I cannot escape the constant equipoise
In between the mischief and control
Swinging from the pendulum of desires
In between the mischief and control...

Nikita heard the words and thought, That's me - that's my whole life... She had survived everything Section One had delivered. She had risen above it and had triumphed. She was the ultimate operative, subordinate only to Michael. And she had even managed to eclipse him, in some ways. He was still the puppet, doing whatever Section demanded, whenever they demanded it. She, however, had fought for her freedoms, and had won.

She had power now - perhaps more power than Michael, even though he was Level 5 and she was only Level 4. He didn't, or wouldn't, think past the Section mentality, and that limited his capabilities. Nikita was independent, and the fact that she was a wild card made her a calculated risk, but one that she knew Section was willing to support. She'd accomplished missions without casualties - she'd met insurmountable odds as provided by Birkoff's simulations, and she had continually confounded Section's logic.

Nikita knew she was walking a fine line. She carefully treaded the path between kudos and cancellation, as was the norm in the realm in which she lived. She wondered, sometimes, why she fought so hard to stay alive. It would have been so easy to take a bullet to the head, or to inflict it herself. She could have sacrificed, time and time again. She could have chosen death over life. What in the world kept her from succumbing to despair and welcoming death?

The answer was always the same - Michael. That Machiavellian martyr - the manipulator of her soul and emotions. He always seemed to know how to keep her just within reach, whenever he needed her. He played her like a cello, striking her strings and making her vibrate with sound and feeling, pulling her close to him to feel her resonance, then pushing her away when the song was over.

Nikita had decided not to fight him anymore. She came when he called, gave him what he seemed to want from her, and took what she could from him. They were not intimate in a sensual sense - they could be close physically on a mission, and the rapture they felt was as strong as if they were making love in a secluded, secret setting. Michael seemed only to need her near him, and she needed only to know he was thinking of her. It was not a normal relationship, according to the outside world's standards - but there was no such thing as a normal life when one lived in Section One. Nikita had finally found her way of surviving, and Michael seemed to accept that.

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

Michael was at his desk, working on the newest profile for a mission that would involve several teams. He was able to plan multiple layers of strategy and countless contingencies, all the while thinking about Nikita. She made him incomprehensibly crazy - more so than he'd ever been as a radical student, before he'd been inducted into Section One. He'd burned with the fire of patriotism then - he'd been young and zealous and idealistic. That outpouring of emotion had cost him his freedom, and not a day went by that he didn't think about it.

Nikita never knew it - he didn't divulge those feelings to her, and she believed he was cold-hearted and manipulative. It was the reason she stayed clear of him unless he deliberately took steps to draw her close. Michael could not tell her that he pulled her into his proximity because he needed her so much he knew he would die without her. She would not believe him - he had hurt her too many times for her to trust his words, should he ever confess the truth to her.

Michael hated what he had become - what he had allowed himself to become. He hadn't realized what a shell of a man he was until Nikita had come into his life. She was a solar flare to his eclipse - she was pure kinetic energy to his ennui. There could not have been two more opposite people thrown together for a common purpose, and Michael was the first to admit it. He was also the first to be drawn to her because of her fire...

There is a fire within all of us
There is a river flowing in your soul
To put out the fire when it gets out of control
There is a stranger in all of us
That we try to get to know
There is a wise woman in there, too
She's trying to run the show...

How can I ever tell her the way I feel? Michael agonized wordlessly as he pored over the latest mission profile. How can I make her believe me, when I don't even know what I believe anymore? She doesn't trust me, and she doesn't like me. Why do I keep trying to win her, when it's useless?

If Nikita had walked into his office then, she would have seen him with his head in his hands, his eyes closed, his emotions clearly written on his face. He was a man in torment, and she was the reason. He was human, vulnerable, weak, absolutely abandoned to his feelings, completely in love...

