It had been five months since Michael and Nikita had shared their special night together. Five months since they had reaffirmed their love and protectiveness toward each other. Five months since Mad'laine had observed their physical dedication to each other, unbeknownst to either of them.

Fromhe moment they'd re-entered Section One to the present, it had been another test for each of them. Separate missions, separate agendas, separate partners, separate seductions. They had not been permitted to see each other at all - it had been a repeat performance of the five months prior, when Adrian had been in the picture.

Now, Adrian was dead, yet the scenarios had not changed. Nikita had been paired with other partners, profiled to seduce and/or sleep with marks to whom she had no attraction. Each mission had closed her up inside a little more. Each betrayal, each physical encounter with someone other than Michael had caused a reaction in her that resembled morning sickness. She threw up before every mission, took her necessary drugs to get through it, and afterward, threw up again, as if vomiting would clean her psyche of the abhorrent acts she was forced to perform.

Mad'laine had been true to her word - Michael had been allowed to comfort Nikita in her agony. He'd been permitted to cradle her in his arms, whisper to her, hold her as she vomited helplessly into the toilet and press his cool palm to her forehead...

It wasn't a relationship - not by any definition of the word. It was just another version of hell.

~~~~~

Another mission. Nikita on a team with operatives with whom she was not familiar. From the briefing, she could tell they were all green. God, she would be the senior member on the team...

"Michael will be leading the team from here. You have your profiles. Meet at van access in an hour." Operations, as usual, was abrupt and rude. Nikita caught herself wondering if he even remembered how she'd saved his son's life. *He owes me,* she thought as she exited, her eyes not meeting Michael's. *I saved his son's life. He owes me SOMETHING...* She didn't divulge anything of what she was thinking, and even Michael couldn't read her thoughts.

As the team departed, Nikita was focussed on one thing - *Operations owes me...* Then, in an absolutely lucid revelation, Nikita realized that almost everyone in Section owed her something.

~~~ Birkoff owed her his life - she'd covered for him when he'd been forced to kill someone, after never having taken a human life before. She'd brought him back to the real world - HIS world, whether he'd wanted it or not. She'd saved him from cancellation.

~~~ She'd saved Walter's life, after Operations had sanctioned the cancellation of Belinda. Walter had been homicidal/suicidal, and no one except she and Birkoff had been aware of it. Nikita had been the one to talk Walter down, to comfort him and reason with him, to persuade him that he was needed... She'd kept him from killing Operations.

~~~ She'd saved Mad'laine's life when Michael had gone into mandatory refusal - saved her, accomplished the mission profile, and brought her back to Operations. Nikita had been as much of a friend to Mad'laine as the older woman would allow her to be. Nikita still felt a slight shock when she remembered Mad'laine visiting her apartment and softly chatting over a cup of tea in a poignant moment that now seemed lifetimes ago and unreal.

~~~ She'd covered for Michael when he'd been tortured and had lost his memory. She'd helped him through it, and she'd put her own desires away, even though Michael had been so innocent, so trusting, so naïve... She'd kept everything professional - she'd put the mission first, and had saved Michael's life in the process. She'd been the perfect operative - she'd done exactly what Operations would have expected of her. She'd performed in an exemplary fashion.

Yet - she had received neither a thanks nor a commendation. She'd received nothing for her sacrifice. No recognition, no acknowledgement, no indication that anything at all had been accomplished to further the good of the Section.

Nikita was sick. Every day. Before she walked into Section One, she visited the bathroom and threw up. If she couldn't make it to the bathroom, she threw up beside her car, with the door open so no one would see. And after she'd emptied her stomach - sometimes a painful process because there was seldom anything to bring up - she strode confidently into the womb of Section, resolutely prepared to take on whatever was expected of her. In some ways, she was stronger than Michael, although she could not imagine ever being stronger than the optimum representative of Section training...

************

"This isn't freedom..." Michael heard the words in his mind, every day. Every time he went to a briefing, he was jerked back to the night in Lyons, when he'd revealed his love and desire for Nikita. He'd held her close, heard her anguished, whispered thoughts, felt her heartbeat in her throat as he'd caressed her - he'd cherished that time, and it had been so brief, so painfully sweet, so achingly beautiful...

