ms_legendary | [For Jason] Returning Jackals

My name is Nikita. Seven years ago I was taken off of Death Row and trained to be an assassin by a covert unit of the government called Division. Four years ago, I escaped and I've been hunted ever since. I thought I'd seen everything, every evil the most depraved human minds could dream up. I was wrong...

"Sleep well and dream of large women," Nikita wheezes, out of breath when she finally drops to a walk almost a mile from where she left the boy, Finnick. It's been circling in her head, along with manic laughter and the Gilligan's Island theme song since the other boy released her wrist. Danger Will Robinson, Doctor Who and Lost in Space have all flashed while she ran, too, which makes her wonder just what the hell Amanda or Percy put into this cocktail or Brandt, whichever one's got her.

She thinks it has to be Amanda. Percy wouldn't drug her. He'd want her lucid for his stupid monologuing. Brandt wouldn't want her hallucinating, so it'd be something to make her pliant, maybe, but he wants her to hurt. Amanda's the only one who likes to torture like this. Breaking the mind open like a geode so the glittering secrets come spilling out.

Well she can't have hers. Amanda can't have her secrets, she can't touch Michael and Birkhoff and Alex and Ryan and Sean and Owen. She can't. Nikita's locked them and the black boxes all up behind walls as impenetrable as Birkhoff's firewalls. They're safe and Nikita will run and fight and scream and claw until she dies.

But first, she needs to take her bearings and get something to drink. There's a stream, it flows clear. In a dream, that should mean safety. If this place is real, if they're coming after her, it's a good place for an ambush. She's so thirsty, her head hurts so much. Her ribs want to stab out her lungs, but she's focused on staying alive and keeping her secrets, so she's not thinking about...no, she's not thinking about Michael.

Right now, shes going stay here behind this rock and watch for pursuit. Rest a few minutes, catch her breath, try not to pass out again, and then get some water...

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Jason watches Finnick pass safely through his own door, and then he's off. He'd been quick before, but now he flies through the trees like a bullet loosed, pausing only to make small corrections to his course of pursuit.

It feels like hours before he finds her, but it can't have been more than twenty minutes. Watching her near the water, Jason leaps to the nearest tree. He should just knock her out. It'd be the simplest, safest way to recapture her, but her body's been through so much. He can't risk it.

And something tells him he can't risk losing any more of her trust. From the lowest branch, Jason calls, "Please stop running."

Her eyes flash wide, head jerks up. Her heart leaps into flight mode and her chest aches from the pound of it. She needs to find somewhere safe to recover or she's going to stress her heart into dangerous tachycardia.

Why is he warning her of his position? And why is he in a tree? An aerial assault is impractical with the water as close as it is, even if he's got another jumpline. So why?

Think, Nikita. Why would he warn you? It's Michael's voice, like when Birkhoff got taken, which is how she knows she's losing it. She shakes her head, trying to clear it, looks around for signs he's not alone. That would be a good reason, a distraction, but even in the deep dark, she's almost positive it's just the two of them.

"Stop chasing me and I won't have to," she calls out, and heads for the water. It's not wide or fast, but he'll have to come in after her.

Edited Date: 2012-06-09 04:24 am (UTC)

"I'll stop when you let me explain where you are," Jason replies, mouth still open to add and when you stop passing out, but he never gets there. One moment he's mid-descent and she's headed for the rocks, the next she's hit a slippery spot and is too unsteady to keep her feet.

Too quick to even curse, Jason darts forward, catching her with one arm beneath her knees and the other her shoulders, but already they're too close to the ground. He kicks out a foot, shoving neatly off the nearest rock to get some air, flips, and lands with both feet safely on the ground. Only then does Jason begin to wonder if she'll stab him for it.

When Nikita's foot slips out from under her, it's the beginning of the end. She knows it. If she's losing her balance, there's no way she can keep fighting him. Especially not if he's this good. Good enough to catch her out of a fall and flip them back to feet. But she doesn't have to let him know that. She can, she will, go out with her teeth bared at least.

There's no time to pull the knife in her boot, no angle, no percentage. "Why should I trust you?" she demands and pikes up with her feet, to kip out from between his arms like uneven bars. She hits the ground too hard and the, "Take me to Michael, then I'll listen," barely makes it past her teeth with the pain.

She's spinning, her brain's spinning, and when she comes up, her vision blurs. Before he can answer, she's fallen again. Out, her last thought, I told you I was a dead woman.

Jason catches her before she hits the ground a second time, staring down at her in his arms in consternation. It's not his preferred method, but when he deposits her by a nearby tree, he pulls out the lengths of rope he'd claimed on his supply run.

As he winds the bandages first around her wrists so the ropes that follow don't bite into her skin, Jason has a dizzy moment in which he recalls how thoroughly his life has changed. In Gotham, when he needed someone to stay put he'd thought nothing of pushing a knife through their shoulder like a pin through a bug. The thought of doing that to this woman now makes him shudder, and Jason's hands are gentle as they bind her feet, wrap bandages around her shoulders before winding rope around those, too, effectively tying her to the tree.

