I've let Nikita down, and it's the first time that I've failed her. I stood and watched the plane that took her from me until it disappeared into the night. My stomach clenched as if it wanted to reject its contents, but my self-control won.

It's laughable my self-control my much vaunted self-control. I've lost her. Nikita's being married to a jet-setting playboy pervert won't be the same as my being married to Elena. He'll keep her at his side, under his control. She won't be working or going on business trips. Her mission is to stay with him indefinitely.

I always knew my mission would end, sooner or later. I lived in denial, especially after Adam was born. His tiny form won my heart the first minute I saw him covered in vernix and still wet from Elena's body. The power in that little one as he squirmed and squalled on Elena's abdomen awoke dreams of permanence and a feeling of fatherhood that I'd never thought I'd experience.

I told Nikita the truth when I said I'd tried to separate the two lives of Michael Samuelle, meaning I hadn't totally succeeded. Meeting her in the church was my idea, ostensibly for the privacy, but more for my consolation. I know that God gave up on me long ago. This living hell wherein I dwell is my just due for the lives I took in Paris. Then Nikita was brought into Section One, and it seemed as if He'd granted me a reprieve.

Nikita has brightened my life, shown me that there's more than one way to accomplish a mission. Oh, she has nearly driven me insane doing it, but that is part of her charm.

For every step we took side-by-side, someone or something always pulled us apart. The precious measures of time that we carved out that were ours alone, they weren't enough. Still those tiny moments that we existed only for each other, they served to bind the tears of my ragged, soiled self.

I didn't deserve her love, but I took it, unable to resist the lure of the light within her. I told her I couldn't live without her. What I meant was that life wasn't worth living without her light.

The shoe's on the other foot, now. I have to stand aside and let Nikita do her job as Operations so crassly phrased it, but I feel Madeline's fine hand in this. Years ago, if I had only known. . . . It's because they don't own every molecule and atom of me anymore. I've dared to become a man, more than the machine they envisioned.

It's true they've stripped me of everything I held dear.

Je t'aime, Nikita. I bide my time. I will reclaim my soul.

FINI

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