Michael forcibly pulled himself from that night, and concentrated on the profile on which he was working. He kept reminding himself that if he missed a single detail, lives might be lost, and if lives were lost, Nikita would force him to answer for his mistake. She kept him striving for perfection, because the alternative would be unthinkable. And the unthinkable was losing Nikita...

How could either of them hold on in the brutal, ruthless, mindless existence in which they struggled to function? How could they maintain a "relationship", sanctioned by Section, when everytime they turned around, they were being sent on missions which paired them with other people and forced them to whore themselves? How could they keep the beauty and purity of their love for each other, when every single day, that very essence was eaten away by the jobs they were required to complete?

Nikita lost weight, every day. She grew more listless, every day. She suffered in silence, every day. Michael watched her fade, every day...

While he grew more shadowed, every day. He swallowed more of his heart, every day. He was sick, every day. He wept silently, every day. *This isn't freedom...* he thought, every day. And every day, he planned a way out, for himself and for Nikita. He would not go alone - not this time. Not alone. And he would not set her free alone - not this time. They had been through too many "this time" scenarios. It would have to be different, this time.

Michael had a plan - and he planned to tell Nikita everything, this time...

************

Nikita was home - she'd finished her usual routine of throwing up, washing her face, brushing her teeth, and dragging herself weakly to the kitchen to fix a cup of peppermint tea to soothe her abused stomach lining. Now, she sprawled on her couch, with no book this time. She didn't want to think at all - didn't want to focus on printed letters. Her music was a bit louder than usual, but she didn't care - she had no neighbors anymore. Her lifestyle had driven them out, one by one - they'd caved in to the fear of hearing gunshots at crazy hours of the morning, or of being exposed to her screams when she could no longer internalize the pain and nausea and injustice. Nikita was surprised the landlord still allowed her to live there, as bad for business as she was. She suspected Section paid him well, and he tolerated her only because he made more from her in a month than he could possibly collect in a year from five other tenants.

She stared at the floor. *I can't do this anymore,* she thought, matter-of-factly. *I can't live like this anymore.* She felt the extreme desire to re-live the days before she'd escaped from Section the first time - the days when she had wanted to put a bullet through her brain. She realized, now, that her stance had been all wrong --she'd learned a lot about death in the last several months. She'd learned that to effectively take life, a person needed to put the barrel of the gun inside the mouth, not to the temple. A reflex action when pulling the trigger could result in a miss, not a hit.

Her thoughts were morbid, she knew - yet they were somehow necessary. She needed to weigh her options pragmatically. How badly did she want to live? How desperately did she want to die? As she lay on the couch, her stomach finally calming down a little, Nikita tried to cling to the hope that suicide was not an option for her - not yet. She still had Michael, in whatever small capacity she *could* have him.

She snorted in derision as she remembered Mad'laine's words - "Section is willing to sanction a relationship between you and Michael..." At the time, it had sounded so wonderful, so promising, and so hopeful... Nikita and Michael both had learned quickly that their so-called "relationship" would be anything but wonderful. When they were thrown together like two rag dolls in a closet full of other stuffed toys, it was with the brutal knowledge that each had been thrown together in like fashion with strangers...

Nikita's gun was waiting in the cupboard, where it had waited just before that fateful escape which Michael had facilitated. She remembered how he'd sacrificed everything to set her free, because he'd known it was the only thing she'd wanted, and it had been the only thing he'd wanted for her. He gave her freedom, forsaking all else, even his own love for her.

Now, Nikita realized all the sacrifices he'd made for her - all the risks he'd taken, all the browbeating and repercussions, all the condemnation. He'd borne every word, every action, and every punishment silently, accepting it as his due. Because he'd loved her.

He'd loved her. Nikita could not fathom such self-sacrifice. She could not reconcile her selfish actions to the selfless acts Michael had performed on her behalf. He felt himself so unworthy, when in reality, Nikita herself was the unworthy one. She'd demanded so much from him, yet was not willing to give as much of herself in return. SHE'D been the selfish one - not Michael. Never Michael. He was her angel, and yet he thought of himself as a dark demon.

