipping past laughably lax hotel security, she's inside his room. Shadownet tells her the flight he most likely would've taken landed about half an hour ago, and factoring in immigration time, the taxi ride here, she expects she has another twenty minutes or so until Michael gets here himself.
She sits down on the bed, and sets her gun and computer down beside her, ready to wait.
Then her phone rings. It's Birkhoff.
"Yeah?" She asks, quietly.
"Nikki." He says urgently, and instantly she begins to fret, thinking Percy has caught them in their subterfuge, but it is much worse. "Load up the Daniel footage, I think I found something."
"Hold on." She says and wedges her phone between her ear and her shoulder, grabs the netbook and loads the footage as promised. As she does this, a revolution boils in her tummy, tumbling and bubbling and it takes all her self control to push it back down and focus on the task he's given her.
"It's up. What am I looking for?" It begins to play, looking ever the same as usual. Daniel walking casually down the hallway, timestamp ticking over in the corner.
"Pause it at 20:17 at around the 35 second mark." He says, and Nikita navigates to the exact spot and pauses as instructed. Daniel is walking, left hand flexed outwards, his Grandfather's watch peeking out from beneath the sleeve of his pink (real men wear pink) shirt.
"Done. What am I looking at?" She asks. "I don't have much time."
"Yeah, yeah." Birkhoff says quickly. "Zoom in on his watch."
It's a little difficult for her to do with the phone still wedged between her ear and shoulder, but she taps the right command into the program and it blows the image up. At first it is too blurry to see detail, the original footage is not of the highest quality, but the program Birkhoff insists they work with automatically begins cleaning up the image, sharpening the details until she can read the exact time on the watch. 8:31.
"It might be nothing." Birkhoff says quickly, "But the time on the watch says it's a bit after 8:30, which doesn't match the time stamp of the footage."
She can tell Birkhoff thinks he's just grasping at straws but she knows it's the smoking gun they've been looking for. Daniel dutifully wound that watch every day when he got out of the shower. It kept perfect time, in the way that only old, well crafted time pieces could, and he treated it like the treasured possession it was. If it was only a few minutes different to the time stamp she could've waved it away as a subtle discrepancy, but fourteen minutes is telling.
"It's not nothing." She says quietly, and then her ear pricks as she hears the soft bell of the elevator ring at the end of the hall. It will be Michael. “It’s everything.”
“Nikki,” He says, but she knows she won’t have time to hash out her feelings with him on this right now. She hasn’t got the time.
"I've gotta go, Birkhoff. Thanks."
She hangs up the phone, slips it into her pocket and stashes the netbook in the bathroom, where she hides behind the door and waits. Sure enough, less than a minute later she hears the electronic click of the main door unlock and she can hear the heavy footsteps and measured breathing of a man.
Her mind is whirling with information. The footage had been doctored. She’s suspected it for a little while, but now she has the proof. Michael didn’t kill Daniel. He’s just on the other side of this door, and she has the proof that he didn’t kill the man she loved. He’s here in a foreign country to kill the man who killed his family, and she is here because she knew he would be.
So she steps out of the bathroom, and points her gun at him. He’s on high alert, naturally, and as soon as he hears her move out into the main room, he has a gun trained at her heart, and she can’t help but smile as it’s goddamn deja vu all over again.
"How did you..." He begins.
"Hello Michael." She interrupts, quietly, then lowers the gun.. He darts a glance at the door, then the window, clearly looking for his escape route, and she sighs. “I’m here alone. No one knows where I am.”
It’s a lie, but it’s as true as he needs it to be. No one who wants to hurt him knows where she is.
She watches closely, and sees the tiny little wrinkles form between his eyes. He is puzzled, confused, and then in one, enormous moment he relaxes and lowers the weapon in his hands. “Hello Nikita.” He says, and there is a touch of his old warmth there, just enough to quell the hurricane in her stomach a little.
Nikita nods and allows herself to relax a little in return. “We should talk.” She says.
… … …
They sit on opposite sides of the room, he at the desk, and her on the edge of the bed. She is right, there is so much they need to talk about, but neither of them seems to know just where to start. There is a veritable mountain of complexity before them and there are so many things they could begin with.
Michael opens his mouth to tell her what he learned from Owen, that he had been framed, that he didn’t kill Daniel, that he would never hurt her like that, he would never inflict this pain on someone else. But she speaks before he gets the chance.
“Did you kill Daniel?” She asks, and it is so straight forward and devoid of emotion that he is at first a little surprised.
“No.” He says unequivocally. “No. I didn’t kill him.”
“Were you there that night to kill him?” She asks.
“No.”
“What were you doing there?”
He pauses for a moment to remember. Then he explains: “I had evidence of an undercover division agent who had a connection to him and wanted to know why. I thought he was your target, that he had some intelligence or connection Division wanted to exploit.”