Afterward, Jason crouches, rocking on his heels as he waits for her to wake.

There's no warning, no flicker of eyelids or twitch of fingers. One second Nikita is unconscious and the next she is awake, eyes wide open in the slowly growing light. She doesn't look at her bonds, doesn't move to pull against them but stares at him, dark-eyed and accusing. He said he didn't want to hurt her and she believed him.

Cold fury passes into soft, molten hurt and betrayal. She doesn't hide it from him, doesn't cry and doesn't speak. And after a minute, she simply closes her eyes again and turns her face away.

"Every time you run you pass out," Jason blurts when it's clear she won't be turning back any time soon. "And you won't stop running." Face folding into a petulant frown, Jason stands, only to sit down again on the rock nearest her.

"You need to listen to me, or you're gonna get hurt. They'll lock you up if you go around knocking people out."

Words slide through her thoughts. His, hers, Brandt's, Michael's. Old threats, new ones. Nikita listens without hearing. She could tell him it wouldn't be the first time, ask him why he cares, ask him how he's any different, tell him that if he stopped chasing her she'd stop running. She could tell him to let them try. But nothing sticks.

"Doesn't matter." Her voice is flat. Toneless. Her eyes open, she looks, but doesn't seem to see. "I'm already dead."

As is his, perhaps, irritating custom, Jason takes that literally. "A lot of people here are," he says. "But this place is called Tabula Rasa. You don't have to just be dead, here."

Jason's eyes gleam in the growing light. "You can be whatever you want."

Still flat, still lost, still not even trying to work her way out of the ropes: "I've heard that before."

It's like the Boy Scouts' version of Division's recruitment speech. The image of Percy in that uniform sparks a hysterical, manic laugh that she traps behind her teeth. If she gives in to it, the tears are next.

Besides, she's already remembering a different version. She wasn't bound when Michael sat and waited for her to wake up.

"Well I don't fucking care." Whatever she's seen, wherever she's been, it's nothing like the island. Jason's comfortable in that much.

"This isn't the world you left. This place is crazy. There are gods here. Fictional people. Dead people. You don't have a clue yet, what you've popped into."

If he's expecting a reaction, he doesn't get one. This could be the Elysian Field of dead heroes, would be, if Owen or Ryan had their say. Or Dante's Inferno, Seventh circle for Violence, or Eighth, tenth Bolgia for fraud for falsifiers and he her tormenter. It wouldn't change anything.

When the sun comes up, it will be beautiful here. Even if it's a Division prison or an ibogaine dream or literary metaphor... An island, far away from everything, after Percy is dead and Amanda will never try to find them. She closes her eyes.

Her voice doesn't waver. No tears threaten. Not this time. "Michael's not here, is he?"

Edited Date: 2012-06-11 07:30 am (UTC)

"There's no Michael here," Jason confirms, watching her close down as thoroughly as he's ever seen Bruce, and just as he had with Bruce, Jason suddenly wants to crack her open, just to prove she feels. But he won't, especially now when he knows all that will come out is tears.

"Unless he's going by another name. Who is he?"

Hope flares for one soul-searing moment, pure and shining in wide open eyes. He could be using an alias. She does. Alex does.

But it dies again as quickly, certain knowledge turning hope to ash. He wouldn't be. Not if he's looking for her. Michael can't be anyone else. He's Michael.

Pure, selfless, noble Michael.

Who is he? "Everything."

Jason waits, his frown deepening when nothing else comes. "That's not going to help me find him," he says, "if he's here."

Studying her face, Jason recalls his own reflection when Lux left, and hers is every bit as wrecked. "What's your name? Is he your boyfriend?"

"If he's here--" This boy is on borrowed time. I don't think you know what it would do to me to lose you, Nikita. She knows. She's learning second by second. "He'll find me." She lowers her lashes again. "He always does."

Abruptly she goes chill. I'm a big girl now. I don't need a good luck charm, she'd said. Take it anyway. And she had. She'd kept it. Even through all their missions together, not to give back until it was over.

"My name...doesn't matter. I'm a ghost. A dead woman. It's over." She doesn't have Michael's knife. It's over.

"Nobody's gonna kill you here." She won't hardly look at him, and the cold, calculating places left in Jason wish he'd bound her head upright, but the thought never quite reaches the surface.

"I mean it. It's a blank slate. You're not anybody anymore. You can start over, and." Jason's expression brightens by degrees. "He might come here. When I came, I was alone, too. But then people from home started showing up."

Great. She's in her own personal version of hell, the afterlife version of Australia, or some kind of penal colony, and wouldn't you know it, her tour guide is a trained killer who drank the Kool-Aid.

