[For Lilo] Over Water

[ms_legendary]

My name is Nikita. Eight years ago, I was a ex-junkie cop-killer on Death Row. As far as the world knows, I was executed September 3, 2004 by lethal injection. My death was faked by Division, a rogue unit of the U.S. government that forced me to be an assassin, and I've been a ghost ever since. Now I'm trapped on a tropical island that's part paradise, part purgatory, every day a reminder of the life I never had and the death I've been living for almost eight years. I'm lost...and it's up to me to find me.

Today, when she wakes up, it hurts too much to breathe. She was dreaming of Michael again. Terrible nightmare dreams, where Brandt closes her fingers around a trigger and makes her kill him. Softer, sweeter dreams in golden light where waking up only means warm skin and the perfect, always right scent of Michael around her. Everything in her, from head to soul aches with the knowledge of loss.

Michael's gone and she's dead without him. She's a ghost so many times over, she's as insubstantial as smoke over water. Only Jason, Annie, Cassandra, and Wolf can even see her, but her stubborn heart keeps beating. Trapped between life and death, hope and hell, the knife beneath her pillow won't let her give up.

Nikita knows, like the shark she is, she needs to keep moving or die (again), and so she swims, every day, against the current. She runs until she spills an ocean of sweat. Every day. Soon, she'll have to find a partner in this permanent paradox to spar, but today, it's enough to drag herself out of bed, into the plain black tanksuit the box finally gave her, and walk down to the beach. When she dives into the water, she goes down and stays down until she has to breathe or die. Survival instinct forces her back up, and she inhales until it hurts.

Then she swims.

Comments

[ikipelekai]

Moments later another head streaming with glossy black hair breaks the surface. The little girl who owns it looks unhappy with the company and she splashes backward out of the way with a little yell. Her dark eyes are red-rimmed and her brown face puffy with more than baby fat. She's been crying and seems willing to take out the mood on anyone who comes near.

"What are you doing here?"