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

It doesn't matter what I want.
It doesn't matter what I need.
It doesn't matter if I cry,
Don't matter if I bleed.
You've been on a road
Don't know where it goes or where it leads.

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

Deception.

Oh, he had taught her well. She'd spent three years in deep cover, and not a slip in her cover, not a crack in the façade. As he stood in the evaluation chamber, not wanting to look at the cold woman who had replaced Nikita, he marveled at it again.

Truly flawless. It had been a flawless performance, and he had no one but himself to blame. Who had trained her? Who had instructed her in the nuances of undercover missions? Who had shown her, in the cruelest way possible, how much a secret life could scar? He had taken an innocent girl, and he had manipulated and mutilated her until her only recourse was to retreat inside the brittle woman who sat before him, passing judgment on his life.

Her words pierced the silence, and the trial began.

"Michael Samuelle. Brought into Section One ten years ago. Graduated training nine months early and moved directly to level Three."

Barely any movement from her. No overt body language, no hint of condemnation or redemption in her tone. Nothing that gave him any hint of his upcoming fate. Not that it mattered. He couldn't spare the energy to care whether he would live or die. Nikita would certainly survive this restructuring, and that was all he cared about. All he had ever cared about.

And truly, all he still cared about. Even now.

"Your continual ascent within the organization was due not only to your tactical and strategic abilities--there was something primal about your approach." A pause. "You have shown otherworldly disregard for your own well-being." Another pause, longer than the first. "More than anyone else, you have been true to the highest principles that define this organization, Michael."

He roused himself to answer, hating the hoarseness he heard in his voice. "That's not true. I've betrayed Section. I've put your well-being ahead of everything else." He had thought it was mutual.

He could feel her gaze on him, and wondered who he would see if he looked back. The defiant child who had huddled in a corner of the White Room and spat threats at him? The double...no, triple-agent who had been unable to look him in the face and lie about Adrian? The highly competent operative who had fought at his side during hundreds of missions?

Would there even be a trace of the lover who had moaned underneath him? The woman who had clasped him to her in a sweaty tangle of limbs and sheets and need? Who had never once said, "I love you"?

Before he could bring himself to lift his head, she spoke again--this time as executioner. "I have no choice but to recommend...your cancellation."

Cancellation.

Of course. There had never been any other possible outcome. Time to wipe the slate clean and start anew. Madeline was dead by her own hand, and Operations was tightly leashed by Center. And despite the new, more compassionate stance that Nikita was pushing, they could not allow him to live. He had broken too many rules, too flagrantly, for too personal a reason.

Very well. Death held no fear for him. It never had. She would protect Adam and Elena, even if Operations didn't. Her feelings for them, and her natural desire to protect the innocent, would ensure their safety.

And that left only one loose end to attend to.

"Is there an abeyance mission pending?" Finally, needing to see her reaction, he dared to look at her. She looked...tired. Bone-weary, as if an unexpected movement would send delicate cracks running through the fine porcelain of her face. But despite that apparent fragility, there was no hesitation in her answer. She was prepared. Before this ordeal had even begun, she'd known every word he would utter.

"Yes," she replied, meeting his gaze unflinchingly.

That was her gift to him--a chance to die with dignity, and perhaps a bit of honor. Not a bullet to the head in the White Room, but a final chance to do some good, maybe even save some innocent lives. It was more than he deserved.

"Thank you," he said.

And he meant it.

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

It doesn't matter what I want
It doesn't matter what I need.
If you've made up your mind to go,
I won't beg you to stay.
You've been in a cage.
Throw you to the wind, you fly away.

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

Michael stood at attention, listened to the briefing, and waited to die.

Around him, Section went on as if nothing had changed over the past two days. Standing at the head of table, Operations dispensed his usual mix of orders, threats, and technical terminology, and out of habit, Michael condensed the information into efficient blocks.

"Teams 3 and 4 will fall back for the retreat. Michael, you will proceed alone to the engagement area."

Entry takes place here.

Jason spoke up, a trace of the unfamiliar Southern accent still coloring his voice. "By this point, you will have triggered their security. We've estimated ten to fifteen hostiles with orders to kill anything that moves."

Resistance expected here.

Operations pressed a button on the remote and activated a holographic diagram of the enemy compound. "You will be wearing a suicide vest with one pound C-4 explosive and one detonator. Once the engagement has commenced, you will have a window of thirty seconds. You'll take this route all the way to the target."

Target located here.

Kurtzman interrupted. "Won't that approach be blocked?"

"No," Jason replied. "It dead ends. And there's no retreat."

"Then how does Michael get out?" Jason didn't answer that question, and after a moment of silence, Kurtzman figured out what no one dared to say.

Michael dies here.

"Check your panels," Operations snapped. "You'll move in fifteen."

The rest of the team filed out, and Michael remained behind in the suddenly silent room.

Michael dies here.

His time had finally come. All the years escaping death, and now death had caught up to him. How different everything might have been if he had died in prison, or in the bombing that had killed sixteen innocent people.

No absent father for Adam. No horrifying memories for Elena, who had been forced to watch her husband and father gunned down in front of her. No one else could have carried out the Vacek mission, and Section had known it when they sent him under cover. They would have been forced to take down Vacek some other way, and Elena would have found a normal husband. Adam would have been born to a normal father.

And Nikita...

Nikita would have been assigned to a different trainer, who would never have been so stupid as to fall in love with her.

A disembodied voice boomed from the intercom. "Mission departure in ten minutes. Mission departure in ten minutes."

Weapons. He needed the weapons and the suicide vest.

He paced through the corridors one last time, passing the familiar locations that had defined his life for the past ten years. Systems. His office. Comm. He had served his time here and performed better than anyone had a right to expect. Lives had been saved, disasters averted.

