Nikita gazed pensively at the rain beating against the window. She had always liked rain. Even on the streets, where unannounced thunderstorms had sent her scurrying for shelter, she had enjoyed the feel of the cool rain on her face. It reminded her of green grass and open fields-or would have reminded her of those things had she ever experienced them for herself. She stepped out onto the balcony and let the drops wash over her body, wishing she could wash away the stains of guilt and shame that clung to her.

From the street below, Michael watched Nikita. Even from this distance he thought he could see the rain trickling down her graceful neck. He closed his eyes as the familiar pang of desire mixed with longing struck him. Reflexively, he pushed it away, the mental action second nature to him by now. He reopened his eyes to see her leaning on the railing. The contrast of her pale hands against the dark railing caught his attention and, unexpectedly, a fragment of a poem floated into his mind. He wondered if she would be surprised at his love of poetry. He sighed and mentally added it to the list of things he wished he could share with her.

Having satisfied himself that she was where she was supposed to be (one could never be sure with Nikita), he melted into the shadows pooled at the mouth of the alley. Walking home, he tried to concentrate on the details of his upcoming mission, but the same line of poetry kept running through his head. "Nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands." He started as a car roared by him on the street, speakers blaring. As the laughter of teenagers drifted back from the swiftly vanishing vehicle, he thought wryly to himself that Operations would threaten to cancel him if he ever saw him so distracted. But distraction had become a familiar companion to Michael since Nikita's recruitment into Section.

Paying little attention to the shops lining the sidewalk, Michael suddenly spotted a small bookstore. His feet slowed of their own volition to halt in front of the store window. Leather-bound books in rich colors were arranged in the display case. Tennyson, Donne, Browning, Frost, Eliot...it was obvious that the store's specialty was poetry. Definitely suspecting a cosmic conspiracy, Michael turned and entered the bookstore, disregarding the Section training that mentally told him "This. Is. A. Bad. Idea."

The smell of old books washed over him as the door drifted shut. To his left, a middle-aged man sat behind the small counter. The rest of the small space was filled with shelves, crammed to capacity with volumes of poetry. The shopkeeper looked up and smiled.

"Can I help you?"

Michael hesitated before answering. "I'm...just looking,"

"Browse all you like," the man replied. "The store is roughly sorted into English, American, and foreign language poets, with the Brits to the front of the store, the Americans to the back, and the others along the back wall. Other than that, everything is pretty much shelved alphabetically."

Michael wandered through the maze of shelves, the names of familiar and much-loved poets catching his eye. Although there wasn't much about his childhood that he cared to remember, his parents' appreciation of great literature was one. They had passed along that love to him. He tried to convince himself that he wasn't looking for a particular book, but a little disobedient voice in the back of his head whispered, "Perhaps this is something you can share with her." "Quiet," his Section training ordered.

Quickly, before he could think better of it, Michael strode to the back of the store and scanned the shelves. It was there, of course. He reached up and eased the book out of its spot on the top shelf. He flipped to the table of contents, scanning the list for the poem he was looking for. When he found it, a small, almost shy smile crossed his face. He banished it immediately and returned to the counter.

"Ah, you found something after all."

"Yes," Michael replied in a polite but removed tone designed to discourage small talk. It didn't work. The man's eyes lit up as Michael placed the book on the counter.

"One of my favorites," he exclaimed. "I would have pegged you for a Shakespearean."

"I enjoy Shakespeare, too," Michael admitted.

"Well, who doesn't?" The man smiled and entered the purchase into the oddly modern cash register. "Are you sure you don't want anything else? I got some wonderful stuff at a rare book sale last week. How about a first edition Emily Dickinson, since you seem to like Americans?"

"Perhaps some other time." Michael handed a bill to the man and received his change.

He stepped back into the humid night, determined to concentrate on the upcoming trip to Ghana.

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

(Three days later)

Nikita closed the door to her apartment, determined to take a shower and fall into bed. And as jet-lagged as she was, she suspected that she'd be going to bed smelly. Who knew that Ghana had so much livestock?

She'd changed into her favorite T-shirt and boxers-the really comfortable ones-when the knock sounded at the door. "Damn him," she thought. Even besides the fact that he was the only who ever came to her apartment these days, his knock had a distinctive, confident, Michael-ish sound to it. "God, I need sleep," she thought. "I'm inventing new words." She opened the door a total of about two inches.

"What do you want, Michael? I was halfway in bed."