Nikita is quiet for a moment, and he can see that she is slotting this new information into her understanding of everything. He can see the toll this life has had on her, the bags beneath her eyes, she looks skinnier than she’s ever been, and it’s as though there is a heavy burden weighing on her shoulders. She looks much older than her twenty seven years, and it kills him to know he was inadvertently the cause of such toxic stress.
“He was just a graphic designer.” Nikita says finally, and he can hear a tremble in her voice.
“I know.” He says, and leans forward. “It didn’t make any sense to me at the time. When I was there in the apartment I found some Division bugs, but there wasn’t any reason. He had no security connections, no terrorist connections. No access to money or information. I was in the middle of my search when the Cleaner turned up. We fought and I shot him in the shoulder and I managed to get away before Daniel got home. I assumed the Cleaner was there for me, until I read he died in the paper.”
He wants nothing more than to reach out to her and comfort her, she’s not crying, but she is clearly upset and it pains him to know that he has been the root of so much of the sadness in her life. Even if it was all a lie.
“I was out of town that night, I was part of a smash and grab team in New York. It was simple work, but when you left they promoted me to recruit supervision so I was leading the raid. I got home so early in the morning, I didn’t have any time to sleep, but I went over to Daniel’s place anyway because I knew I could get breakfast there and he’d let me sleep on his couch all day and watch reruns of Friends and then when he got home from work that evening he’d watch it with me.
Instead I got to his place and the door was closed but it wasn’t locked. Furniture was everywhere, and then I got to the living room and he was dead on the floor next to the coffee table.” He sees a tiny tear roll down her cheek, and she doesn't wipe it away. "The first person I called was Percy, can you believe that? He was number one on my speed dial. I call him and I tell him what happened, and I don't remember much after that until I woke up in Birkhoff's office on his couch and they show me this footage of Daniel coming home, and then you running down the same corridor five minutes later with a blood splatter across your cheek. And then there is DNA evidence proving you were in his apartment... And they tell me you killed him and I believed them because what else could I do? I hated you so much, Michael. They played me and I believed them and I hated you."
She buries her face in her hands, and Michael can't stand it any longer. He is by her side immediately, pulling her hands away from her face and pulling her into a hug. She puts up little resistance, and soon enough she is sobbing into his shirt, and he can't help but think to himself that this is all his fault. He left and left her behind with no one to protect her. She was played because she had no one in her corner looking out for her interests, and ultimately she was hurt because she dared to love somebody. He softly shushes her, and she clings more tightly to him than even Haylee ever did.
"I'm sorry, Nikki." He says. "I left you to them, I'm sorry."
"I'm sorry."
Fandom: Nikita
Characters: Michael, Nikita, Alex, Amanda, Percy, Birkhoff, Owen.
Rating: PG-13 for this part. May increase in future chapters.
Summary: "He leaves Division in the dead of night. He says no goodbyes, he lets no one know that anything might be amiss." -- Michael discovers the truth about his family's death first and goes rogue well before Nikita meets Daniel.
Author's note: I thought this would be the last part but it got long. Next part is definitely the last part.
Love, like a blow to the head has knocked me down and I’m bleeding
… … …
“Percy is sure Michael is dead.” Nikita says to Birkhoff, late one night, a few weeks after the debacle in Montreal.
“You don’t think so?” Birkhoff asks quietly, and he finishes typing another line of code into whatever new program he’s writing, then turns to face her. Nikita shrugs and settles herself down onto his couch, pushing the empty bags of potato chips and red bull cans off the edge and onto the floor, and fluffing up the cushions beside her.
“I don’t really know.” She confesses, and she wishes that Birkhoff was blasting his deafening techno music so that there is something to fill the deep silence that seems to stretch between them. “It just doesn’t feel right. Maybe he’s just hiding again, maybe he’s hiding that Owen fellow. He had one of the black boxes, maybe they’re figuring out how to use that information.”
“They won’t be able to. Not easily.” Birkhoff says, and he has a certain look on his face that makes her think maybe he shouldn’t be sharing that with her so freely. Nikita knows that she doesn’t know everything that goes on here, Birkhoff knows things she doesn’t, but it goes the other way as well. No matter how omnipresent Birkhoff claims to be, there are black spots in his intel.
But honestly it’s not important. “I don’t have any evidence. Just a weird feeling about it. I don’t feel settled, nothing feels complete.”
“Well, I guess we’ll see soon enough whether your gut is right.” Birkhoff says, and returns back to his coding.
Nikita leans back on his couch against the fluffed cushions and just breathes. The last few weeks have been hard, they’ve felt harder and more stressful than the last few years, somehow, and every time she thinks about why, her stomach rolls and rebels against her. She finds herself hiding from Percy more often, as though he can somehow read her thoughts and knows that she has been doubting everything.
Michael is dead, supposedly. He’s the one who killed her fiance. She should be elated. Percy certainly is, though he isn’t showing it in the regular, normal way that most human beings do-- he’s walking around Division with more confidence and more zeal than ever. But she isn’t. She wanted a chance to speak with Michael again. She wanted to ask him about Daniel, about why he killed him, why Daniel was ever a target. And then, she wanted to be the one to kill him herself. Or she wanted to be the one to forgive him. Or she wanted to do both at once. She’s never been able to decide exactly what she’d do if she saw him again, because she knows that there is more to the story than she’s been given.
