RATING: I would say, oh, PG-13 for blood and stuff kids shouldn’t think about SPOILERS: Season 4 through “Hell Hath No Fury”; Season 3 opening arc; “Simone”; “Half Life” SUMMARY: A vignette about Madeline at the end of the ep, “Hell Hath No Fury” DISCLAIMER: I am in no way affiliated with USA Networks, Warner Brothers or Fireworks -- if I was, I’d certainly conceal my activities better.

Rationally, Madeline knew she was overreacting.

Logically, she knew that her sobs, her tears, her fingers clutching at Leon’s still-warm skin were all signs of embarrassing weakness. Inferiority. Knew her voice repeating broken, useless phrases would be used against her at some point in the future; Paul wasn’t one to let such an opportunity go to waste. He hadn’t needed to shoot her, after all. Eye for eye, bullet for bullet.

Paul would be upset; she made a mental note to reassure him. Later.

Madeline knew that if she had full control of her emotions, she would be disgusted by her stereotypically feminine behavior. The inconsolable woman, shrugging off Nikita’s pitying hand and ignoring Paul’s snapped orders.

Madeline could not stop the hurt, the choking sounds dying half-swallowed in her throat like a throttled bird.

It was absurd, what she was doing, bruising her knees on the concrete and crying over a man that did not deserve emotion. The Enemy. Even if he was more like herself than perhaps anyone she had ever met.

It only made sense; the only person who had a chance of breaking Madeline was lying in a widening pool of his own congealing blood. And in the end, she had won.

Madeline tried to keep the end game in mind. Winning should be -- had always been -- everything.

Perhaps it also made sense that she would give anything for this mock-betrayal of Section to be real. That she could have really loved, felt. That she could finally end it with a sweeping, final stroke rather than a minuscule miscalculation. Something real. Something other than the push of a button or a cancellation order. Something that she’d resorted to dangerous surgery to accomplish: to fully experience emotion.

But Madeline knew better than to wish.

Her eyes burned. Her nose was clogged. Her knuckles hurt from where she was clutching Leon. How utterly undignified.

And yet, she couldn’t stop herself from indulging in narcissistic hysteria. She had led Leon to his death. Her death. The end of their professional rivalry and personal relationship. The end of he who understood.

The end of herself as an emotionless being.

Madeline allowed herself to indulge in the pain. Her narrow world had just grown a shade more gray, aligning itself, she realized with bleak humor, with her office walls. She didn’t want to explain why she was crying. Which was why she refused to rise until she felt the press of blunt fingers wrapping around her arm.

Michael. Pulling her up. Wordlessly.

She wanted to pretend that no one understood, but Michael did.

Madeline hated him for understanding. She hated that she needed him to understand, because no one else could.

Or would even be willing to try.

The schism between her logical and emotional beings wavered and remained split as Madeline leaned against Michael’s strong shoulder. He ought to have no compassion for her; despite all her training, Madeline had to wonder if it was a failure on her part -- or on his.

Madeline hid her face and leaned a little more, instinctively sensing that Michael would not use her momentary weakness to rip into the exposed underbelly she’d never admitted that she possessed. She couldn’t say why she trusted Michael to lead her away from temptation and back to herself.

But then, Madeline had never seen Michael plot against a broken thing. And Madeline was indeed broken, shattered like an assaulted pane of bulletproof glass only held together by an outer coating. A coating applied to vulnerable inner contents like a lacquer.

Breaking and grinding the broken into submission was her forte, after all.

She had done it to Michael often enough that he ought to be fully aware of the fact.

And yet, he was helping her.

Madeline was too wounded to understand why.

Maybe that was the point.

Madeline held her head up as Michael guided her out of the dank building. Ever thoughtful -- a talent which made him one of Section’s most valuable Valentine Operatives -- Michael interposed his body between her and the curious eyes of their subordinate cold operatives. Then they were outside; he lifted her when Madeline found she could no longer walk and that she’d lost possession of her left shoe. Madeline discovered, to her faint surprise, that the crook of Michael’s neck was indeed a comforting place to rest her head.

It seemed more suprising to her that she had never taken the opportunity to rest her head there until now.

“Madeline,” Michael said. His accented voice reverberated through his chest. She raised her head. “Madeline,” he repeated.

She was sitting in the back of an empty Section van on the lump of a wheel-well. Michael kneeled in front of her, performing field triage on her wound. Aghast, Madeline found herself whimpering, “Leon.”

Her teeth clicked together as she attempted to stop.

Callused fingers slid under her chin, her skin still damp with tears and blood, and tilted her head up. Madeline met Michael’s gaze, stared into familiar green-shaded eyes. “Madeline,” he said again.

She recognized the look in his eyes.

If that look had been pity, Madeline would have grabbed Michael’s knife from his thigh sheath to slice a smile into his neck.

The look was not pity and Michael lived, stoic face intact. It was for the best; Michael’s reflex times were faster than Madeline’s even when he wasn’t on active field duty.

“No,” Madeline said, testing the word. Then again because two letters didn’t encompass enough pain, “No.”

Michael blinked. His eyes darkened while she watched. “Yes, Madeline.”

It was over. She knew this. Admitting Leon was dead and fully acknowledging her own reactions, Madeline decided, could wait for her to thoroughly experience the denial stage.

She pulled back from him, not wanting to touch anything living that wasn’t Leon. Michael reached forward anyway and tucked her bloody clothing back into place over the pristine white bandage.

“Will it pass?”

He cocked his head. Full lips twitched in a humorless smile and then smoothed back into an expressionless, sensual line. “No.”

“Never?”

“No.”

Madeline sniffed, the damp, sucking sound nearly making her cringe. Michael had done this before and managed to keep his grief mostly in private. SimoneReneElenaAdamNikita. And countless others, whose names had faded because they weren’t as massively important. Because they hadn’t left gaping wounds in Michael’s psyche. Wounds he’d been berated for possessing, for allowing himself to be wounded in the first place. Wounds she had observed and prodded, like a malicious child picking at someone else’s scab.

Yet, he’d managed.

In public, he hadn’t made near a spectacle of himself even after he’d lost his son.

She could do this.

She could.

“Madeline,” Michael said again.

She finally realized what he was doing by repeating her name and nodded. Nodded and centered and started to come back to herself, back to who Madeline was. Back to who Madeline was not.

And by no means was Madeline this, this weak creature. This broken thing.

No, not this.

Michael saw her trying. He saw her trying to come back to being Madeline like a paraplegic relearning how to walk and shifted up from his knees to sit, in wait, on the opposite side of the van.

He would not have to wait long.

The End

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