Shoving aside the images that sprung to mind with the association of "Nikita" and "bed", Michael eased the manila envelope through the crack in the door. "Look over this before you report in next week."

"What is it?"

"Intel for our next mission."

"Since when does Section trust me with intel before a mission briefing?" Nikita asked suspiciously.

"Just read it," Michael replied quietly.

"Fine. Can I go now, teacher?"

"Good night, Nikita."

"'Night, Michael."

As Nikita shut the door, she wondered if the man ever slept. He must be at least as exhausted as she was, yet here he was at two in the morning, playing the messenger boy. "Odd," she mused. "I wonder what's so important that it can't wait..." A yawn cut off that line of thought, however, and she tossed the envelope on the table on her way to bed.

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

(The next afternoon)

She was feeling slightly more human, now, although the edge of exhaustion hadn't completely disappeared. And she'd finally gotten her shower, but only after a solid twelve hours of dreamless sleep. That in itself was a sign of how tired she had been-usually her dreams were filled with either fantasies of Michael or replays of the horrors she was forced to inflict on others. Gray, Lisa Fanning, Simone, Rudy...so much death and pain. The flashes of memory rose, unbidden, but Nikita refused to let them contaminate her waking hours. "Stop it," she ordered herself. "You got a good night's sleep, quit complaining." On her way to the kitchen-her stomach was quite insistent-she passed the envelope that Michael had delivered the night before. Although tempted to stop and open it, she decided to appease her stomach first.

After satisfying her healthy appetite ("You eat like a starving horse," Walter had once told her), she picked up the envelope and draped herself on the couch. She saw what she hadn't noticed last night-the envelope was not flat, as she had expected, but kind of bulky. She pried open the flap and reached inside. Her hand touched leather. It was a book. She drew it out and stared in amazement. Whatever it was, it was beautiful, bound in dark green leather, obviously expensive. She turned it over and gazed at the title embossed in gold on the front. "Love Poems," she read to herself. "e.e. cummings." The name sounded vaguely familiar, probably due to the "culture" lessons Madeline had given her. As she slowly flipped through the pages, a single sheet of paper fell out and floated to the floor. Reaching down, she picked it up, not having any idea what she might find.

Printed on the white paper was a simple message. "Page 42. Please enjoy it." Not "please read it", but "please enjoy it."

"What the hell has gotten into Michael?" she wondered aloud. Dutifully, she flipped to page 42.

	somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond


	any experience,your eyes have their silence:


	in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,


	or which I cannot touch because they are too near





	your slightest look easily will unclose me


	though I have closed myself as fingers,


	you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens


	(touching skillfully,mysteriously) her first rose





	or if your wish be to close me,I and


	my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,


	as when the heart of this flower imagines


	the snow carefully everywhere descending;





	nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals 


	the power of your intense fragility: whose texture


	compels me with the colour of its countries,


	rendering death and forever with each breathing





	(I do not know what it is about you that closes


	and opens;only something in me understands


	the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)


	nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

Nikita closed the book with trembling hands and was astonished to feel tears running down her face. "Damn you, Michael," she thought. "Why is it that every time I convince myself you're not human, that you don't care, you pull something like this?" She lifted her arm, prepared to fling the book across the room, but stopped short as she caught sight of Michael's note lying on the couch.

"'Please enjoy this.' When was the last time Michael asked me for anything?"

"Yeah?" a little sarcastic voice in her head answered. "When was the last time he gave you anything? Anything but lies and pain and confusion?"

"This," she answered aloud, opening the book and looking at the poem again. "He gave me this."

********

(A few days later)

"What the hell is this?"

Michael looked up from his computer to see Nikita standing in front of him, brandishing the book he had given her. He looked quickly to make sure no one else was in the corridor, got up, and shut the door behind her. He returned to behind his desk and turned off the surveillance cameras and bugs-all sixteen of them. (Not that Michael would ever have said anything of the sort, but he sometimes felt that Operations was a little too paranoid.)

"Did you like it?" he queried. He carefully watched Nikita's face for her reaction and was pleased as he saw her try to maintain her expression of exasperation and anger. Despite herself, though, an expression of softness crept into her countenance.

"That's not the point. But, yes, I liked it. I liked all of them." She wasn't about to tell him that she'd read the contents of the book several times over, struck by the beauty and obvious feelings behind the love poems. "The point is, what the hell are you doing? When we were going after Armel, we had to play bloody husband and wife. For God's sakes, Michael, we made love. Again." She couldn't bear to look at him, afraid of what she might see on his face at the mention of their intimacy.