Nikita watches Birkhoff type frantically away at his work station, surrounded by his mega computers, with their flashing lights, hypnotically red, yellow, blue, green, flashing away. He seems so absorbed in whatever Percy has told him to do today, she thinks it’s hacking the CIA, but she hasn’t been watching too closely. She thinks to herself that this mess of a man right here is probably her only friend, which is something she never would’ve predicted when she was recruited to Division nine years ago, and the man on whom she’s come to rely so heavily.
She pushes herself up from the couch and begins rifling through one of Birkhoff’s other workstations, pushing aside the rest of his food scraps and spare computer parts until she extracts a laptop from the pile, and she takes it back with her to the couch.
A few weeks back Birkhoff partitioned a section of the server off for their own private use (what Percy doesn’t know about won’t kill him) and she uses it to access the security footage of Daniel’s death. She’s watched these ten minutes of footage countless times, so many times that she knows exactly how the wrinkles in Daniel’s shirt sit across his shoulder, and she could replicate the exact splatter of blood that is spread across Michael’s cheek. She can list exactly what each man is wearing. Daniel is in his pink shirt (real men wear pink) and neatly pressed navy suit pants. The jacket he’d been wearing all day is hung in the crook of his elbow, and the same hand is holding his briefcase while he rifles in his pocket with his other for the keys to his apartment. She watches every time how his watch (the one he inherited from his Grandfather, that he had to manually wind every day so that it kept perfect time) catches on the lip of his pocket before he pulls out the keys then disappears into the security camera’s blind spot just outside the apartment door.
She watches the next 7 minutes, as nothing happens in the halls. The security footage has no sound, so she has no way of knowing if a microphone would’ve picked up anything that happened within the walls of Daniel’s apartment. If they had yelled at each other, if you could hear the struggle. The walls of the apartment complex were thin, she and Daniel had been able to hear the neighbours above them cook dinner to salsa music, and the neighbours to the side make passionate, noisy love after they’d finished watching Grey’s Anatomy.
Then Michael emerges suddenly from the same corner Daniel had disappeared into. Unlike Daniel, who was casually returning home, Michael sprints down the corridor, dressed all in black, though the soles of his shoes have a small section of red rubber inset into them, most likely the brand, and instead of waiting for the elevator he slams through the emergency exit door and into the stairwell to make a speedy exit. Only once during his escape does he look behind him, and that is as he opens the emergency door, when he glances back down the corridor with a stoic expression on his face. Nikita freezes the footage on that one frame, and tries to read the lines of his face. What was he thinking, as he ran away? Was that regret? Was it anger? Was it success?
She couldn’t say.
Frustrated, she pushes the laptop to her side, and returns her attentions to Birkhoff, who is still studiously working amidst his detritus. She waits until he seems to have paused for reflection, and she interrupts him quietly.
"We're going about finding him the wrong way." Nikita says, and rubs her tired eyes with the balls of her hands. "He's too good at hiding where he is, if we haven't had any luck for the past five years, we're certainly not going to find him now, and if we assume that if Owen is with him now, Michael will be keeping him out of sight as well. Or at least teaching him how to hide from us in the same way."
Birkhoff turns to look at her but doesn't reply, instead he reaches for the luke-warm coffee resting beside his elbow and takes a sip.
"We need to start thinking like him.” Nikita goes on, “What's the one thing we know he wants."
"To take down Division." Birkhoff says immediately. "He hasn't exactly been quiet about that."
Nikita shakes her head. "No. Well. Yes, but what I mean is we don't know how he's going to do that. Maybe he'll use the black box somehow, now he has access to one, but he wants something more than that."
"What?" Birkhoff asks, frowning a little.
"He wants revenge. He wants to kill the man who killed his family." Nikita says bluntly, because that is what she wants as well, and they both know it.
"Kasim Tariq."
"Yes." Nikita nods, and snatches up the laptop once again. She quickly launches ShadowNet and searches the terrorist's name, and in an instant a summary of information they have on the ex-Division agent is in front of her. "I assume we have an intelligence trace on him." She asks, and Birkhoff is already typing away at his own computer, and tracking down any new information of his own.
"Yep, though it's been pretty quiet these last few months from what I can see. There's a note here saying he has ties to Gogol, which is probably why."
"Gogol." Nikita repeats, and files that away to process later. "Send me everything you can find on Tariq." She says perfunctorily, knowing that for her, Birkhoff would do it anyway. They have worked closely enough these past few years for him to be able to safely anticipate her every whim, and vice versa.
"Done." And sure enough, her computer lets off a little ping notification to confirm.
"Thank you." She says, and opens the secured file. "Can you restrict access to you and me only, please? And if anything new pops up, or we get a confirmation of his current whereabouts. Let me know straight away."
