***AUTHOR’S NOTE’S**** Summary: A short, Michael POV of the "office scene" in No One Lives Forever. Spoilers: Season 4, including No One Lives Forever. Rating: PG Disclaimer: Don't own 'em, just wrote this particular story, can't copyright it and please don't reproduce it without asking first. ;-)

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Michael stared after the closed door, one hand supporting him as he leaned heavily against his desk. When he had entered his office and found Nikita there, arrogantly sitting in his chair with her back to the door, he immediately assumed something was wrong. And when his eyes had lowered to see the gun resting in plain view, Michael felt his insides nudge themselves around to make room for an emotion he had not felt in years.

Panic.

He had felt disappointment, true, when Madeline had informed him that Nikita was in custody. If only for the tiny ounce of hope that he had allowed to survive within him, in the part where Nikita usually resided, after she had failed to arrive for their meeting. Hope that Nikita had decided not to come, to stay on the outside. To be free. He knew the hope was a useless exercise, but irregardless kept it for a few hours as a shrine to her memory; Nikita would have liked that, maybe done the same.

The disappointment had widened and deepened, winnowed into a morass of crags with the emotional talus of their relationship littering the bottom at the sight of her slumped shoulders and blue eyes laden with codependency.

He had not been relieved at all. She still breathed, but as long as she remained in Section, Nikita did not live.

Not even with him.

Michael knew this, and quietly despised himself for still needing her.

But he had endeavored to stay calm. Rational in the face of her irrationality. Her eyes had changed since he saw her last in her cell, perched shoeless on a bench. They were cold. Colder than he had ever seen them, even after the Gelman process. Her eyes then had not only been remote, but also vague. It had been the amorphous distaste of an automaton.

Essentially nothing personal.

Michael had dealt with it in his own way. With avoidance. Subornation.

And a tight, tight ache in the center of his chest that had not gone away until his Nikita had finally opened her eyes, and made love to him. An ache that had reappeared when Nikita had married Helmut Volker

His success had been evidenced by his steady numbers. Getting the momentary drop on Operations in his aerie had almost been worth the pain.

Michael’s immense capacity for endurance of pain had dulled its effects, after all.

But this was an entirely new brand of coldness. He had been jolted momentarily by the fact that Nikita reminded him of Operations like this and his knees had gone weak. In fact, his knees had buckled and he covered for the betrayal of his body by crouching.

Yes, panic seemed the word to describe it.

Michael had guessed that Nikita was fishing for something. Information, perhaps. At least, he hoped she had had a purpose for invading his office and staring at him with those cold, cold eyes. Eyes like frost on flowers. He guessed that she had a mission and was finding it difficult to complete. Nikita had come to him for reassurance, a gentling hand against her eyebrow. Maybe a whispered murmur that everything would be all right.

It had occurred to him -- crouching on the floor beside his chair, so close to her sloping thigh that he ought to be feeling the first stirrings of desire -- it might be possible that Nikita had not withstood the strain of being set free.

Perhaps she was broken.

Her strength of spirit may have been her greatest asset, but even Nikita could only shoulder so much in such a short span of time. Maybe she had gone just the slightest bit mad in order to cope.

Even if she had, he knew he would not turn her in. Wondered, then, what she might do with the gun.

This crystal creature would never turn the gun on herself. On that, he had been sure.

Therefore Michael had panicked.

He had just picked up and reassembled all her broken pieces. He did not want to do it again. It did not appear that he had done a very good restoration job the last time around and it frightened him that he might lose more of her with another round of his inept fumbling.

He was no Pygmalion. Not even superficially. He was not a misogynist and had married more than once. Willing or no.

And Pygmalion had managed to sculpt something beautiful and begged for it to be imbued with life. He had been granted Galatea, a living, breathing woman. His creation had borne him a child, had loved him.

Michael had only managed the opposite; he had taken a warm, beautiful thing and turned it into marble. Yet even marble did not possess eyes as cold as Nikita’s. Marble could chip. Marble slowly dissolved under acid. Marble warmed under the sun.

Right then, Nikita could not have been cut with the dust of diamonds.

Panic nudged its way up from his entrails and savagely bit at his heart and lungs, depriving him of blood and air. Michael sat at his desk and his arms raised, wrists automatically arching to type. He did not know what to do. There was nothing to pray to, no one to back him up, and not a certainty in his mind that Nikita was still sane. Or still his.

Yet Michael still loved her.

This was his Galatea. She scared the hell out of him.

THE END

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