Nikita began to cry - she attributed it to her exhaustion, her last mission, her nausea, her fear. She refused to believe that her tears were for the man who was suffering untold pain, many times worse than her own. She would not accept that Michael could feel the way she felt now. And then, in the next sob, she realized that Michael DID feel this way - he felt this, and more.

Once again, she thought, *I can't live like this anymore...* The gun was so close, so easy - she knew how to do it now, knew just where to position the barrel so it would finish the job effectively. And the gun was loaded. She was ready. She could do this.

Nikita wondered, briefly, if she should leave a note for Michael - in case he came back from his mission of seduction of some terrorist's daughter or wife - so he would know her reasons for leaving his life. She almost sat down and composed a letter, but then thought better of it. He knew her - he'd know what her reasons were, and he probably had felt her thoughts anyway.

Nikita poured a glass of wine, drank it in two gulps, then poured another and sipped it more slowly. This would be her last night on earth - she wanted to make it one of peace, if she could. She walked calmly to her stereo, put a CD of nature sounds in, and gave a brief, sad smile at the sound of birds singing against a backdrop of rippling water. *Perfect,* she thought. Then, she pondered the idea of a bath - bubbles, candles, incense, and wine... She could pull the trigger right after she'd finished her glass of wine, with the candles burning and the bubbles dissipating...

She lit the candles and placed them in the bathroom, drew a bath, dumped half a bottle of sea mist bubble bath into the water, and grabbed the wine in one hand and her half-full glass in the other. The gun was tucked under her arm almost casually, an unconscious part of her, like her sunglasses. Once all her necessary accessories were gathered and placed, she went back into the living room, took her cell phone and pager and put them outside on the balcony, where she would not hear them, until she could no longer hear them, ever.

She stripped, sure of her purpose now. Naked, she knew it would be tonight. It had to be tonight - there was nothing left. Even though Michael was alive, he was as far from her as Mars. He would continue to survive after she was gone, she knew. He lived for Section, even more than he lived for her. Section was his teat - he suckled on it whenever he needed life-giving sustenance, because he could not cling to anything or anyone else. Section would feed him, Nikita was certain. It would give him everything he required.

She turned off the bath water, smelling the fragrance of the bubbles, sipping her wine, and fingering her gun. She stood by the tub, nude, and put the barrel of the gun in her mouth, acquainting herself with the foreign texture and taste of cold metal in her mouth. Closing her eyes, she envisioned herself finally free - free of her physical body, which had always encumbered her and placed her in one dangerous situation after another. She pictured herself floating, euphorically unfettered, toward the sunset, twenty feet above the ocean surface. It was so beautiful, so entirely possible...

Her finger pressed on the trigger, slowly, almost languidly. Just a moment more, one exquisite pause in time, and she would be there - free...

A knock on her door snapped her out of her near-deadly desire. Michael. She knew it was Michael - but she didn't know HOW it was Michael.

************

He'd collapsed on his bed after a grueling, ugly mission. He didn't think he'd ever feel clean again, with the things he'd been forced to do to acquire the necessary information Section had required. He'd showered, scrubbing his body until his skin was red, in an effort to wash from his mind the scent and the imprint of the woman he'd had to seduce. He'd brushed his teeth with toothpaste, and then with baking soda to cleanse the horrible, foreign flavor of her mouth from his tongue.

It hadn't been enough - he could still feel her, like a shroud wrapped around him, and he was almost suffocating from this most recent violation. Nikita had pulled him from the abyss, time and again - she had never understood why he'd sacrificed so much for her, but he'd never been able to tell her what she'd done for him to make such sacrifices bearable, even preferable to the half-life he'd always lived before she'd come into his world.

Now, he remembered his words to her - "You keep me alive..." and her words to him - "And you complete me..." Had they been spoken in the heat of the moment? *Does Nikita really believe that I complete her?* Michael wondered, awe-struck as he lay on his back across his bed, a towel wrapped around his waist, his hair still wet, his skin still smarting from the unmerciful scouring he'd inflicted on it. He'd had no time for more - his cell-phone rang, and he knew it was Section One, summoning him to sacrifice even more of his soul and body...