The profile was forgotten, and Michael finally gave in to emotion. He put his head down on his arms on the desk, closed his eyes, and silently wept, for the man he once was, and the man he had become - and for the woman who had brought out the human in him when he had thought that facet of himself was long gone. It was a brief capitulation, but to Michael, it lasted for years. His stomach hurt from the sobs he tried to hold back. His head hurt from swallowing tears and anguish. No physical torture had ever wounded him so deeply and irreversibly. He wanted to groan her name, but he couldn't form the word - his teeth were clenched to bite back a cry of absolute agony.

Excuses piling up like junkyards
We never want to sort through
Efficiently we hide our needs
And all along a voice is calling out please, please...

Finally, he surfaced from the obliterating ocean of despair. The profile sat before him, unwinking and steady on his monitor. He squeezed his eyes shut tightly, then opened them, wiping them on his sleeve. Taking a deep breath, he applied himself to his work - as he always did whenever deeper thoughts of Nikita pervaded his mind...

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

Nikita was, of all things, conflicted. She finally could see how Michael felt - divided toward a mission and the end game. She'd been through it, many times, but it had never become so personal that she felt she'd lived it in her own life. The latest job had been routine, but for some reason, certain aspects of it had hit her more deeply, and she had walked away with a pain that cut more acutely than anything she'd ever felt before. Maybe I'm getting hard, she thought as she headed out of Section. Or maybe, I'm getting soft...

It had been weeks since she and Michael had actually spoken. The "powers-that-be" had made certain that the two of them had stayed apart - continents apart. Nikita had accepted it - she knew it was Section's way of punishing her, or testing her, and she'd been a player long enough to know the game. In fact, she'd learned to be a chameleon - like Michael - from Michael. She could change her colors, her very fabric, in order to conform to whatever situation into which she was dropped. She'd become such a valuable asset that she was second only to Michael and a handful of other Level 5 operatives.

She counted her victories like rosary beads, although she wasn't religious, and certainly not Catholic. Nikita wondered if Michael ever lay awake at night and counted his victories - over the enemy, over himself, over her, over Section One... He probably has a scorecard, Nikita thought, dispassionately. Me - ten; them - two... She wondered how he reconciled his deceits and betrayals with his successes...

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

Her apartment looked less and less like a place of haven, and more like a prison. She was feeling the need to escape again, but she knew she couldn't involve Michael this time. And she knew it wouldn't be permanent. She'd tasted freedom, and it had left her wanting. Section One was truly her family and her home now, and she'd resigned herself to it, reluctantly. She'd learned to live within the constraints of it, just as Michael had, and she understood, now, what it meant to be owned by Section One.

She didn't like it, but she was not one to bite the hand that fed her, lately. So, like any smart captive, she'd learned to project one thing while thinking another. Operations had been satisfied that she was finally the perfect operative. He'd seen cold-blooded, "end-game" thinking from her, and he'd been pleased. He hadn't known that what Nikita had projected to him had been something entirely different from what she'd actually enacted. The end-game had been achieved, with no casualties, as usual, but there'd been humanity in the action, and the innocents had been safely, invisibly spirited away to a new life. Birkoff had helped, by erasing all traces of those aspects of the mission which might compromise the end-game Nikita had devised.

Her apparent capitulation to Section mentality killed Michael a little more every day. He had no way of knowing what she was truly doing - he didn't suspect that she was developing her own set of contacts, of which he, Operations and Mad'laine knew nothing. All he saw was the woman in whom he'd invisibly placed his heart and life, becoming a machine no different from himself. He'd fought for years, since he'd first come into contact with her, to preserve her fire and integrity. Now, all he could see was that he'd failed. Michael wore black - but more than that - he thought black...

