Fanfic: Someone Borrowed - Part III (Michael/Nikita, pg-13)
III. never thought I'd live to see it break
Nikita's head is spinning as she ascends the staircase, Michael at her heels. Somewhere in the back of her mind she wonders if this is all a dream, if they're really about to do this.
Abruptly, Michael stops walking in the middle of the hallway, using their linked hands to twist her around and into his arms.
She's content for a moment to let him take the lead, completely satisfied to let Michael press her against the wall and kiss her so thoroughly that any uncertainty about this course of action melts away.
Then she takes charge, and they spin as they travel down the hallway and through the bedroom door, carelessly shedding clothes along the way. Her jacket hits the floor; his shirt joins it a second later.
There's a raw, burning desperation here, but it's tempered by the desire to take it slow - make each moment last. They might never have this again, and Nikita wants to remember every minute of it.
She doesn't know where they'll be tomorrow or even the day after that. Today, he's willing to be hers. She'll take whatever he gives her; it'll have to be enough.
All this time they've wasted waiting for something to give; all these weeks spent struggling against something that right now feels so right. It's less about lust - although that is there, blinding and fiery - and more about this deep yearning to connect with someone, to feel human again.
They tumble onto the bed in a chaotic heap, rolling over so Nikita's on top, straddling him. She runs her fingers across his jaw line and leans down to press a slow kiss on his lips.
His hands reach up to cup her cheeks; the touch is reverent. Her eyes slip shut as their bodies turn over again so he can settle on top of her, hands running down her curves and gently gripping her thighs. Hard calluses brush against soft skin.
"Nikita," he whispers in a low, rough voice.
And then she just gives in completely.
It's not perfect, yet - so much like the house they've found themselves living in - that's what makes it perfect. It's flawed, but they wouldn't be Michael and Nikita without their flaws.
Here they are, stripped bare. No Percy, no Amanda, no Division.
Right here, right now, they are Michael and Nikita the way they were always meant to be.
Together.
"Are you going to tell me this was a mistake?" Nikita whispers against his chest later, drawing slow spirals on his skin with the tip of her forefinger. As much as she tries to dampen it down, this fear that Michael will want to pretend this never happened keeps crawling under her skin. Michael might be able to delude himself; Nikita can't. She's wanted this for far too long, and now that the dream has become reality, the prospect of letting it go feels like the worst thing in the world.
He doesn't answer for a long moment, but his fingers begin to skim lightly up and down her bare back, tracing the curvature of her spine. The motion is slow and remarkably comforting. Shifting slightly against him, Nikita moves to lay her head on his chest so she doesn't have to look him in the eye.
"No," he answers finally, his voice low and almost inaudible. "I'm not."
He finds her hand and presses a kiss against her knuckles. The lovingness of the gesture takes her breath away.
A tiny smile pulls at the corners of Nikita's lips as her eyes drift shut. Fully content with that small-but-significant reassurance, she lets the steady rise and fall of his chest and the soothing caress of his hand lull her to sleep.
In the morning they dance around each other with shy smiles and bashful, lingering touches. She places a light kiss on his jaw as she adjusts his tie, his fingers brush hers as he hands her a cup of coffee, she draws her own hand across his shoulder blades as she moves around the kitchen table to sit down across form him. Her whole body comes alive at the mere thought of his touch, and she shifts restlessly in her seat.
After a silent breakfast - during which Michael studies the paper like he's planning to take an exam on the daily headlines, and Nikita mostly picks at her food - they both flee in different directions. Nikita goes upstairs to change; Michael starts gathering his things downstairs.
"Nikita," he calls up the stairs a few minutes later. "I'm leaving."
"Alright," she steps out of the bedroom and stands on the top step, peering down at Michael as he places a hand on the front doorknob. He hesitates.
It's enough to make her walk down the stairs and step straight into his arms. She presses her lips chastely against his cheek, but before she can pull away completely, he's got his arms wrapped around her waist and his lips are moving against hers.
"I'll see you later tonight," he promises in a thick voice.
When he leaves, she shuts the door behind him and leans back against it, completely aware that she's grinning like an idiot.
Tonight can't come soon enough.
In the meantime, Nikita has a book club meeting to attend.