"After it's all over, I ask you how you feel, and you say 'Conflicted.' So I wait. And what happens? Nothing." She threw her hands up in exasperation. "Ever since then, you've been treating me like I don't exist, except as another one of your operatives. So what do I do? I try to move past it. Again." She drew to a shuddering halt, realizing she was about to start shouting at him. Quietly, she continued. "I'm tired of this, Michael. It takes too much out of me. Either we reach some accommodation, or we cut this off completely. Otherwise, it's going to get one of us killed, and it's probably going to be me."

Her words hung in the silence that followed. Exasperated, she whirled around, prepared to storm out of the office. But his voice stopped her.

"I wanted to share something with you."

"What was that?" She turned around to find him looking down at his desk.

"There's so much I can't...so much we have to keep hidden. You're right. Our lives as operatives depend on shutting out all emotion, all distractions. This poem...poetry is something I love and I wanted to give a little of that to you."

"I don't understand," she said flatly.

Michael had a suspicion that she did understand and was just being deliberately obtuse. But he also knew that she deserved to hear the words.

"The poem reminded me of you. As much as I tried to close myself off, especially after Simone's death, I couldn't do it. Not with you. But I can't let myself be free, free to feel. Neither can you. You know that's true.

"Yes," she replied sadly. "I do." As much as she wanted to deny it, she had lived too long in Section. She had seen what happened when people let their emotions get the better of them. People who tried to be anything but an instrument of Section invariably ended up dead. Sometimes they were cancelled, sometimes they screwed up. But it always happened.

"So why do this? Why open up something you've tried to close so many times?"

"I don't know," he sighed. "I guess I thought this would be enough. At least for now."

She surprised him by moving around to perch on the corner of his desk. "I don't like 'enough.' I deserve better. We deserve better." He was opening his mouth to agree when she cut him off by placing a finger across his lips. "But for now, it can be enough."

He gazed up at her, green eyes meeting blue, until she turned away and stood. "I need to go see Madeline," she sighed. Not really expecting a response, she began moving to the door. Her hand was on the doorknob when she felt Michael's presence behind her. She froze as he placed his hands on her hips and gently turned her around. Not daring to look up, she thought to herself, "I should have known he wouldn't let me have the last word."

Michael knew he was playing with fire, but he couldn't resist teasing them both, just a little. He framed her face with his hands and leaned into her, pressing her back into the door, covering her body with his. Against his chest, he could feel her heart beating faster. Encouraged, he gently touched her lips with his own.

Nikita felt her knees grow weak as she luxuriated in the feel of him pressed against her. Although the kiss was certainly arousing, she sensed that it was also meant to comfort and reassure. And it did. He broke the kiss and buried his face in her hair, pressing a kiss to her temple. They stood there for an endless moment until he pulled back and met her eyes.

"Sometimes 'enough' needs a little help," he murmured wryly.

She smiled shyly up at him and slipped out of his arms, opened the door, and was gone.

********

(Later)

Michael was surprised to see the envelope propped up outside his door. He scanned the hallway outside his apartment and saw nothing. He checked the door but found no sign of tampering. Cautiously he picked up the envelope and entered the apartment.

After satisfying himself that no one, friendly or otherwise, was lying in wait, he took off his coat. Sitting on the edge of the sofa, he broke the seal on the envelope and reached inside. A smile crossed his face as he drew out a slim book. He flipped through the pages and was not particularly surprised to find a piece of paper placed between two pages. He gently unfolded it and read to himself. "Page 63. Please understand." He turned slowly to page 63 and began reading.

	I wonder by my troth, what thou and I


	Did, till we lov'd? Were we not wean'd till then,


	But suck'd on country pleasures, childishly?


	Or snorted we in the seven sleepers' den?


	'Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.


	If ever any beauty I did see,


	Which I desir'd, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee.

A real smile crossed Michael's face as an actual, honest-to-God, spark of hope kindled somewhere inside him. He looked out the window and discovered that it was raining. Crossing to the French doors, he opened them, stepped outside, and let the rain run down his face. He did not see the figure standing in the shadows several feet away. But she heard him as he addressed the empty street.

"I understand."

Acknowledgements:
"somewhere i have never traveled" is by e.e. cummings
"The Good Morrow" is by John Donne

All characters and poetry used without permission.