As legacies went, it would have to suffice.

Walter was distributing gear to the last few members of the team as Michael approached. He reached for his package, but Walter stopped him with a look.

"Just wait here a minute," he said urgently. He took two steps into the arsenal and retrieved something. "Here." He handed the small bag to Michael. "Take this with you, Michael."

"What is it?" Trust Walter to find one last way to break the rules.

"Solvents and a compressor. You can get through a three-foot wall. Dig yourself out of there before the detonation." He looked...hopeful. And he didn't understand. Walter was different than most Section operatives-a fighter to the end, despite the orders of his superiors.

He didn't know what Michael knew. Nikita had been given a choice. Michael, or Center. Love, or duty.

And she had chosen duty.

Michael didn't begrudge her the decision. Duty had married him to a woman he didn't love. Duty had created a child with no hope of growing up with a father. Duty had forced him to lie to Nikita for four years.

Section was not an institution that tolerated ambiguities. Choices were clear, not pleasant, and Nikita knew that as well as he did.

She had made her choice, and it required his death.

And despite his years of experience in Section, Walter would never accept that. But he had no time to have this conversation with Walter, even if he had wanted to.

"Thank you," he said, but his gratitude was not for the equipment. In time, perhaps Walter would understand that. He picked up his supplies, leaving the solvents and compressor sitting on the table, and headed for Van Access, where the members of his last team were waiting.

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

It doesn't matter what I want.
It doesn't matter what I need.
It doesn't matter if I cry,
Don't matter if I bleed.
Feel the sting of tears
Falling on this face you loved for years.

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

The emergence into the forest was like rebirth, as he was dragged from the comfort of certain death into a confusing daylit world.

He was alive, thanks to Nikita. Unexpectedly, painfully alive. Whether he would stay that way remained to be seen.

"We're clear," Nikita announced, her tone crisp and business-like.

Not for long, they weren't. "Four minutes," he replied. "Then we'll be in range of Map C-Two." And with Section's attention already focused on the area surrounding the hostile compound, it would only be another two or three minutes before someone in Comm picked them up. There were many questions he wanted answered, but they had only minutes to talk.

"Why did you break protocol?" he asked. The old Nikita had made a habit of defying orders, but he hadn't expected it from the new, establishment Nikita.

She scanned the woods surrounding them, already searching for signs of pursuit. "I wasn't ready to see you die."

"Are you out?" He already knew the answer. She would never act so efficiently and coldly if she were free. But he wanted to hear her say it, explain her actions.

"No, I've got to go back. But you can make it." Reaching into her bag, she brought out a field router, pressing it into his hand. "This will jam their frequency long enough to get you out of the hemisphere. Take it."

He regarded it for a moment, then looked back up at her face. "What about you?"

A half-smile crossed her face, but with the sunglasses, he couldn't see if it reached her eyes. "I'll be all right. I've got a card to play. They owe me this one."

He mentally translated that. Center owed her a debt for her long undercover mission...and rather than save that debt for a time when she might need it, she was exploiting it now.

To set him free.

Love, or duty? Apparently, she'd created a third option.

"Come with me." Maybe there was still a chance for them, despite the mistakes they had both made. The weeks that they'd spent together, on the outside, had been the happiest of his life, despite the constant threat of capture. If she wanted it, he would fight to make it happen.

But she was already shaking her head. "I can't."

Why? Why bother saving his life if she didn't want to be with him? He reached for her and lifted her sunglasses, hoping her eyes would reveal what she was feeling. Normally so expressive, they were shuttered, almost lifeless.

"Is that what you want?" he asked.

She paused, as if preparing herself, and then looked at him coldly. "I don't love you. I never did."

Too late. It had come to this. They had been given a chance at happiness, and they had both failed. And now, Nikita was pushing him away. She obviously cared for him. She was risking Center's displeasure to set him free. But she wasn't willing to take the chance with him. Too scared, perhaps, or too guilty.

He understood her feelings. He just didn't agree.

Reaching for his field knife, he drew it out of its sheath. He laid the point on the skin directly under his eye and pressed in and down, feeling the skin part under the razor-sharp blade. As the warm blood began to flow, she looked away, unable to maintain her uncaring pretense in the face of this ultimate symbol of their complicated relationship.

Blood and tears.

So she wanted him to go. Fine. If she wanted to sever the ties between them, he wouldn't argue. But he wouldn't go to extraordinary lengths to hide from Section, either. The situation hadn't changed since she'd first ordered his cancellation. She would live, and maybe even prosper, and that was all he needed to know. His survival was inconsequential.

He handed her the field router, took one last look, and walked away.

But she refused to let him go.

"Michael," she called out. "Without the field router, Section will detect you. I can get Center to look the other way if you vanish, but if Section finds out you're not dead, they'll hunt you down."

He stopped his retreat and turned to face her. Her haunted gaze met his own.

"Does it matter?"

She walked toward him slowly, deliberately, until she stood in front of him. Reaching up, she smoothed two fingers under his eye and down onto his cheek, gathering the blood that had flowed from his self-inflicted cut. As if the motion hurt her, she smeared the blood under her own eye, mimicking the tear that stained his face.

"Yes, it does," she whispered. "It always did."

They faced each other, and as her eyes filled with tears that overflowed and mingled with the blood on her face, a thought occurred to him.

Life with Nikita, or life without Nikita? Maybe there was a third option for him as well.

He nodded slightly, and she activated the field router and handed it to him. A tentative smile crossed her face and for the first time since the whole ordeal had begun, she looked hopeful.

As she turned and walked away, he tucked the field router into his jacket and began making plans for his new life on the outside. She wanted him to survive, and so he would, away from Section and the life he had known for the past ten years.

He would leave...but he would not go far.