It's almost unfortunate that the woman Nikita is portraying is supposed to have a fondness for classic Literature, because although Nikita knows the basic gist of Jane Austen's Persuasion - Carla's chosen book, since she asked Nikita for her favorite book and Nikita automatically answered straight from the dossier Amanda had given her - she's not completely certain about many of the details of the novel. She had the foresight, following one of their conversations on the subject, to pick up a copy of Jane Austen for Dummies at her local bookstore, but even that doesn't seem to help her much.
It's not because Nikita's dumb; it's because Nikita's distracted. The meeting is being held at the Bower's home, and Nikita has explicit orders to at the very least check out the security surrounding John's office.
So towards the end of the hour, when the conversation turns from the novel's connection to Northanger Abbey to the significance of the title and whether or not it was chosen by Jane Austen or her brother Henry, Nikita excuses herself to go to the bathroom.
"Use the one upstairs, it's the first door on the right," Carla tells her. "The downstairs bath is being renovated."
Nikita almost can't believe her luck. John's office is at the end of the hall, secured by a single lock on the door handle. The twist of a hairpin releases the lock and Nikita steps in, closing the door behind her. Her socked feet don't make a sound on the plush carpet. After searching though the enormous bookshelves and all the unlocked desk drawers, Nikita can only conclude that the journal rests in the only locked drawer in the room. (Assuming, of course, that there are no other hidden compartments or safes she hasn't found.)
She picks at the lock for a few minutes, but the sound of someone coming up the stairs causes her to flee.
Nikita sprints down the hallway and rounds the corner near the stairs quickly.
She stops short in her tracks.
Carla climbs the final step and presses the barrel of a gun to Nikita's forehead. There's an alarmingly smug smirk on her face.
"Hello, Nikita."
"Carla," Nikita tries to keep her voice even, level. "What's going on?"
"My husband is a very paranoid man. So paranoid, in fact, that he's installed sensors to alert him every time his office door is opened. It opened a few minutes ago, and the only one up there was you. So. What were you doing, Nikita?"
"I just…went to the wrong room on accident." Nikita smiles, trying to maintain her innocence until the last moment. Maybe she hasn't blown it just yet.
"I would love to believe you," Carla says. "Really, I would. But John locked the door this morning. You couldn't have opened it by accident. Which makes me wonder: Who are you, and what do you want?"
Raising her hands slowly, Nikita takes a step backwards. Carla follows her. "Right now, I really want you to put the gun away."
Instinct and training snap together quickly. In one fluid motion, Nikita surges forward and grabs Carla's wrist, twisting it so she loses her grip on the weapon. It only takes a second, but that's enough time for Carla to retaliate by slamming the heel of her hand into Nikita's jaw.
It's then that the quick scuffle escalates into an all-out brawl that quickly culminates in the two women tumbling down the stairs, only earning a nice display of bruises for their efforts.
Nikita rises to her feet first and scrambles for the kitchen. There's a back door in the Bowers' house, and that is her target. Bullets whiz by, but either Carla's a poor shot or she isn't actually trying to hit Nikita. The woman overtakes her from behind as Nikita crosses the threshold and enters the kitchen, and for a moment when Carla's think arms lock securely around her neck, Nikita actually feels worried. But then she twists in Carla's grasp and shoves the woman backwards, using her thin frame to slam her body against the wall. This loosens Carla's hold so Nikita can squirm free.
She rushes away from Carla, towards the block of knives sitting on the counter. She flings the first one she grabs at her attacker and it lodges itself in her thigh. After pulling the impromptu weapon out of her leg, Carla ducks so the next blade Nikita throws embeds itself in the wall behind her instead of in her flesh.
When Carla apparently decides that Nikita has the upper hand for the moment and dashes from the room, Nikita faces a decision: let the woman run off to call her husband and run the risk of Michael being killed, or risk her current state of well-being to try and stop her.
It's not much of a debate.
Nikita catches up to her in the living room and the fight that ensues would put many other more experienced Division agents to shame.
But Nikita was trained by Michael, so every hit, punch and kick involves strategy as well as instinct. As Michael once put it: well-honed instinct serves Nikita well, but when complemented by her natural quick thinking, she's darn near unstoppable.
But not completely unstoppable.
Unfortunately.
