ms_legendary | [For Jason] Broken Bird

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. Five years ago, my boss, Percy, sent me to infiltrate an organization suspected of selling plutonium to terrorists by ‘getting close’ to the leader, Nicholas Brandt. I seduced Brandt and slept with him. After Brandt broke the arms of a woman to ‘motivate’ her husband, I took him down and asked Percy for five minutes alone with Brandt, no eyes on me, to show him there are women out there who can hurt him too. Now Percy set Brandt loose from prison to get to the plutonium we never found, and the sadistic bastard killed Senator Madeline Pierce, the last surviving member of Oversight, Sean’s mother, and our last hope for presidential pardons, just to flush me out. Brandt found me. And I’m going to make sure I’m the last person he ever lays a hand on...

Brandt wants to hurt her, but he has no idea how much pain she can take. He has no idea that while he’s jolting her with electro-shocks and talking her to death between punches, she’s worked one hand halfway free of her restraints. He may think he’s scaring her, leaning kissing-close with the face she ruined for him, threatening to rape her, but he’s just pissing her off.

It’s all going according to plan, right down to the fear in Brandt’s one eye when she tells him that yeah, they do have something in common. “I regretted most of my missions for Division, but not all. Not yours. You’re right. I enjoyed hurting you.”

All right, so maybe electro-shock therapy on a handmade frame administered by a psycho in the basement of an abandoned house wasn’t really the plan, but a good agent learns to improvise. She thinks on her feet and uses what she has. Right now, what Nikita has is that no matter what he does to her body, he can’t hurt her. As long as he’s beating on her, expending his rage on her, he’s not targeting anyone she cares about.

Alex is watching Sean. Michael is watching Nerd and Alex. Percy is, doubtless, relishing watching her and Brandt, and the longer she keeps Brandt here, the longer no one else is in danger. So she’ll just keep taunting this sadistic son of bitch until he kills her or she gets free. If he kills her, it’s over because he wanted her. If she kills him, well now. The world is minus one worthless piece of trash and she gets karma points for waste disposal. Nice and tidy, just how she likes it.

But why has Brandt been upstairs so long?

Her eyes strain through the gritty, grainy semi-dark toward the staircase. Her ears are ringing, pulse jumping around like a scared rabbit from the current, but she can just make out sounds of a something heavy being dragged. Nikita’s no more scared than usual, and she hopes her people are smart enough to stay the hell away from here, but she’s also human. She hurts and it’s about a 60-30 chance she’s going to die today. Part of her wants those sounds to be a rescue.

But it’s not. It’s not a rescue. It’s Michael. Every bit as captive as she is. She’s so pissed, she doesn’t even know how he got down here, and Brandt might as well not even exist. For the moment. But he will, oh god, he will, because now he can hurt her. He has Michael. He can destroy her.

She’s so pissed and scared and tangled up, she doesn’t know when her inside thoughts bleed out and she starts in on Michael bound to that chair. Nikita doesn’t know anything. She forgets to keep working on her cuff. There’s just pain until Michael starts talking.

Tall, smoky voice, very sexy. The memory comes to her unbidden, the first of many Brandt will use to torture her with.

“He didn’t...capture me,” Michael’s saying. His eyes seem greener from the bruising on his face and the shadows, or the intensity of the stupidity he’s spouting. “I came on my own. I gave myself up. It was the only way I could find you.”

“You son of a bitch!” Nikita yells. How can he be doing this?

“What?” Michael’s eyebrows knit, but it’s not cute today.

“You dumb, stupid son of a bitch!” She throws herself against the frame, trying to break free, trying to get to him.

“Nikita--”

“The situation was contained. The damage was limited,” she insists, raw red rage shredding her voice. “And now what?”

“You were in danger!”

“I was lost! I am lost. Michael... you’d just sacrifice yourself for a dead woman?”

“No.” Stubborn, stupid son of a bitch. He won’t see what’s right in front of him. Telling her no, like he can’t see the writing on the wall as well as she can. “You’re not dead, we can still--”

“Shut up, just shut up, shut up!” She wishes her hands were free so she could put them over her ears. “So typical. Always gonna do the right thing, right Michael? Can never be selfish, pure, noble Michael. You just had to give yourself up to this psycho like you’re some kind of martyr.” The words are pouring out now, pent-up anger spilling out, carried on a rising tide of fear. Fear for him, not herself. “Like you had to go and be with Cassandra and you just had to see your son. Why can’t you ever just say: I want this, I don’t care if it’s wrong!”

There’s more shock in Michael eyes than Brandt ran through her body, and her face contorts with tears she’s trying not to shed. She doesn’t want to give that to Brandt. Not the satisfaction. Not the power.

She’s expecting Pot-Kettle, but she gets, “You think I can’t be selfish?” instead. Michael, her Michael, her beating heart, looks more wrecked than she feels. “This is the most selfish thing I’ve ever done. I did this because I had to see you one last time, even if I was killed.”

Oh no, no no. No, no. Michael, no.

“I did this because I love you.”

