Set between Mercy and Hard Landing. All standard disclaimers apply. ------------------------------------------------------------------

The explosion still blazed in his mind. Even after nearly six months, Walter couldn't cope with his rage and guilt over the tragic end to the Shays mission. Certainly, his regrets didn't center on the demise of that poor shmuck Stanley, though he did feel a bit sorry for the little guy. Rather, he brooded over his inability to save his surrogate daughter. Over and over in his mind he screamed, "That's Nikita in there!" Over and over he heard the cold reply, "That's not the mission profile."

"Adrian would have never allowed something like this to happen", he mused to himself, since the open mention of Section's former leader was a quick route to abeyance. Walter frequently missed the good old Cold War days, when the enemy was clearly known. Section was a different organization then, relying on operatives being recruited from the ranks of the military and intelligence communities. The idea of recruiting hardened killers from prison was anathema to Adrian. That was Paul's brainchild.

Walter remembered the first time he heard Paul, now Operations, propose his vision of recruitment. "If we make them disappear, with the threat of death for disobedience, we will have the ultimate control. We can break them down with no consideration of outside interference. Our people will be trained and molded to be perfect machines, who will do what they are told unquestioningly. Questions, doubts, revolts of any kind will be grounds for immediate cancellation.

"Can you imagine what this will do for Section One? We will be able to do what no other Section could ever accomplish. No mission will be refused, even one likely to end in death. No operative will be able to quit over a fit of conscience or pique. We recruit those who have neither the conscience to be bothered by killing nor the brains to organize a revolt against us. A select few, with the qualities to become leaders will be among the recruits. They will be even more carefully controlled than the rest to ensure they won't rebel. Eventually, they will be promoted in our ranks and allowed to lead the others.

"This one, a young French bomber looks like an excellent candidate for the second group. He has great intelligence, courage and conviction. Unfortunately for him, a fringe extremest group recruited him at a vulnerable time in his life. We can mold this young man into our finest weapon."

At the time, Walter had mixed feelings about the approach that Operations was taking. On the one hand, he despised the idea of mixing with the kind of gutter trash they were supposed to turn into commandos. On the other hand, the idea of saving a promising young man like Michael from a wasted life in prison appealed to Walter greatly. He too had reviewed Michael's file and seen great promise in the young man's life.

Over the years, Walter had developed a great admiration for Michael. His instincts in the field were uncanny; making him the best field operative Section One had ever produced. He surpassed even the many traditional recruits from the ranks of the CIA and the Mossad that had passed through the steely halls of One over the years. Michael's tactical skills were unparalleled; allowing him to be quickly promoted to team leader, and eventually aiding him to gain the coveted Level Five status.

All of this made Walter's current project harder. He was going to kill Michael.

***********

Michael sat in his office after the disaster at the Mayflower. The ache in his backside from that damn dog's bite was almost a welcome distraction for the ache in his heart at being forced to return to Valentine duty. Somehow, he had lost his ability to completely divorce the physical from the emotional. He felt every inch the whore Section had forced him to be.

He engaged his scrambler and stared at the blank screen on his laptop. Over and over in his mind he heard Walter screaming, "That's Nikita in there!" Over and over he heard his own cold reply, "That's not the mission profile." He thought of Stanley Shays and wished for the thousandth time that he had gone back and cancelled the awkward young genius personally.

The knowledge that Nikita's breakdown over killing in cold blood was inevitable gave him no consolation. He had run the sims using her psych profile 50 different ways and the conclusion was always the same. She would break down. She would be cancelled. She would be gone. There was no long-term life for Nikita in Section. Michael knew this from their first meeting, but had worked against it mightily until the end. "Why can't you just do the job?" he had asked her, when he knew the answer better than she did herself. She wasn't a killer; she never had been.