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

Nikita sprawled on her couch in her sterile prison. She'd put in a CD by Vonda Shepard called "It's Good, Eve", and had poured a glass of wine. She deliberately focussed on the mission from which she'd just emerged. Innocents had been involved. With Birkoff's help, she'd managed to spare a small family of peasants in the Ukraine, and get them to a safe location where they would begin new, and better, lives. She was satisfied with her work, confident that they would be protected. Nikita had no idea that her divided conduct was tearing Michael apart and pushing him close to the edge of suicide. All she knew, for the moment, was that she'd managed to confound Section One, again. She'd beat the odds. She'd won - perhaps not the war, but the battle.

A knock on her door sent her to her feet, as exhausted as she was. She had her gun in her hand immediately, her wine glass on the table in front of her. She crept to her door, accessed the security camera, and saw Michael. He looked pale and almost fragile. My God, she thought. He looks broken...

She opened the door immediately, glad to see him after such a long time apart, but alarmed at his gauntness and his waxen complexion. He walked in, his eyes haunted and casting about, as he always did, searching for intruders or danger. Seeing she was alone, he stopped his protective prowl and stood silently, his expression unreadable. Clearly, he had something on his mind, but Nikita could not for the life of her decipher his gaze.

"Sit down," she said softly, gesturing to the couch. Not knowing exactly why, she went quickly to light scented candles and set a mood that would relax him, as she watched him sit down on the couch, his hands clasped between his knees, his head down. She re-programmed the CD of Vonda Shepard, in random order, sensing that a female vocalist might act to disarm him more effectively than something louder or softer.

"Can I get you anything?" she asked very quietly, almost afraid to infringe on his mood. He shook his head, not looking up.

Abandoning civility, Nikita sat down on the floor in front of him. "Michael - what's wrong?" she asked, her voice husky.

He met her eyes, and his own were tragic. She'd never seen him so open and exposed before, and it scared her. She waited for his words, knowing they would be loaded with meaning that he would pray she would understand.

"You've changed," he said softly. He fell silent, not to unnerve her, but because now that he'd gathered his courage and had come to her, he didn't know how to open to her emotionally. His mind was blank. He'd opened the conversation, but he had no idea how to continue or finish it.

Nikita made that fear disappear. "No, I haven't," she said gently, and her hand strayed to his arm. "I haven't changed at all, Michael."

He raised his eyes to hers, questioning, his inner torment buried for the moment. All the times he'd protected her, covered for her, lied for her, sacrificed for her, risked his life for her - how could she say she hadn't changed, when he'd been tracking her missions as well as he could since he'd been removed as her mentor? He'd seen the results - he'd seen the numbers, and the parameters in which she'd had to work. He'd realized the odds of success, and he knew her inner spirit. There would have been no way for her to come out of those missions without compromising her soul...

He came back to the present at the sound of Nikita's voice, calm and - was he imagining it? - peaceful. "I haven't killed innocents, Michael," she said very clearly. "Not one."

She was stunned to see him stare at her, his disbelief open on his face. "Nikita, don't lie to me..." he whispered, and his eyes were dark and full of tears. "Don't tell me-"

"-Michael, I'm not lying to you!" she uttered, and her hands went to his cheeks to touch him, to make him see her, look into her eyes, travel into her heart and soul. "I'm telling the truth. Look at me! Believe me!"

Michael reached up and grabbed her wrists tightly, almost painfully, and his eyes bored into hers as if trying to cut through to the back of her skull. She gave him honesty, and finally, he saw it. In the background, Vonda Shepard was singing about "Mischief and Control":

Cause I'm so hungry
And I'm so tired
I feel so lonely
I feel so wired
I need my angel...
I need my angel...
Where is my angel?
Where is my angel?
Where is my angel?....

A small groan escaped Michael's lips then - she'd been telling the truth. She was still Nikita. She was still his angel. She was still his...

Michael stopped thinking, then, as Nikita's arms came around him and held him tightly. She was sweet and warm and alive - and she was still his fire, and his mischief...

Equipoise - difficult to maintain, unless all the elements were perfectly in tune. Michael knew, then, that he could find his own equipoise, as long as he had Nikita to be the mischief to his control...

The End

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