Because if Nikita was completely unstoppable, Carla wouldn't have been able to blindside her with the electrical stunner hidden underneath the couch.
Michael's cover is blown.
He doesn't know exactly how; he just knows that John tries to shot him, fails and all Michael can think is that he has to find Nikita and make sure that she's alright.
She's supposed to be attending a book club meeting at the Bowers' residence, but he arrives to find their home deserted, furniture overturned, decorations thrown from the walls. There's a knife buried a good four inches deep in one of the kitchen walls and a pool of blood on the white tile. He shudders to think that the blood is Nikita's, even though he knows that it could very well belong to whoever she'd thrown the knife at. In this instance, that person could very well be Carla.
He calls Division, and Percy tells him to come back in immediately, to leave Nikita behind.
Michael can't do that; he won't. So he hangs up on his mentor and calls Birkhoff instead. He orders him to activate Nikita's tracking chip.
"I'd love to, dude," Birkhoff grumbles, "but it's either out of range or she's been taken underground. I've been telling Percy for years that the latest changes I've made needed to be retroactive, but does anybody listen to me?"
Figuring that since Birkhoff already knows nobody is really listening to him, he might as well prove him right; Michael abruptly disconnects the call without saying goodbye.
His mind begins running through the locations he knows John's used, eliminating ones his cover would know about. John wouldn't take Nikita anywhere he thought Michael could find her, but there are at least three places Michael suspects John might have taken her, none of which have any qualities that would mess with her tracker.
For a moment, just a moment, he wonders if maybe it's all futile. What if she's dead?
His stomach turns at the thought.
Sometime later, Nikita wakes up to the shock of freezing cold water being thrown over her body. She's in the trunk of a car, staring up at two of the ugliest men she's ever seen. Bower's goons. Fantastic.
One lifts her out of the trunk with one arm.
"Search her!" John Bower barks as his men drag a thrashing Nikita into the ancient warehouse. "Thoroughly," he adds as if it's an afterthought.
Roughly, they strip her down to her undergarments under the guise of searching for wires or bugs.
"You think you're gonna break me?" she taunts. "You've got another thing coming."
Bower leers at her, tongue skimming across his top lip as his eyes rake up and down her body. She wants to take her knife and gouge his eyes out, but part of her thinks that would be entirely too kind.
"Where's Michael?"
John grins. "Sent him out to pick up lunch," he deadpans.
Nikita doesn't understand what that means; she just knows that she can't even allow herself to think that it might be code for "He's dead".
She feels sick.
The click of a woman's high-heels against the concrete floor causes Nikita to turn her head to the side. Carla glides up to her, brushing a long manicured finger across her cheek.
"Oh, Nikita," she sighs, brandishing a black plastic case and removing a long needle. "What are we going to do with you?"
Nikita doesn't know what they inject her with, just that it burns like hell and causes the whole world to blur before her eyes. It takes one measly shove from Carla to push her backwards into a waiting chair. They bind her wrists to the arms of the chair with zip ties; duct tape secures her legs.
Then the questions start, prying and relentless, and she fights against the overwhelming urge to tell them everything. About Division, about Michael, everything.
And when there is nothing more to say, no more of her soul to freely give away, no more ways she can betray Percy and Division and Michael, Carla slips a scrambled cell between her tied hands.
"Time to call your hubby," she jeers.
Nikita's vanished without a trace. Carla and John are equally well-hidden.
With nowhere else to look, Michael returns to their house. Michael curses loudly, just as his cell phone rings.
"Michael." There's a dead quality to Nikita's tone. Her words are slurred.
"Nikita? Where are you?"
"Michael, don't-"
"Hello, Michael," Carla's voice is impartial. "Let's get one thing straight. I know that you and Nikita aren't really husband and wife. I know that you were posing as a married couple to gain the trust of me and my husband. Nevertheless, one thing about your sham of a marriage was real: you're in love with her. So…unless you want me to kill her very, very slowly, you're going to do exactly as I say. Don't even think about playing the hero."
And because Carla is apparently right about his feelings for Nikita, Michael grits his teeth and does as he's told.
"What are you going to do to him?" Nikita doesn't think before she speaks; her words and her thoughts are running together in a horribly scary way.