Operations had broken every rule in his own book when he targeted the young girl for recruitment. He was considering a switch in Section One's recruitment practices. For all intents and purposes, the inhabitants of the street had already disappeared from the face of the earth. Nobody cared about them; nobody would miss them. The insane along with the hopeless alcoholics would make perfect human shields in certain situations. Conceivably, given enough detoxification and training, one of them might turn out to have some skill and be used for cold ops. In any event, the cost of recruitment would be significantly less without the need for establishing elaborate cover stories for their disappearance.

In order to pilot his ultimate program to get approval to implement it, Operations needed a candidate with a reasonable chance to become a functioning operative. That meant searching for one of the younger members of the homeless community. They needed someone searching for a parental figure, a deep need that Section could fill. Intelligence and physical condition were critical elements as well, in order to ensure rapid success in the rigorous training program. The only complication to the plan was that a homeless teenager could have parents looking for them. Therefore, they would need to modify their current recruitment strategy slightly. Section would manufacture their murderer, by any means necessary.

Michael turned back to his screen and typed his daily plea, "Nikita are you there?" The blank square rewarded his perserverence with silence.

He wished he were dead.

***********

"Ever since we took out one of their outposts six months ago, the Freedom League has accelerated their attacks." While Walter visibly grimaced at Operation's nonchalant reference to Nikita's death, Michael showed no outward reaction. "We have just brought in Stuart Sherrin, a money launderer who has recently done a large amount of business with the League. We have learned from him that the League plans to kidnap an engineer with security clearance to the nuclear research facility in Lyons.

"The team will follow the kidnappers back to their headquarters and eliminate the facility. This should allow us to wipe out most of their command and control capability. Details are on your panels. You leave within the hour."

Walter walked back to his area, thinking only that it would be a rough sort of justice for Michael to die in a mission against the Freedom League. Memories of Sugar popping gum while loading her Glock made him smile. He missed her sunny smile, her quirky sunglasses and her enthusiasm for lowcut fashion. She had been the daughter he wished he could have had in another life and a warmer place.

He remembered the first time he saw the odd looking teenager roaming the halls of Section. "That little girl killed a cop in cold blood? No way. Look at her eyes." he remembered telling Birkhoff.

"No, really, she did", Birkhoff assured him, "She practically gutted the guy. She was standing over him with the knife in her hand and blood all over her when the cops showed up. They pulled her off death row to bring her here."

"I'm surprised at you, Birkhoff. Haven't you been here long enough to know that everything isn't what it seems? You have set up more fake background cover stories than anyone. You know what they can do. Something is up. Operations wants that girl for a reason. You can count on it." As he came to know Nikita over the next two years, Walter became more convinced that he was right and that she was incapable of doing the crime that landed her in Section.

Because that sweet girl wouldn't kill an innocent man in cold blood, Section deemed her dangerous and undesirable. Walter had grown to expect that from Operations and Madeleine. What he couldn't believe was that Michael could knowingly send her to her death and not lift a finger to save her. She trusted Michael with her life because she loved him. Now that she was gone, she would have to rely on those who loved her back to let Michael know just how little he deserved that love.

As he assembled the weapons for the team leaving for Lyons, Walter made his decision. He picked up each clip that Michael would be using and carefully swapped out the third bullet in each with one just slightly too big. Not enough of a difference to be visible on inspection, but enough to jam once Michael attempted to fire the third round.

He wouldn't be coming back this time.

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

Awaiting the arrival of the Freedom League kidnappers, Michael let his mind wander to that other fateful kidnapping. Stanley Shays was a bona fide geek. He was a wonder kid ready to do work his chemical genius as long as somebody kept him in raw materials, Jolt and Snickers bars. Unfortunately, Section didn’t get him first. He had been picked up by a mercenary accountant smart enough to know the value of what Stanley could produce, but dumb enough to think he could sell it to the highest bidder with no repercussions. Stanley was oblivious to it all. He was a classic little boy; blowing things up with little thought to anything but the pleasure of witnessing the explosion.