He snapped up the phone, his stomach roiling, his mind recoiling from what he knew he'd hear...

"Michael, Nikita's critical." He sat completely upright at the words, feeling suddenly nauseated and strangely disoriented.

"I don't under--"

"--She's suicidal," the female voice, Mad'laine's voice, said urgently. "Go to her." The connection went dead then. Michael swallowed hard, like a dog about to be sick, then dressed quickly, with all his Section training. He snatched up his keys, locked his door without even thinking about it, and ran to his car with the same determination he always used to get to the van during egress on a mission.

*Oh, god,* he thought in anguish. *What if I don't get there in time? What if she's already pulled the trigger or taken the pills...?* Then, clinically, he reasoned as he drove, "If she's taken pills, we can pump her stomach. We can give her drugs to cleanse her system." He didn't want to think about the possibility of a bullet.

As he drove, he shut down. He thought about the weather. He recited all the poetry he'd ever memorized as a child. Fleetingly, he thought, *When was I EVER a child?* and then went on remembering things - any things, anything to keep his mind off what he would find in Nikita's apartment when he arrived there. The drive was excruciating, his thoughts completely torturous. Then, he wondered how Mad'laine had known Nikita was so close to suicide.

"My god," he breathed aloud as he drove, "Nikita was right - she DOES like to watch!" Surveillance cameras, while they'd made passionate love, while Nikita had touched him, while he'd guided her hand, while they'd been locked in the throes of such mind-bending ecstasy - Mad'laine had seen it all...

Michael felt even more nauseated then. He didn't know how he would be able to assimilate all the new information his brain was processing. Mad'laine had watched... she'd enjoyed what she'd seen. And now, she'd tipped Michael to the fact that his only weakness was on the verge of suicide. How Mad'laine had manipulated them - how she'd played each against the other by using their emotions and their own weaknesses...

As Michael pulled into the parking structure of Nikita's apartment complex, he thought, his teeth gritted, *If she dies, Mad'laine, YOU die, too...*

************

Michael stood outside Nikita's door after having already knocked loudly, his fingers gripping the key to her apartment. *If she doesn't open in three seconds...* he thought desperately. *Oh, god, please let her be alive...* He closed his eyes, and he felt his heart pounding in his throat. His hands were clenched tightly in his pockets, the key puncturing his flesh as he clamped down on it. He could not wait for her - he slid the key into the lock and opened the door, dreading what he would find, bracing himself for it even as he swallowed revulsion and shock.

No smell of gunpowder. No blood spattering the walls. No body. Michael was momentarily numbed. Then, he caught a whiff of scent. Freesia. The candles that had been burning the night he'd loved her so wildly he'd thought he was losing his sanity.

"Nikita..." he said, his voice cracking with emotion as he took the stairs to the bedroom two at a time, gun drawn out of habit. His mind was on auto-pilot. He saw nothing except anything that was a threat.

Breathless, near-panic, half-positive he would find Nikita dead on the floor, he reached the bathroom and saw her standing there, the gun in her hand, a strange, unreadable expression on her face. She was completely naked, and the tub was full of water and scented bubbles. Candles burned everywhere in the room.

Michael stopped short, suddenly unsure of his next move. He had been braced for blood, prepared for death. Life, hope, a chance for a future - these were the X-factors for which he had not planned. He was amazed at how quickly he'd been able to surrender hope, even after all the time of knowing Nikita.

Ashamed at his emotional capitulation, Michael lowered his gun, still unsure of Nikita's mental stability. For the first time since he'd known her, Michael could not read her - and it frightened him. He didn't dare speak or move. He knew how quick she was with a gun, and how deadly accurate. She could take her own life in the time it would take him to reach her.

Very softly, he breathed, "Nikita..." He felt a shiver travel from his scalp to his toes and back up again in the space of a heartbeat. None of the missions in which he'd ever risked his life had ever made him feel so absolutely terrified as he was at this moment. He didn't see Nikita's body, glorious, soft, pale and slender - he only saw the look in her eyes, and the gun in her hand.