Birkhoff pauses for a moment, and Nikita panics for a second, wondering if she’s asked too much of him. If this need for secrecy is too much for Birkhoff to handle. But then Birkhoff answers: "Sure thing, Nikki." in an almost cheerful tone, and she knows that he is her best friend.
… … ...
Looking after Owen is nothing like looking after Alex. In fact, on the whole, Michael finds that living with a recovering drug addict far easier than living with this acerbic, barely tolerable man. At first Michael writes Owen’s attitude off as grief, mixed in with physical pain-- the bullet wound to the man’s leg took a while to heal, and Michael’s skills as a surgeon left much to be desired.
But then he heals, and the relationship does not improve very much, though at least they coexist as reluctant allies. They have enough in common to know they’re on the same side, but that’s about all they agree on. Owen refuses to give up the location of his Black Box, insisting that it is safer if only he knows it, and Michael refuses to give Owen details about Alex, though he couldn’t keep the fact that he had a man on the inside at Division secret for very long.
Not to mention, Owen still holds a grudge about Michael shooting him. Michael may have neglected to apologise for that. But the guy was a dick. He'll get over it one day.
In the meantime, they spend their days skirting around each other, like skittish, territorial cats. Michael reluctantly shows Owen the ropes, hands over some of his contacts (though not all of them, Michael's not stupid) so that he can get his own cash, ID, weapons, anything he needs really, while staying off Division's radar. They establish a method of communicating with each other so that when they separate (which will be as soon as freaking possible, as far as Michael is concerned) they'll still be able to keep in touch all while being far, far away from each other.
He finishes up a brief instant message with Alex, who's been keeping him updated on the fallout of his "death" in Division, when he realises Owen snuck in at some-point. Michael slams the laptop shut quickly, and glares at the Guardian. "I thought we agreed you'd stop sneaking around." He says lowly and gets up from his spot, ostensibly to take his now empty coffee cup back to the kitchen to wash up, but really it's to put him on even footing with Owen.
"I wasn't sneaking." Owen says, and the impatience that Michael finds so dangerous is there, hovering behind his words.
"Well you weren't going out of your way to make yourself known." Michael says, unable to keep the grouchiness from his voice. He snatches up the empty coffee cup and the plate on which his lunch had sat. "What do you want?"
Owen doesn't answer. Instead he steps over and opens the laptop, where the last few lines of text from Alex are still hovering on the screen: Percy is the only one who thinks you're really dead. Everyone else, though...
"Do you have a way of getting her out?" Owen asks evenly, "Because they'll find her eventually. They know everything."
"Don't you worry about that." Michael says dismissively. "I've got it under control."
"Really?" Owen says, raising a skeptical eyebrow. "Because we've been here for weeks, and I'm starting to get the idea you don't know as much as we always thought you did."
"We?"
"Well, maybe you know more now you have your little mole in there, but you've just been flying by the seat of your pants these past few years, haven't you?"
Michael lets out a wry, dry chuckle. "You're trying that tack are you?" He asks, knowingly. "You're trying to get me to doubt myself, so that I'll let you use the information off the black box."
"It's not like I have to ask for permission, do I?" Owen spits. "I'm the one who knows it's location, not you. I'm the one with the power."
"Yeah, And I'm the one who saved your life." Michael stabs a finger at the man's chest, hitting his sternum.
"Funny. I see you as the guy who shot me twice." Owen says.
Michael rolls his eyes. This conversation is going exactly the same way it always does, around in circles, with both of them arcing up, resisting the authority and expertise and opinions of the other. Frankly, Michael is getting tired of it.
"Using the black box isn't an option, until we have all of them, and you know it." Michael says. "If you're done creeping around for the day, we can keep debriefing each other, see if we can remember anything else we might be able to use against Percy."
Owen begrudgingly accedes the point and a few minutes later they're settling down across the table from one another with a pen and pad each.
"It's your turn to start." Owen says, twisting the ball point pen in his fingers. "Let me have em."
Michael quickly skims his notes, they've spent the last few sessions covering Owen's role as a Guardian, what it entailed, whether he knew of the other Guardians, where they were assigned, protocol, contingency plans to see if there was any way that the position could be exploited. Owen in turn had questions about Michael's time away from Division-- what he's spent his time doing. He spent more than his fair share of time picking at Michael to reveal his mole, but Michael had drawn a line in the sand on that one, til he completely trusted the other man. He wasn't even sure that day would ever come, to be quite frank.
Today he decides that he should probably be a little less intense in his questioning, maybe focus on their common ground.
"Tell me about Daniel Munroe." He says simply, putting his pen to paper. "He was my first real lead after I got out of Division, I was keeping tabs on him for weeks, but I could never figure out what they wanted with him. And you were there."
But what he thought would be a simple answer clearly is not as clear-cut as he thinks. Owen shoots a suspicious glare in his direction, and Michael wonders what possible nerve he's hit this time, Owen is so damn sensitive about every damn thing...
