In Your Shoes Spoilers: Anything up to "There are no Missions."
Rating: PG
Summary: Michael thinks about Nikita after "There Are No Missions."
Disclaimer: All the characters are owned by USA Network and some other people all of whom are emphatically not me.


In Your Shoes

by: Rebecca Carefoot


I understand now how it was for you. I know more deeply than I ever wished to.

We have switched places, Nikita. Our relationship never quite reaches equality, does it? For a few shining moments it did. We loved each other as a man and woman should, each returning the others love, finding strength and warmth in each other. But it was only a few moments in a span of years. I can hardly remember a time when I did not know you, love you. But it was not so long ago that I existed without you.

When we started out, I was the cold one, the one who did not feel. I was the manipulator, the one who used your love against you. I was the Section's puppet. Even in the beginning you awakened part of me, made me less of a robot. But it took years for me to truly break free. It took years for me to be able to express my love for you openly as you always had for me. You opened the floodgates, Nikita. You made me like yourself, feeling. I can feel again. And more than anything else I feel, I am consumed by my love of you, my need for you.

And now that you've taught me once again to feel, now that you have broken my defenses, melted my walls of ice, I find that you have become me. I have become you, and you have become me. Now you are the robot, the Section's puppet.

Now I know what you must have felt when I scorned you again and again, when I encouraged your hopes only to further the Section's ends. Now I know what it is like to love someone who cannot love me in return, who is physically unable to love me in return. Someone who would use me or kill me on the whim of another.

It's not quite the same. I always loved you in my way, even when I was incapable of demonstrating my love, of admitting it. I could control that love in the beginning. My emotions were never strong enough to crack the control I held over myself. Still, I felt something. As small as it was, as little as I was capable of, some part of me always loved you. But I don't know if your love for me has survived, if a small part of you still feels, feels for me. I don't know if part of you is buried beneath the mind control. I don't know if you will love me even if you do get a part of yourself back. Did they take it all? They crippled me, but have they done the same to you or have they killed you?

I don't know what to do. I don't know if it's even possible to cure you.

But I have to try.

It's what you did for me. You never let me go, even though I betrayed you too many times. You left me once for Jurgen, but you never really let me go. You were always willing to give me one more chance; you even let me earn your trust again. You refused to let me die when I lost my son. You gave me a reason to live. You fought for me; not just my life, but my soul. You gave me back my humanity.

And now I truly know how hard it was for you to do that. I've seen the same betrayal in your eyes that you once saw in mine. I've heard the same emotionless tone in your voice that you heard in mine. I've seen the emptiness in you that once made me hollow. Seeing you like this hurts me. I feel so deeply for you that it almost chokes me everytime I see you. My throat tightens at your beauty, your empty eyes. I almost want to run away, find safety away from Section. I could hide from them, and I would never have to see the shell you have become. I could make you nothing to me, force myself to stop feeling again. It would be easier than knowing you feel nothing for me, not love, not even hatred. It would be easier to let you go, even though I would have to lose myself again in the process.

Would it be easier? Could I ever forget how to feel what I do for you?

I can't even tell if I am lying to myself anymore. I only know that you have changed me, and the truth is I'm not sure I can go back to the way I was. It would be easier to stop loving you, but I don't know if I can. Easier, but I don't want the easy way if it means you are lost.

So I will fight for you as you did for me. I will endure your coldness as you endured mine. And I will warm you. I will change you. I will bring you back to me.

We will love each other the way we were made to, equally. We will have another shining moment.

I know the pain I caused in you, and I am truly sorry. I respect your strength even more than I did before. And I will show you I can be as strong as you were.

It doesn't matter what it takes, what I have to do. I will destroy Section if I have to. None of that matters. Nothing but you.

I will bring you back.

I promise you that.

End

Feedback

Other Shows // Rebecca Fic