Author's Note: Okay, I think I need a 12-step program. I, Katherine Gilbert, am an addict. I cannot stop myself from writing fill-in-the-blank LFN fiction. I admit that my life has become secondary to my need, and that I no longer have any control. I actually told myself, for three whole days, after seeing "Half Life," that I'd be able to not write a story about it--*three* days, mind you. Then, sadly, the monkey jumped on my back, I fell off the wagon, the shakes started, and the addiction took over again. It should be said, though, that, since my writing is the one area of my life I'm really happy with, I'm not trying to beat this addiction very hard. Hope it's not bugging anyone else. :) Alright, I'll stop the silliness. On with the introduction. The following is a character study set after "Half Life"; it starts later the same day as the ending scene (with Michael watching his sister) and contains spoilers for "Half Life," "Simone," "War," "Nikita," and "Approaching Zero." I guess I'll rate it MA-14, but it really doesn't have anything particularly shocking in it. I should mention, as well, that I'm not a French scholar (to put it *mildly*), and my computer is fairly lacking when it comes to accent marks (I've tried to substitute for a few of these with apostrophes; it's the best I can do). If any of my French or descriptions of France doesn't work, therefore, please just suspend your disbelief. :) Oh, the title, for anyone who may want it translated, is Latin for "reminder of death." No infringement of any sort is intended with the following.

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Some days, no matter how beautiful, are inescapably gray. On this one, no amount of sunlight could make the world bright for him. There was no beauty to be seen.

Michael drove back in from the country toward the outskirts of Paris. He began to wonder if the overwhelming sense of despair and fatigue he was experiencing was similar to how Judas had felt looking at his thirty pieces of silver.

Rene' hadn't been Christ, though; he hadn't been perfect or holy, but Michael couldn't view him as a terrorist. Terrorists didn't take in orphaned children and raise them to be healthy, law-abiding members of society. They weren't loving and funny and life-affirming. Rene' had been all of these.

Michael sighed. He had always feared the day when he would run across his old friend again. He had prayed that Rene' had moved on, had given up the life which might force them to meet. He had always suspected, however, that he couldn't.

Section had taught Michael to reduce the terrorists they fought to soulless monsters in his mind; it made killing them far easier. It was an exercise in purposely narrowing one's views. Otherwise, it would be too easy to question why one side were the terrorists and the other the protectors of democracy, when they seemed to be doing the same things.

Michael hadn't changed life paths when he entered Section. When he allowed himself to analyze things, he would realize that he had never stopped building bombs--killing innocents. Now, however, it was supposedly for the "right" goals.

This was one of the reasons Michael couldn't see his old friend as evil; he had done nothing worse than Section's standard operating procedure. And Rene', unlike Section, was capable of compassion.

In following the mission profile to eliminate the last vestiges of L'Heure Sanguine, Michael had betrayed one of the only real friends he had ever known --a man who had never once betrayed him. He felt utterly lost as to how to continue on with his life from here.

He had intended to die last night--had been praying for it. His life had had no meaning for so long.

Michael finally reached his destination--a large, rural cemetary near Versailles. It was old, with touches of extravagance, but was mostly rather understated. It wasn't Pere Lachaise, but it was attractive.

He parked near the central building--used mostly for memorial services--and began to walk. He had never been to the plot he was about to visit, but he knew its location. His parents were buried here, as well, in the opposite direction--on a slight hill where the family mausoleums were, but he had no desire to visit them. Other than the shock and the fact that he had been left the sole guardian of his much younger sister, he hadn't much mourned their passing. There was no reason to be hypocritical now. If they had known he was here, they wouldn't have cared.

As always, Michael was dressed for a funeral. The few mourners he passed, therefore, paid little attention to him, as he walked along, lost in thought.