"What?" Owen finally asks, and stops twisting his pen between his fingers.
"Daniel Munroe. What was Division's interest in him?" Michael repeats, but this time he is a little less certain, because Owen now looks genuinely dumbfounded, and more than a little bit uncomfortable.
"You mean you don't know?" Owen asks, tentatively.
"No, that's why I'm asking. I know Division was interested, and it was all but confirmed when I ran into you, but..."
"I killed him that night." Owen says bluntly, cutting him off. "You weren't meant to be there, but we figured afterwards that you knew I was coming and had tried to intercept me. You didn't try very hard, but..."
It is Michael's turn to be confused. He tries to process this new information, to slot it in with what he already knows to be true: Owen was a Cleaner before he became a Guardian, and he was one of the best. Daniel had been in close contact with a Division operative in the months before his death. It must've been because he had some intel, or some connection that was a threat to 'national security' or whatever bullshit excuse Percy had given it.
"Alright." Michael says with a nod. "So after I got away, you killed him. That explains why no one followed me. I know I shot you, but I figured you had backup nearby, it always bothered me I got away so clean."
"No. There wasn't any backup, just me, and I had strict orders to carry out my mission at any cost." Owen explained. "He arrived home about twenty minutes after you and I fought. I killed him with your gun, set it up to look like a house invasion gone wrong."
Michael nods. This he all knew, from news articles and police reports. "Why was he a target?"
Owen's brow ruffles again. "He was engaged to a Division agent in deep cover, he was a civilian. Percy gave me the order to take him out himself."
This aligns so well with everything he knows about Division policies that he’s honestly kicking himself he hadn’t thought of it before now. The man had no real intelligence value, no connections to anything of importance. It’s really the only thing that makes sense. "Which one?"
Owen pauses for a long moment, "Nikita." He says finally, and Michael feels his heart drop out of his chest.
Nikita.
And everything just falls into place in front of his eyes. All those little things make sense, the hit on Daniel of course, but mostly Nikita, her reactions towards him and Birkhoff's animosity towards him. And then other things that Alex has mentioned, about the restructuring of Division, Nikita's rise within the ranks, and the strange fierce loyalty that Percy had fostered in her in the years he'd been away.
"They framed me for it, didn't they." Michael says, not really needing Owen to answer, because he already knows.
"Yeah. They had footage of you coming into the building, they spliced it together. With that and your gun and prints at the scene..." Owen trails off, "It was pretty convincing."
"It always is." Michael says with a sigh, and gets up from the table. "We'll do this later. I need some time to think."
"Take your time, man. Whatever you need."
… … …
At first she worried that she wouldn't be able to keep her little investigation away from others. The guilt weighed on her for a while as she wondered whether she was right to doubt what she knew, whether it was fair, whether it was just. She has always liked finding things out for herself, having the evidence laid out in front, clear and plain as day, without needing to doubt its integrity, but she knows that that is a luxury born of self reliance. Trust is something given and earned, and these people have trusted in her all these years and yet here she is, repaying them with...
With what?
But when she pulls on her tailored suit, with its slim-line, neatly pressed pants, and the corseted jacket, and she pulls her hair into a practical yet stylish pony-tail, it is as though she is pulling on armor. No, not armor, a costume: she is playing a character. Nikita, the faithful, trustworthy, loyal agent. The one who has never doubted anything, who believes the system she is working for is right and just and good.
The suit protects her from the suspicious looks, and it helps her bristle at Percy's subtle insinuations about her relationship with Michael, and helps her wave away Amanda's continued attempts to pry into her subconscious.
The suit keeps her safe, and it keeps her on guard.
She stands straight and tall beside a seated Amanda, carefully watching Alex conduct her first interrogation. It isn't going particularly well, and Amanda begins to bark orders through the intercom. "Positive incentives aren't working, Alex, maybe it's time to try a negative one?"
Nikita notes, and knows that Amanda does as well, that Alex is extremely reluctant to administer the shock-- the recruit eyes the little controller she has in her hand with skepticism and a little fear. Nikita knows that feeling, but knows that she is going to have to get over that fear sooner rather than later.
"She's a little green for this sort of interrogation." Nikita murmurs quietly, and she hears Percy come in quietly and stand behind her. She glances back at the man, who though she's wearing heels still somehow manages to loom above her. "You don't normally sit in on recruit training."
Percy quirks a single eyebrow at her, but doesn’t seem angry when he says: “Well you were the one who told me she was special. I wanted to see for myself.”
Nikita nods, and returns her attention to the monitors. She watches Alex goad the man -- turning the offer to let him see his family into a barely veiled threat is clever, but no one expects the reaction they get when the man launches himself from the chair, ripping apart the plastic cuffs, and slams Alex into the wall.
Amanda immediately calls the guards for backup, and Nikita turns on her heel, runs out the door and down the hall to the interrogation room. By the time she is there the guards are hauling the terrorist away and Alex is cowering on the floor, clutching at her throat and gasping for air.