And, she really wishes she could push her hair out of her face, because it's driving her crazy. Instead, she starts very slowly, minimally, working on the ropes on her wrists. It's going to take her hours to get free. Not that it matters. He's obviously not going to kill her, and if Michael's not here - Oh. Michael. - here, she's got time.

Sighing, she opens her eyes again. All she wants to do is find somewhere safe to mourn, but somehow, even though she's the captive, she's stuck talking the teen version of Boy Scout around. She smiles, wry, because even if she's dying inside, at least it's familiar. "Listen," she starts, then decides that's not going to work. "What's you're name?"

"Jason," he replies. "I came here as the Red Hood. I was a vigilante. Still am, but there's nothing here to fight. Look."

She seems steadier now, but he doesn't know how much of that is sheer determination. "I think you should let a doctor look at you."

"No." Her voice doesn't waver at all and her eyes go commando black. "No doctor." She heard what he said, about being a vigilante and there not being anything to fight, and she'll deal with that later.

"You have me tied to a tree. I'm not going anywhere. You want me to believe you, I can be whatever I want here, start with that. No doctor." No hands, no blades, no drugs. At leadt out here, it's almost a level playing field, and the choice to fight until she dies is hers.

"Fine," says Jason, but he doesn't look happy about it. "Can I at least check your pulse? If you keep going tachycardic it won't matter what you want."

Nikita rolls her eyes, but shrugs the best she can under the circumstances. "What am I going to, bite you?" Actually, it's not the worst idea, but it won't help her get untied any faster and hurting him's not going to make any of this stop. "Knock yourself out."

Nikita's been background counting her pulse since she came to. It's steadied out, too high because she's massively dehydrated. "And after you're done playing Florence Nightingale, maybe you can give me some water from the stream--" Not from a bottle when she didn't see him get it. "It's been about eight hours since I had anything to drink."

She doesn't really know how long Brandt had her or how long she's been here, but it feels like eight hours, and she's not used to it. Everything's gritty and everything hurts.

Jason gives her a look that's every bit as stubborn as the one she's wearing. "I'm not giving you dysentery," he says, pulling a gourd from his waist. He opens it and takes a long drink of water, letting her see him swallow.

"See? It's safe." Shuffling forward it, he holds it near her mouth.

You look thirsty, soldier. She's so thirsty she could cry, so bruised inside and out, so lost, she has more reasons to cry than not to, except that she's Nikita.

There's a heartbeat where she thinks she might refuse, or sip and spit it in his face, but she can smell it (funny, right? water doesn't smell like much, until it feels like you'll die if you don't drink). He drank it, it's probably safe, unless it's whatever has a trained killer acting like a boy scout, but even if it is, she can get her own after he lets her loose.

Her expression softens, eyes close again, but just for a second, a nod that's just the barest tip of her head and lashes. "Please." It's a polite request, not a plea. Just a simple acknowledgment that he's going to have to do it for her with her hands bound.

Nodding, Jason crouches slowly in front of her, tipping the gourd against her lips with care until he's given her a mouthful. One, and then another. When she swallows, he touches his fingers to her bound wrist and counts the beats.

Well enough to be released. He wishes he could say it was a relief.

"If I untie you," he says, "are you gonna hurt anybody else?" Blue eyes turn accusing. "Finnick's having a baby."

Finnick. The tall boy with eyes like Birkhoff and Michael. She feels a bang in her chest, relief, that she hadn't hurt him worse than she did. It might be a lie, a trick of the dream, Amanda telling her she doesn't want to hurt anyone, but Nikita doesn't care. She's glad she didn't take a child's father away today, and she does nothing to hide the relief of that in her eyes.

"If you untie me and let me go, I won't hurt anyone who doesn't try to hurt me," she answers back, but doesn't tell him that leaving Finnick where she could hurt him was his bad choice. It's not going to encourage him to let her go. "I go home, you don't have to worry about me, everybody wins."

"You can't go home." Jason's expression is unhappy when he pulls back, but she'll figure it out herself soon enough. Everybody does once they've run the length of the island and never gotten further than the ocean.

Still, he releases a batarang from his gauntlet, slicing neatly through the ropes that bind her feet first, then through the bandages as well. "You'll see."

"That's what they said about Division. No one could get out." Nikita rotates her feet, restoring circulation (even though he'd been careful not to cut it off completely in tying them) and stretching stressed muscles. "No one ever had."

She lifts her head and meets the boy's gaze with the full force of her own, the determination to get back home. "I was the first. I found my way out of the first hole they threw me in. I'll find my way out of here, too."

Jason's seen that fire before. It'll serve her as well as it has the rest on this island, lend her fists an extra strength with which to rail against the cruelty of this place, and little else.

"You never fought magic," he says simply, and cuts the binding on her wrists.

"Magic's never fought me."

Her eyes are dark and steady on his, confidence restored with the freedom of movement. There's no threat there, not for him. He's setting her free. And to prove it, she waits for him to cut her shoulders loose, instead of reaching for her knife to do it herself.