Deep inside himself somewhere, he wished Nikita were here, wished he had her quiet strength and love to support him now. She had tried so many times to shelter his heart, to protect it like the most beautiful and fragile gift-- despite his repeated brutal attacks on her own. It was his own fault she wasn't here, though; the smallest word, the slightest honest request and she would have followed him unquestioningly. He sighed slightly. He just wasn't ready to share this much of himself, even with her.

Michael finally approached the row he had been searching for. He walked down it, scanning the names, until he was standing in front of his own grave. Rene' had chosen the stone and the inscription, which read--in French: <"Here Lies A Man Who Died For Freedom and Justice. He Cannot Be Replaced."> His eyes grew red, as he held back tears. At the bottom was inscribed the ideals of the French Revolution: "Liberte', Egalite', Fraternite'." Michael smiled slightly. It made perfect sense for Rene'; it was what he believed they were all about. . . . Michael didn't know anymore.

Michael was suddenly deeply relieved that he hadn't asked Nikita to come. The words were such an obvious lie. He hadn't acted so much, in his younger days, for justice as he had out of anger. He had known people who had been truly committed, at the time, of course, but they weren't the ones building bombs. He couldn't even clearly remember the causes he had fought for; they had just been a way of channelling his energy.

His whole life had been a lie, it seemed now. He was no longer certain that he had ever acted out of a pure or deep emotion. It all seemed like playacting.

Michael pondered this further, for a second. . . . No . . . no . . . not all of it. He shook his head. He had had five relationships in his life, he decided, which had been real: his sister, . . . Rene', . . . his son, . . . Simone, . . . and Nikita. They were the only true ties he had ever developed. Everything else had been illusory, transient, or ordered.

Only one of these relationships still existed. He had destroyed all hope of communication with the laughing child he had suddenly been called on to raise, when he had started planning others' deaths. The other three had died, in one way or another, because of him. He closed his eyes suddenly, taking in his breath, unexpectedly moved to prayer: "Please, don't ever let Nikita die because of me." Whatever might happen to their relationship, she had to live. He had no hope of sanity, otherwise.

Michael opened his eyes again and thought about the past few, terrible days. He had felt betrayed by Nikita, when she had first turned in Rene'. It was only when he forced himself to examine the situation from her viewpoint that he could begin to understand.

Nikita had only seen one side of his old friend. Michael had hidden his better qualities from her, had forgotten, in his fear, that--ever since his betrayal of her and Jurgen--he had been trying not to close himself off from her. He was keeping his distance, yes; he needed to to keep his emotions for her controlled, but his response to her inquiry about Rene' had been the first time in a few months that he had simply brushed her off. There was a difference.

Nikita understood this distinction, he was sure. While she disliked his separation from her, on some levels, she could accept it. It was the reversion to old patterns--his insistence that she simply follow his unexplained orders-- which had angered her.

She hadn't turned in Rene' out of spite, however. She had given Michael the chance to define his old friend as something other than the bomber of school children she had seen, and he had refused. She had had little choice.

Michael wasn't sure Nikita fully understood her own actions, though. He suspected that, on some level, at least, she saw them as a betrayal of Michael to the Section. Now that he had had the chance to analyze it, he knew better; he wished he could convince her of it.

Michael looked up at the rows of stones the cemetary held. He had been hoping to join his name, in spirit, here today. He wanted a release from the pitiful existence which passed for his life . . . or so he told himself.

He had gone to Nikita's apartment before the last mission to say goodbye--to explain why he wanted to die. This was his conscious motive. He needed to have the person who meant the most to him understand why he was going to let himself be killed.

To a certain extent, as well, she did understand. Her whole attitude had changed when she had been told of his sister. She still saw Rene' as a terrorist, but she had urged Michael to let someone else handle his old friend --to save his own sanity. . . . He couldn't, of course, despite Madeline's similar offer. If his friend had to die, Michael thought Rene' deserved one final chance at justice, and that could only happen with him there. Rene' was the only one who, Michael thought, could finish what had been started 14 years ago; he could give Michael a physical death to match the one he felt spiritually.