“Alex.” She says, and pulls the girl’s hands away so she can inspect the damage, but Alex resists and slaps them away.
“Alex.” She says more forcefully, and grabs her by the jaw, forcing her to make eye contact. “I need to know if you’re hurt.”
The girl is frightened, but drops her hands, and Nikita gently caresses the bruised skin, checking for abraisions, any signs that the wind-pipe had been crushed, anything that could lead to permanent damage...
“It’s just bruised.” Nikita murmurs, and gently pushes a lock of hair away from Alex’s face. “You’ll be fine.”
“He was crazy, why wasn’t he properly cuffed?” Alex yells, though the timbre of her voice is not quite up to it after the abuse it had just received.
Nikita sees the beginning of a panic attack starting, and she knows that she needs to nip this in the bud before it gets out of hand. “Think, Alex. He couldn’t have metal restraints, not with the electric shock.” And picks up the small remote control that had been dropped in the fracas and returns it to Alex.
“I could’ve been killed.” Alex hisses, and seems to be on the verge of tears. Nikita shushes her automatically.
“Hey hey hey.” She says, making firm eye contact with her. “I won’t let that happen to you.” she promises, then lifts the girl to her feet. “Let’s get you to the medical bay.”
She stays with Alex through the exam with the doctor, and when that is done and pain pills are prescribed, she escorts her back to her room to rest.
“She’ll be fine for the op tomorrow.” She tells Amanda when they reconvene later that evening. “She’s a little shaken, but she’s dealt with worse.”
Amanda nods and adds a brief note to a file on her iPad. “You did a very good job of keeping her calm.” She says lightly, setting aside the tablet to reach for her tea. “Would you like some?”
“Sure.” Nikita says, and settles down in the seat across from the older woman. “She was going to hurt herself more if we weren’t careful.”
“True.” Amanda says, and pours the green tea into the two little ceramic cups, setting the pot back onto its tray. “You’ve grown into a more nurturing figure than I expected you would.”
Nikita isn’t sure how to respond to that, and she honestly hasn’t noticed the change herself. She accepts the little cup when it’s passed with an: “Oh?”
“Yes.” Amanda says firmly. “Ever since Michael left and you were promoted to help manage the recruits.”
“Well it’s what the role requires, isn’t it.” She reasons, and takes a sip of the tea. It is the perfect temperature, warm enough to fill her chest with heat but not so hot to burn her tongue.
“It’s certainly the way that Michael handled the recruits.” Amanda says, and though her tone is light, and her words are innocent, Nikita knows that there is nothing light and innocent in what Amanda is insinuating and she is suddenly angry she is being questioned and probed and judged in such a manner.
“Oh, well.” Nikita shrugs, calm and composed. “It’s an effective method for building trust, which is more than I can say for thinly veiled interrogations.”
Perhaps it is too far, she thinks, and watches Amanda’s face keenly for even the slightest facial tick or glimpse of emotion that would incriminate her forever.
But Amanda’s poise wins out in the long run, and betrays nothing. Nikita has to satisfy herself with Amanda’s words instead: “I suppose you’re right. Though look where your trust in Michael got you.”
Nikita sets her cup very deliberately back down on the table to keep from throwing it in the other woman’s face.
Amanda gives her the softest of smiles. “He betrayed us all, in the end.”
She doesn’t stay long with Amanda after that, but she doesn’t manage to leave the complex til late in the evening. The single strand of hair she’d wound around the lock on her apartment door is still in place-- she’s had no unwanted visitors today, so when she steps inside and closes the door behind her she finally relaxes.
Slowly, piece by piece, she removes her costume, her armour. She releases her hair from the tight ponytail. The shoes, tall heels for authority, are kicked off into the hall closet. The corseted jacket, now a little wrinkled from wear, is hung across the hamper in the bathroom, and is quickly followed by her blouse and pencil skirt.
She stands for a moment in her underwear in front of her bathroom mirror and surveys the damage for the day: bags under her eyes betray her exhaustion, knots in her stomach have banished any hunger she should feel, chipped polish from a vigorous session at the firing range...
There is still a small pink blemish of a scar on her left shoulder, just below her clavicle. She presses it with a firm finger, and deep inside the sinew and muscle of the joint she feels the ache that has been there for months, no, for years. For longer than Daniel, even. It’s been there since Michael left, really, and no matter how hard she tries to find him, to help him, to get her revenge, to kill him, to replace him, none of it has come close to healing her of the pain because it all boils down to one thing:
She misses him.
That’s what the costume is really for.
The suit protects her from the suspicious looks, and it helps her bristle at Percy's subtle insinuations about her relationship with Michael, and helps her wave away Amanda's continued attempts to pry into her subconscious.
The suit keeps her safe. It keeps her on guard.