"You'll find out." Carla says as John motions to his men. They move towards Nikita,
Nikita struggles and fights, but there are too many of them and their hands are everywhere.
Unceremoniously, they throw her into one of the huge shipping containers stacked in the center of the room and lock her inside.
It's dark and cold.
Nikita doesn't have an inherent dislike of confined spaces or darkness, for that matter, but the absolute blackness is disconcerting and the fact that she's practically naked in addition to being freezing and covered in filth only makes it worse.
Drawing her knees up to her chest, Nikita wraps her arms tightly around her legs and shivers.
She hopes Michael finds her soon.
Michael goes where he's supposed to go, obediently forfeits his weapons to John's goons, and even lets them rough him up a bit before they take him to John. Carla stands at her husband's side, and Michael notes the bruises on the woman's arms and the bandage wrapped around her thigh with a sense of satisfaction. Good for Nikita.
"Tell me, Michael, just what exactly you thought you were doing, sticking your nose into my business?" John's seething, pacing back and forth with his hands clasped behind his back. "I trusted you."
"Where's Nikita?" Michael asks.
"Isn't he a dear?" Carla sneers, stepping forwards. She turns to her husband. "I told you, darling. He loves her." She says it so matter-of-fact, like she's just said that the sky is blue and the grass is green and oh, by the way, Michael loves Nikita.
Why on earth did they even wonder if Carla was involved? Her brash attitude now, coupled with the comfortable way she's handling the black gun in her hands, makes Michael feel almost stupid for not putting more stock into the possibility of her participation in John's business.
Carla snaps her fingers and two of her underlings pry open the doors of the shipping container. A few seconds later they emerge with a dirty, only partially clothed Nikita. Michael watches as she winces and shies away from the light. Still, ever the fighter, the second her eyes focus on him she twists out of their hold and sprints towards him.
Two long strides are all it takes him to catch her halfway. Neither John nor Carla seems to care. In fact, it almost seems that they're rather pleased by the open display of affection since Michael and Nikita have nothing to gain by continuing their ruse and are simply confirming Carla's previous statement that the love between them is real.
Nikita curls her face into his shirt and clings to him for dear life; Michael steels himself for whatever retribution is soon to follow. John seems to have the same overpowering sense of vengeance that Michael often sees shining in Nikita's eyes. She pulls back slightly and their gazes connect.
She's wound up tightly, Michael can tell. Everything they've done to her - and Michael isn't even certain what they've done to her, just that her glazed eyes tell him some form of drugs were involved - keeps building and building inside. He's surprised that she hasn't snapped yet. Nikita's the strongest person he knows; it's never made her invulnerable.
Even through the haze, he sees that aforementioned spark in her eyes, and he knows she wants to fight. He almost shakes his head, but her lips are moving, silently counting down. One…two…
On three, they both spring into action. It's an explosion.
John, Carla, and their goons were all to preoccupied watching them act like the docile Michael and Nikita they'd come to know.
They've trained together enough to be intimately familiar with the other's strengths and weaknesses. They fight like one person, fitting together with a flawlessness that enables them to surmount innumerable odds. They're a team: mentor and student who are quickly becoming equals.
The fact that the Bowers' goons are armed doesn't even play into the situation. Nikita's disarmed the first and shot the second before it even matters, and between her and Michael, it only takes a grand total of fifteen seconds before all the extra players are out of the equation.
In the chaos that follows, John grabs Nikita at the same time Michael gains the upper hand on Carla. John has the barrel of his gun pressed to Nikita's temple, and Michael has one arm around Carla's neck, and the other steadies the Glock pointed at John.
It's just the two couples - Michael and Carla, John and Nikita - facing off. Weapons drawn, safety's off, and trigger fingers getting itchier with every passing second.
"Now." John's chest is heaving, but the fact that Michael could easily kill his own wife doesn't seem to faze him at all. "You two might have lied about a lot of things, but one thing was real. You're in love with her."
Nikita's blinking furiously and trying to mouth something, but Michael can't quite catch it. What he does catch is the glimmer of a blade in her left hand. How on earth did John miss it?
"What is this all about, Michael?" John asks, "Do you want my business? Is that it?"