Michael looked at his tombstone again and sighed. It hadn't worked out as he had wanted. In a few days, Rene' would be interred under a gravestone of Michael's choosing, in another cemetary. There would be no one there to mourn him--except his sister, perhaps--if she was even told of her former guardian's death. It would happen the way Section always falsely told its recruits it did--no mourners, no observers.

It was more than he had hoped for himself today, however. He had hoped there would--in the long-standing Section tradition--be no funeral or remembrance for him. His body could be disposed of by Housekeeping. Nikita would be the only one to care, and he wasn't entirely sure--right now--why she should. It was what he deserved.

He told himself that all of this was why he had gone to Nikita's apartment yesterday--to ask her to let him die. Subconsciously, however, he knew it wasn't true. That visit had, rather, been a final cry for help. He knew, on some level, that if she understood his plan, she would stop it--she would save him. She could no more sit back and let him die than he could allow her to. While they had each been indifferent to their own deaths before, they could *never* allow the other to be killed, if they knew about it and could make any sort of move to prevent it. Despite all the pain he had caused her--and frequently despite her own best interests, he understood that she was always there for him.

Michael heard a small group of people approaching in the distance and looked toward them briefly. He stared at his grave one last time and turned to take a longer path back to his car to avoid running into them. When he was a fair distance away, he turned and watched, as his sister and her family approached his grave with a bouquet of flowers. He had wondered if they would. It was, after all, the anniversary of his death.

He saw his sister kneel down by his grave, and he wished suddenly that he had planted a bug on it so that he could hear her--just so he could hear her voice, to know how it had matured. He knew all the facts and statistics of her life; he wished, though, that he knew the details.

He missed having seen her grow up. The beautiful, laughing child had grown into a beautiful, happy woman. Even in her sadness at his grave, he could see her contentment with her family--with her life.

"Maybe it was better I wasn't there," he thought. Rene' had nurtured her-- given her all the love she needed and allowed her to recognize, because of his attention, when real love existed for her in others. He wasn't sure he could have done the same for her--wasn't sure he could do it for anyone. The one person he loved the most, after all, he had betrayed and tormented thousands of times. . . . It was a good thing he was in Section with the dead, after all, he decided; he didn't belong with the living.

After a few minutes, Michael's sister got up and walked away with her family in the direction of her parents' mausoleum. Michael watched her intently, every step. She was the one member of the family who had turned out right. He wished he could have known her.

He leaned against a tree, as he looked out at the graveyard. Part of his mind suddenly wondered how many of the people here he had been responsible for killing.

There had been a reason Michael had been the only one caught for L'Heure Sanguine's bombing; he had made no real effort to escape. It had seemed like a good idea, in theory. The nails were a final touch, allowing them to ensure maximum casualties, for maximum attention. He had been nearby to see it, though, and it had brutalized his soul. The ones near the center of the blast were lucky; they died quickly. The rest suffered from the shrapnel of the nails. . . . There were still times he had nightmares about it.

It wasn't that he had tried to be caught. It was more that, after the bomb went off, he had ceased to function as the person he had been minutes before. The only place he had had to run was inside himself, however. His anger had turned inward.

Since then, with the exception of his time with Simone, his soul had ceased to function. He hadn't been human or alive in years. . . . Nikita was all that was left of him.

Over the past few days, though, he had felt more acute pain than he had in a long time. He wondered if it was a good sign, as he watched his sister and her family return to their car to leave.

Michael remembered a line from the novel, *Beloved*, by Toni Morrison; he had needed to read it once--years ago--for a mission at a college: "Anything dead coming back to life hurts." He started toward his car, hoping--despite his conviction that he was too far gone for miracles--that this would be the beginning of a resurrection, instead of the final death rattle of his soul. He got into his car and slowly drove out of the cemetary. He could only hope.

The End

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