They run the second part of the interrogation simulation the next day, and when it all goes pear-shaped, and Alex kills her interrogator-- the Division agent playing the part-- it is the pressed suit she wears that reminds her of her role. It helps her bring Alex back into the fold when the hysterical girl is panicking at the gas station and hell-bent on running away forever. It helps her recognise she’s being tested when Percy demands she ‘deal’ with the girl, permanently. And while it doesn’t come to that in the end, the pressed suit helps her cope when she sees that the trust she’s spent so long building with Alex is torn asunder so easily.
It keeps her alive.
… … …
It’s an innocuous little phone call that changes everything. Owen’s gone, out of the picture for now, tracking down other guardians and other black boxes, and Michael for his part is relishing his return to privacy and solitude. He gets himself back on track, foiling Percy’s foul plans where he can.
He is planning for his next mission, thanks to some info Alex managed to get out to him earlier, when his cell phone buzzes across the table. The display says 'Private Number'.
"Yes?" He says guardedly.
"Hey Mikey. It's Bobby. You told me to give you a call if I heard anything about Kasim Tariq. He's in Uzbekistan."
He moves quickly after that, in less than twenty-four hours he's checked into a hotel in Tashkent, and peeking through the curtains and the hustle and bustle of the street below. He never would've thought this morning that he'd be here, in this place, about to do what he's been planning to do for years. He knows Alex is worried, and rightly so. If things don't go right here, she'll be left without a safety net... But he can't focus on that right now. He sent her a message while he was on the plane, letting her know he'll be off the radar for at least a few days. That'll have to do for now. She's a smart girl, she can lay low for a while without him.
Michael hears a strange noise behind him, and he reacts instantly, unholstering the gun from his hip and whipping around, but the barrel of a silencer is already pointed at his head.
Nikita.
... ... ...
She gets an email with the intel update. Kasim Tariq sighted in Tashkent. Expected to make trade with Russian mob by the end of the week.
There is a P.S. note at the end from Birkhoff: Nikki. I've fudged your GPS tracker data and I'll cover for you for a few days. Do what you've got to do.
She doesn't waste any time. She hitches a ride on a military transport to Afghanistan and gets a transfer to Uzbekistan within an hour of landing in Kabul. She makes the assumption that Michael would have his own feelers out for intelligence and would've got the same info as her around the same time, but he would be restricted to commercial flights, and so she feels pretty safe in her assumption that she got here first. When she lands she pulls out the netbook Birkhoff furnished her with a while ago, and using the modified version of Shadownet he installed she hacks the local hotels (keeping it to 4 stars and above-- she knows Michael likes a certain level of comfort when he travels) and she finds a booking fitting her description: American. Made less than twelve hours ago. For one night. Cash.
A cab ride later, and after slipping past laughably lax hotel security, she's inside his room. Shadownet tells her the flight he most likely would've taken landed about half an hour ago, and factoring in immigration time, the taxi ride here, she expects she has another twenty minutes or so until Michael gets here himself.
She sits down on the bed, and sets her gun and computer down beside her, ready to wait.
Then her phone rings. It's Birkhoff.
"Yeah?" She asks, quietly.
"Nikki." He says urgently, and instantly she begins to fret, thinking Percy has caught them in their subterfuge, but it is much worse. "Load up the Daniel footage, I think I found something."
"Hold on." She says and wedges her phone between her ear and her shoulder, grabs the netbook and loads the footage as promised. As she does this, a revolution boils in her tummy, tumbling and bubbling and it takes all her self control to push it back down and focus on the task he's given her.
"It's up. What am I looking for?" It begins to play, looking ever the same as usual. Daniel walking casually down the hallway, timestamp ticking over in the corner.
"Pause it at 20:17 at around the 35 second mark." He says, and Nikita navigates to the exact spot and pauses as instructed. Daniel is walking, left hand flexed outwards, his Grandfather's watch peeking out from beneath the sleeve of his pink (real men wear pink) shirt.
"Done. What am I looking at?" She asks. "I don't have much time."
"Yeah, yeah." Birkhoff says quickly. "Zoom in on his watch."
It's a little difficult for her to do with the phone still wedged between her ear and shoulder, but she taps the right command into the program and it blows the image up. At first it is too blurry to see detail, the original footage is not of the highest quality, but the program Birkhoff insists they work with automatically begins cleaning up the image, sharpening the details until she can read the exact time on the watch. 8:31.
"It might be nothing." Birkhoff says quickly, "But the time on the watch says it's a bit after 8:30, which doesn't match the time stamp of the footage."
She can tell Birkhoff thinks he's just grasping at straws but she knows it's the smoking gun they've been looking for. Daniel dutifully wound that watch every day when he got out of the shower. It kept perfect time, in the way that only old, well crafted time pieces could, and he treated it like the treasured possession it was. If it was only a few minutes different to the time stamp she could've waved it away as a subtle discrepancy, but fourteen minutes is telling.
"It's not nothing." She says quietly, and then her ear pricks as she hears the soft bell of the elevator ring at the end of the hall. It will be Michael. “It’s everything.”
“Nikki,” He says, but she knows she won’t have time to hash out her feelings with him on this right now. She hasn’t got the time.