Placing Nikita in charge of Stanley and then ordering her to kill him was an obvious test of her loyalty to Section. Operations and Madeleine needed to know if they could change the basic nature of their operatives, in the name of a common good. For the most part, Nikita had taken that message to heart. She learned how to fight, how to protect herself and her team in the field, and how to effectively take out a target. She was coming around to the idea that Section's ruthless tactics really did have a positive effect on the world at large. She wasn't ready to admit it openly, but Michael was starting to see a change in her.

He was proud of her prowess in the field and her growing tactical skill. Secretly, he also lauded her for retaining her grip on her innate humanity and not giving in to the desensitizing pressure of Section. His protective self, however, wished she could lose just enough of that moral barrier to do the job and stay alive. When she came back from the warehouse without cancelling Stanley, he was both elated and devastated. Elated that she was still herself and devastated about what the future would hold for her in Section if she couldn't get over protecting even semi-innocents like Stanley.

After the blown mission, he found her with a gun to her head, trying to muster an inner darkness to help her pull the trigger. Though her sadness and dispair threatened to overwhelm her, Nikita couldn't bring herself to end it. Michael knew the end would most likely be arranged for her. If he knew Madeleine, she'd arrange things so that he would be the one to put out her light.

When Nikita appeared for the suicide mission, Michael's fears were confirmed. Fortunately, he had already prepared an exit profile for her just in case she was one of the abeyance operatives assigned to die destroying the Freedom League. He had run the sims a dozen times in his office, and he knew that she had an 85% chance of surviving if he gave her two minutes warning to get out of the building. The numbers went down if he factored in her searching for Stanley, but there was no way he could control that. He prayed she would choose her own life and freedom over Stanley's.

He still didn't know if she had. So, every time he closed his eyes, Walter's screams echoed in his mind while flames soared and crackled. She died a thousand times a day, cursing him and his dedication to Section and its rules.

"Michael, they're moving", his partner informed him, moving the car toward the gate. Michael sensed something was wrong and saw the rocket launcher being aimed at the car from the top of the building. Smoothly exiting the car, he told his partner to "Get out". Unfortunately, the warning came too late. Michael took out the first two terrorists rushing at him without batting an eye. As he whirled around to take the third shot, he saw the remaining two bodies fall. He searched for the origin of the shots and saw her. Even with her hair hidden under the parka's hood, he knew her.

She was alive. And so was he.

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

He already regretted what he had done. Walter realized that he had forgotten the true way to show he loved Nikita was to become more like her. She would have never attempted to kill a fellow operative in cold blood for following painful orders. She might not have gone for a beer with them afterwards, but she would never have attempted to take bloody revenge.

A rough smile split his face when he recalled how well she dealt with his 'dirty-old-man' act. She had been wrong; he knew that he could easily have gone all night with her and come out smiling. Widely. And, even if he couldn't survive it, he would have gone happy.

Michael's team returning from Lyon brought Walter out of his reverie. He was startled to see Michael walk through the door. The younger man's face was impassive as always, but something in his manner had changed. Walter assumed it was a near death experience, but as he broke Michael's weapons down for cleaning and storage, he saw that the third round hadn't been chambered and the other clips were unused. Michael didn't know that Walter had tried to kill him.

A few days went by, as other options for taking on the Freedom League were profiled, rejected and reprofiled. Then the rumors started circulating through Section.

"Walter, did you hear? Nikita is alive! The Freedom League has had her captive for the last six months! A mission is on pad to take them out and bring her back", Birkhoff informed him. Both of them prayed this mission would fare better for Nikita than the earlier one to save Simone. What kind of condition would she be in after six months in the hands of terrorists? From all accounts, Simone was subhuman after Sparks had his fun with her. He could wait, he could hope, but more directly, he could go equip Michael to make sure he had more than enough firepower to get the job done.

As he watched Michael bring a bruised and battered Nikita through the door, Walter's heart nearly burst. Tears sprang to his eyes as he saw his girl come to the only home left for her. When he looked into her eyes, Walter's hopes were realized.

His Sugar had come home.

End