She seemed to come to herself at the sound of his voice saying her name. For an intense, riveting moment, Michael honestly didn't know what she would do. He prayed, to some unknown deity with whom he'd had little, if any contact in his life, that Nikita would choose life over death, although he could not think of a reason for her to want to live.

He was stunned, relieved and puzzled when she carefully laid the gun down on the counter by the sink, her eyes locked to his. Very softly, she whispered, "She knows, Michael."

He didn't understand, for a moment. His expression reflected his complete confusion, then he realized what she was saying. His eyes warned her to be silent - she saw the look and gave an imperceptible nod, not moving. He took a deep breath and went to Nikita. Clasping her shoulders, he leaned in very close to her as if to brush his lips against her cheek and heard her breathe, her lips barely moving, "Mad'laine... She watches us. Our 'relationship'. She knows everything."

He kissed her cheek and uttered for her ears alone, "Get dressed... We need to talk." More loudly, for the benefit of the surveillance microphones, he said, his voice convincingly desperate, "Nikita, suicide isn't the answer. Please - think this through."

Michael felt sick. He had unconsciously expected it, but had foolishly hoped it wasn't true. Now, he knew it all. And he knew it was time for him to take Nikita away from it all. She'd come too dangerously close to throwing it all away - everything for which he'd worked and planned for years.

He wondered how to get her dressed and out of the apartment without arousing suspicion. He knew, now, that Mad'laine was watching everything they were doing. It was how she had known Nikita had been suicidal. It was how she'd known to contact him - how she'd known he'd been home.

To take out the surveillance cameras would be to acknowledge that they were aware of her games. Better to leave them in, and play-act while they were in the presence of the omnipotent eyes of Section One.

He was surprised, and grateful when Nikita fixed him with a cold glare, brushed past him in all her glorious nudity, and snapped up her clothing, dressing in savage, ostensibly furious haste. She said nothing as Michael turned his back to allow her a semblance of privacy.

"Think WHAT through, Michael? There's nothing to think through! This isn't living - it hasn't been for almost four years! You said it once - I died a long time ago, and you were right. I was just too stupid or too idealistic to realize it!" She pulled on her jacket and grabbed her purse, her eyes blazing. "You can lock the door on your way out. I'm going for a walk."

She dashed down the stairs and stormed out the front door, leaving Michael standing there, his eyes unreadable. He let out a breath, staring at nothing, then slowly made his way down the stairs and out of the apartment, careful to set the security system and lock the door.

He punched the button for the elevator, took it to the ground floor, and sighed as the elevator stopped. If he was correct in his perception of the last five minutes, Nikita would be waiting for him outside the building...

************

She was. She was shivering in the freezing air, and Michael approached her, almost warily. She'd succeeded in getting both of them out of the apartment without arousing suspicion. Now, they had to talk fast. "I have a plan," Michael began, but Nikita warned him with her eyes to be silent, shaking her head quickly. Her eyes went past him to somewhere behind him, and his eyes locked onto hers in understanding. Immediately, he grabbed her arm roughly, she fought him as he dragged her to his car, and at the door, he gripped both her arms and shook her, hissing as if in anger, "Meet me at the monument in half an hour."

She tore free from his grip with a sharp profanity and ran. Michael didn't go after her. Instead, he climbed into his car and drove away, knowing that whoever had followed him would most likely go after Nikita on foot. And he also knew that she would lose that shadow quickly - she'd learned from the best.

He drove expertly, shaking whatever surveillance might have been placed on him. With ten minutes to spare, he was at the monument, waiting silently, watchfully. Things happened quickly after that. Her hand on his shoulder, cautioning him to turn slowly - he did, and was staring down the barrel of Nikita's gun. In horror, Michael realized that she was closer to recklessness than he'd previously assumed. Very softly, he said, "Nikita - what are you doing?" His eyes never left hers, but he saw scant recognition in them. Thinking back, he realized she had been in "mission-mode" the whole time - he'd put her there with the first knock on her door.