"I've gotta go, Birkhoff. Thanks."
She hangs up the phone, slips it into her pocket and stashes the netbook in the bathroom, where she hides behind the door and waits. Sure enough, less than a minute later she hears the electronic click of the main door unlock and she can hear the heavy footsteps and measured breathing of a man.
Her mind is whirling with information. The footage had been doctored. She’s suspected it for a little while, but now she has the proof. Michael didn’t kill Daniel. He’s just on the other side of this door, and she has the proof that he didn’t kill the man she loved. He’s here in a foreign country to kill the man who killed his family, and she is here because she knew he would be.
So she steps out of the bathroom, and points her gun at him. He’s on high alert, naturally, and as soon as he hears her move out into the main room, he has a gun trained at her heart, and she can’t help but smile as it’s goddamn deja vu all over again.
"How did you..." He begins.
"Hello Michael." She interrupts, quietly, then lowers the gun.. He darts a glance at the door, then the window, clearly looking for his escape route, and she sighs. “I’m here alone. No one knows where I am.”
It’s a lie, but it’s as true as he needs it to be. No one who wants to hurt him knows where she is.
She watches closely, and sees the tiny little wrinkles form between his eyes. He is puzzled, confused, and then in one, enormous moment he relaxes and lowers the weapon in his hands. “Hello Nikita.” He says, and there is a touch of his old warmth there, just enough to quell the hurricane in her stomach a little.
Nikita nods and allows herself to relax a little in return. “We should talk.” She says.
… … …
They sit on opposite sides of the room, he at the desk, and her on the edge of the bed. She is right, there is so much they need to talk about, but neither of them seems to know just where to start. There is a veritable mountain of complexity before them and there are so many things they could begin with.
Michael opens his mouth to tell her what he learned from Owen, that he had been framed, that he didn’t kill Daniel, that he would never hurt her like that, he would never inflict this pain on someone else. But she speaks before he gets the chance.
“Did you kill Daniel?” She asks, and it is so straight forward and devoid of emotion that he is at first a little surprised.
“No.” He says unequivocally. “No. I didn’t kill him.”
“Were you there that night to kill him?” She asks.
“No.”
“What were you doing there?”
He pauses for a moment to remember. Then he explains: “I had evidence of an undercover division agent who had a connection to him and wanted to know why. I thought he was your target, that he had some intelligence or connection Division wanted to exploit.”
Nikita is quiet for a moment, and he can see that she is slotting this new information into her understanding of everything. He can see the toll this life has had on her, the bags beneath her eyes, she looks skinnier than she’s ever been, and it’s as though there is a heavy burden weighing on her shoulders. She looks much older than her twenty seven years, and it kills him to know he was inadvertently the cause of such toxic stress.
“He was just a graphic designer.” Nikita says finally, and he can hear a tremble in her voice.
“I know.” He says, and leans forward. “It didn’t make any sense to me at the time. When I was there in the apartment I found some Division bugs, but there wasn’t any reason. He had no security connections, no terrorist connections. No access to money or information. I was in the middle of my search when the Cleaner turned up. We fought and I shot him in the shoulder and I managed to get away before Daniel got home. I assumed the Cleaner was there for me, until I read he died in the paper.”
He wants nothing more than to reach out to her and comfort her, she’s not crying, but she is clearly upset and it pains him to know that he has been the root of so much of the sadness in her life. Even if it was all a lie.
“I was out of town that night, I was part of a smash and grab team in New York. It was simple work, but when you left they promoted me to recruit supervision so I was leading the raid. I got home so early in the morning, I didn’t have any time to sleep, but I went over to Daniel’s place anyway because I knew I could get breakfast there and he’d let me sleep on his couch all day and watch reruns of Friends and then when he got home from work that evening he’d watch it with me.
Instead I got to his place and the door was closed but it wasn’t locked. Furniture was everywhere, and then I got to the living room and he was dead on the floor next to the coffee table.” He sees a tiny tear roll down her cheek, and she doesn't wipe it away. "The first person I called was Percy, can you believe that? He was number one on my speed dial. I call him and I tell him what happened, and I don't remember much after that until I woke up in Birkhoff's office on his couch and they show me this footage of Daniel coming home, and then you running down the same corridor five minutes later with a blood splatter across your cheek. And then there is DNA evidence proving you were in his apartment... And they tell me you killed him and I believed them because what else could I do? I hated you so much, Michael. They played me and I believed them and I hated you."
She buries her face in her hands, and Michael can't stand it any longer. He is by her side immediately, pulling her hands away from her face and pulling her into a hug. She puts up little resistance, and soon enough she is sobbing into his shirt, and he can't help but think to himself that this is all his fault. He left and left her behind with no one to protect her. She was played because she had no one in her corner looking out for her interests, and ultimately she was hurt because she dared to love somebody. He softly shushes her, and she clings more tightly to him than even Haylee ever did.
"I'm sorry, Nikki." He says. "I left you to them, I'm sorry."
"I'm sorry."