Michael just snaps Carla's neck. Breathing heavily, he looks up as her body hits the floor to see that Nikita's driven her knife into John's thigh. She disarms and kills him in movements so fluid they almost look effortless.
The moment his body hits the floor, Nikita collapses. The adrenaline rush got her this far, but now that the imminent danger is gone, she's obviously fading fast. Michael manages to catch her before she falls completely, but she's already losing consciousness.
"Michael," she whispers in a soft, vulnerable voice, "can we go?"
He lifts her into his arms easily.
"Yeah," he says. "Let's go."
Back at Division, Michael's stuck filling out papers for hours while the doctors examine Nikita. Not knowing how she's doing kills him, but he tells himself that there is a limit to how concerned he can be. Inside Division, she's not the woman he loves - and damn if he doesn't have to stop thinking of her like that - she's an asset. Plain and simple.
"She's in pretty rough shape," Birkhoff tells him when he stops by under the guise of refilling Michael's coffee. "Doc says she was beaten badly, but she'll recover. The sadistic son of a bitch broke every finger on her left hand before you got there."
Michael's not exactly sure how that injury happened. He generally has an awareness of Nikita, especially when they're fighting in tandem, and he can't recall her favoring the arm or hand, though he does remember realizing that it was swelling before the cavalry showed up.
Frowning, Michael sips his coffee and keeps writing. Considering the fact that Division is a Black Ops program, one would think that they would be able to skimp on things like paperwork and bureaucracy, but Michael suspects that Percy's doing this to keep him out of the doctors' hair - which is where he would be even if it wasn't Nikita.
Two hours later, Birkhoff returns with a sloppily made turkey sandwich, and a fresh pen.
He's sure she'll have her own bout of paperwork once they let her go, but the waiting makes him anxious and irritable. What does Percy know - or think he knows - about the last few hours of their assignment?
He grits his teeth and continues scribbling.
"Michael," Birkhoff sticks his head into the room through the door. "Doctors say you can see her now."
Her whole arm is in a sling, her hand is bandaged, and there's a nasty bruise forming above her right eye, but she's alive and they say she'll heal.
"How are you feeling?" he asks.
She shrugs and then winces. "They're not giving me nearly enough pain meds."
"Percy wants you focused for the debrief."
"Who's handling it? Amanda?"
Michael nods.
"What do I say? What if she knows about us?"
"She doesn't know; she can't know. Tell her nothing but what she wants to hear. Relationship are dangerous, Nikita. For both parties involved. She can't know about us. Do you understand?"
"I understand." She glances down. "Where does that leave us, Michael?
And they've done it - morphed back into agent and handler, student and mentor. They aren't equals anymore. She's yielding to whatever he wants to do, willing to take whatever he is willing to give, no matter how shallow the depth.
For just a moment, he almost hates her for making it his decision, because neither choice is a good one. If they go back to the way things were, he loses her. If they continue this relationship under Percy's nose and he ends up using them against each other, Michael will never forgive himself. In finding Nikita, he's found a piece of his soul that he believed was lost forever. He doesn't want to lose it again, doesn't want to lose her again.
"Michael?" she asks again; her voice is soft and careful, as if she sees the turmoil boiling inside him and wants to sooth it away.
"It's just that…" He struggles with the words not because they're untrue, but because they are, and he's never been good at stuff like this. "It's been a long time since anything as good as you has happened in my life. I'm not ready to lose that."
For one moment - just one - he thinks she's about to cry. He watches her blink back tears even as she scoots forwards on the exam table. The fingers of her good hand stretch up to brush against his cheek, and there's gratitude in her eyes as she pulls him down for a slow, sensuous kiss.
And - oh, damn - how did he ever think he would be able to continue resisting this?
"Michael?" she whispers softly. "What are we going to do?"
He doesn't answer because he doesn't know. Their entire relationship has been unprecedented from the start. He was never supposed to become attached to her, never supposed to care for her.
And under no circumstances was he supposed to fall in love with her.
Percy will use them against each other - drain them dry until they've both bled the other to death. The thought turns his blood cold.
With a sigh, Nikita leans forward, pressing her cheek against his chest. There's so much trust in the action, so much complete surrender and steady reliance that the worry constricting his chest subsides.
They have each other.
It'll have to be enough for now.
Part IV
Masterpost