She whispered, "Drop your gun, Michael." Her eyes were silvery and deadly. Michael felt a terrible, wrenching pain go through him - he'd made her the way she was at this moment - he'd forced her, for Section One, to sacrifice her soul. He reached into his coat pocket very slowly, pulled out his gun with two fingers, and dropped it on the ground. Without being told, he kicked it away from them. Then, he waited, his hands visible to her - waited to see if she would shoot him or talk to him.

After several moments of tense silence, Nikita finally lowered her gun. She uncocked it, set the safety, dropped her arm dejectedly and looked down, almost as if she were ashamed. "I'm sorry, Michael," she said softly. "I just don't know who to believe anymore. I don't know who else is watching us - I don't know if I can go on living this way..." She was crying, remembering how close she'd been to blowing the back of her skull off. If Michael hadn't come at that moment, she knew she would probably have done it. Nothing to live for anymore. No reason to keep struggling, if there could be no joy of living.

Michael's voice came through to her - his hands took her upper arms, and he said, very close to her ear, "Nikita - I need you to live..." He wasn't sure how to proceed - telling her, telling ANYONE, his innermost feelings was alien to him, and he was not good at it. Yet, he knew he had to try - he had to find the right words, or Nikita was as good as dead. He took a deep breath, struggling to get past the constriction in his throat. His voice, when it finally came through, was husky and passionate - the voice he had when he was pleading with Nikita to touch him, to make him forget everything...

"I told you I love you," he breathed. "It wasn't a lie - none of what we shared that night was a lie-"

"-Then tell me again," Nikita interrupted harshly, her eyes still cloudy with tears. "Look me in the eyes and tell me again. And don't lie to me, Michael, because I'll know it if you do."

Michael let his breath out - was that all it took? For her to hear the words again? Without reservation, without guile, without the darting eyes, he fixed her stare and said, reverently and somberly, "I love you, Nikita. I always have." Then, living dangerously, he added truthfully, "If you look deeper into my eyes, you'll always know my feelings. You're the only one who can see inside me..."

In her mind, Nikita heard the poignant, stark words and clear, sweet guitar of "Crazy Man" by Marc Allen, even as she heard Michael's heartfelt words to her. The combination of the two undid her, and she dropped her gun, tears falling freely now. She didn't sob aloud, but her heart swelled and contracted from the joy of loving Michael, and the pain of it...

"She said, 'Yes, I know you well,
Sometimes better than I wanted to
Always hiding in your empty room
Don't get the paper or the phone
Children's voices from the street below
The pigeons thunder past your shades
You've seen a hundred fine parades,
But never had one of your own..."

The futility of trying to live by Section's rules crashed down on her, and at the same time the hope of having a life, however tenuous and shaky, with Michael kept her from completely succumbing to despair. She wanted to tell him - she wanted to make him know that all she needed from him was confirmation that he did love her and would be her life-dance, but she didn't know how to form the words.

"She said, 'Everything behind you
Follows everywhere you go
You can't help but take it with you
I wonder if you know that you're a crazy man
I've got to love a crazy man...'"

Nikita thought, in those seconds between the time she dropped her gun and the time Michael swept her into his arms, "I can't die... We have to live - lives depend on us..." Michael's arms were tight around her, and she was stunned to feel his tears on her cheek. She felt his muscles ripple with the emotion he was finally letting her see, and she knew, then, that all the walls were down. "Michael..." she breathed, and closed her eyes slowly, falling into him, surrendering to him. "Michael..."

************

They both knew that they were not in the right time or place to yield to their passion. Michael whispered in her ear, "Nikita - I have a plan. It isn't perfect, but it will get you a head start of a day, maybe more..."

Nikita froze - he'd said the same thing to her after she'd returned to Section after six months of dubious freedom. She pulled back from him, outraged and hurt, her eyes conveying her emotions far more effectively than her words could have done.

Michael knew the reason for her reaction, and he said quickly, "No - it's not the same, Nikita. This time, I'll be with you. I'll have to stay behind, but not for long." Then, seeing the doubt still in her expression, he pleaded with her. "Look in my eyes, Nikita - look past everything that's ever happened between us. Look at me NOW. I can't be without you."

She peered into his gaze, illuminated by the lights from the monument. Try as she would, she could only see sincerity and - God help her - love. Finally, she said softly, "All right, Michael. Tell me your plan."

In the darkness, in the shadows, Michael outlined his escape. Nikita was astonished at how far back his planning had gone - he'd been plotting his coup since she'd made operative status. It became clear to her, there in the shelter of the monument, without surveillance or subterfuge, that every one of Michael's seeming betrayals and lies had been to create a smokescreen to hide from Section his true end-game...

After he'd finished explaining the details, and what was required of her, Nikita whispered, "I'm sorry, Michael."

"Why?" he asked, honestly confused, thinking, *What could she possibly have to be sorry for? I'm the one who lied to her, seduced her, coerced her...* Then, he was alarmed - *What if she's apologizing because she doesn't want to be with me...*

Her next words surprised him and made his heart pound fiercely in his chest. "I'm sorry for not believing in you more. For not loving you the way you love me." Very softly, she went on, "I've wronged you so many more times than you've wronged me - I've hurt you, betrayed you, lied to you, lashed out at you, and never once thanked you for all the times you've saved my life." She shook her head slowly, staring at the ground in astonishment and disbelief. "Why do you still want me, after all this? After everything Section has done to us - how can you still see anything good in me, when *I* can't even think of a reason to let me live?"

Michael stared at her, his eyes swimming with tears, his mind racing to form the perfect words to tell her why he'd clung to her, even when he'd thought she was dead. Finally, though, he could only tell the truth - unembellished, unvarnished, pure. "Why? Because you made my heart beat again." There it was, to the bone. She'd sparked his life again, had given him reason to believe in himself again.

And in the end, both of them realized that their belief in each other was what had kept them alive this far, and would see them through the hellish life of Section One...

************

Epilogue

Michael stood on the balcony of the house nestled in the deep farmlands of someplace faraway from Section One. He was wrapped in a thick, French terry robe, holding a mug of coffee, gazing pensively out at the expanse of forest and early morning mist which hung around the trees like gauze. The smell of the coffee lifted his spirits and made this moment even more special to him.

Freedom. He drew a deep breath, inhaled the pure, clean air, closed his eyes to savor it all, and exhaled slowly, then took a sip of his coffee with his eyes still closed. It had been six months since he had executed his plan of escape. He thought back to that moment when he knew Section One had to set him free. When he'd told Operations he'd had resources of his own, he hadn't told him how far-reaching those resources were. And, after calling upon those resources, he'd been able to provide enough information on Section One - Mad'laine and Operations, specifically, but also other high-ranking members - to guarantee his freedom.

The thought of being completely out from under Section One's thumb had been frightening, at first. All he'd ever known had been Section, and breaking that mold had been difficult. Even now, he caught himself looking over his shoulder, checking exit points, scanning for hostiles. He guessed that aspect of his training would never go away, as deeply-ingrained in him as it had been.

A hand on his shoulder from behind, which normally would have elicited a bullet to the brain of the unfortunate perpetrator, now only yielded a soft sigh, a tilted-back head and an open mouth, as lips pressed to his. "Ahhh, Nikita," he breathed, and sighed again as her hand slipped under the robe to caress his chest. It was heaven - it had been heaven for six months.

Nikita gently took Michael's coffee cup, sipped the brew, then set it down on the table near them. "Beautiful sunrise, isn't it?" she whispered, her lips traveling to his neck as he turned to face her. She was naked. Michael's eyes traveled up and down her form, leisurely. He pulled her against him, opening his robe as he did so, and Nikita gave a soft, seductive giggle as he gripped her tightly.

"Thank you for making coffee this morning," he said huskily, his lips against her ear, sliding to her jaw-line, then taking her lips in a slow, almost whimsical kiss. He felt her respond immediately, knew she was ready for him - but he fought the impulse. It was still difficult for him to remember that they had forever, now...

The End