Somehow that inner plea pushes out, out to where Michael can hear it and she’s twisting in her restraints. “Don’t do that.” Oh Michael, Michael... Why couldn’t he just have stayed safe? Why come and make her vulnerable, expose her weaknesses with the tears on her cheeks and the beatings she’ll willingly take for him? “Don’t do that.”

“I don’t have a choice.” His eyes implore her to understand. She loves his eyes, but she wants to stab them out right now.

“You have no idea who I am!” He doesn’t know how much she was enjoying this little showdown with Brandt. How much she looked forward to getting free and having all the time in the world to punish him, not just five minutes this time. Her stomach twists, bile rising in her throat. “If you did, you could never love me.”

“No, no...” He’s being rational. Damn him, he’s trying to be soothing. Trying to comfort her when he should be trying to save his own life. “I know exactly who you are.”

Fine, confession time. Michael’s the closest thing she has to a confessor anyhow, and he’s the only person she completely trusts, so she spits it out along with her tears, “I have evil inside of me, Michael.”

“Maybe you do. Maybe that’s a part of you--”

Michael’s voice is carried away on a hibiscus and jasmine wind, and Nikita knows without knowing, she’ll never hear it again. She’s not dead, but somehow, she’s gone. Somehow, he’s gone.

Tears stream down her face and choke her. She can’t wipe them because she’s still not free. “Michael...” she whispers to the nonsensical palm trees and birdsong, blinking at tears and moonlight in a midnight blue sky. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Because without her there, he’s going to die, and whatever Division hellhole paradise she somehow got ripped away to, she’s still bound to the frame and she can see from here, the charger is damaged. She’s going to die. Alone. In Division custody.

Without Michael.

The electricity rattles through the frame and up into her. But it’s the knowledge she’ll never see him again that finally draws the scream Brandt wanted out from between her teeth.

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It's loud.

In the dead of night, when most humans are sleeping, the jungle's more alive than ever. On his lonelier nights, Jason takes comfort in this, winging silently through the trees of Tabula Rasa, watching the night creatures go about their business, oblivious to the happiness or suffering of the sleeping humans all around them. They're simple. Content only to live - Jason doesn't think that he could be like that, but sometimes...

He's jealous.

High in the trees, he's listening now, lulled almost to sleep by the constant chatter, when all at once, the jungle falls silent.

Upright in an instant, Jason cocks his head. Silence means a predator, yet he can detect none, eyes well adjusted in the moonlight. He closes them, listening as Bruce taught him so long ago, and...there. A quiet snuffling from the darkness below. A wounded animal, perhaps, and Jason is just casting a line to investigate when the sound resolves to the shape of a woman's voice.

He's already flying downward when she begins to scream.

"Hey," Jason calls, landing in a crouch a few yards away. She's tied up. She's crying. Jason looks at her and his heart aches.

"I'm gonna help you."

"Sure you are. Then you're gonna set me up in a nice villa in Capri," Nikita spits out, rage overcoming the burning and her jackrabbiting heart.

The charge is building again. The device is damaged. Whoever she can't see who just jumped down from a tree (line, means gloves, means he could handle the current, means maybe, maybe he's really a rescue, but no) is gonna get to watch her execution.

Well, then, she'll do her best to make it a good show. The tears stop, and while she can, she works at the cuff that's almost free.

"Just here to get some cheap thrills, or did Percy send you with video camera to make sure I'm dead this time?"

There's a whine in the air. Jason spent a very long time getting acquainted with all manner of dangerous devices. Even by Bat terms, he's an expert in explosives, and he quickly discards the possibility that the sound belongs to a bomb.

But it's still coming from the rack she's strapped to, and in the moonlight Jason can see the pulse jumping hard and desperate in her throat - ignoring her taunts, Jason darts, reaching instinctively for the wires he can see extending from the device to - his blood runs hot - a battery of some kind. Jason rips them free from the primitive torture device with a snarl, cutting off the charge before it can reach her.

Well, that's certainly unexpected. And welcome. Not that she's going to let on either of those things. For whatever reason, the kid in the leather jacket she can just make out through the dark, has decided not to let her die fast.

She's not stupid enough to imagine that means he's not planning worse for her. If she's wrong, she'll apologize later. Maybe.

Right now, she's working on rotating her wrist in the damned cuff fast enough and quietly enough that he doesn't notice. She's got a chance. If she's ever going to... she's got a chance, but he's got all the advantages.

"So what now? You flip me on this little tilt-a-whirl and you promise to make it good for me, baby?" There's a silky, nasty little purr at the end of that while she struggles to bring her heartrate back under control.

Overwarm with a rising fury, Jason washes hot all over for a new reason, blushing as much for the sudden silk in her voice as for the words she's volleying at him.

"I - I don't," he stammers, coming forward despite the heat in his cheeks. "I mean, I could but, be good I mean, but that's not why I - look." Jason forces a full breath into his lungs. "You're not where you were before, okay? I just want to get you off this rack."

Okay, that's almost cute. If he's Division, he's new. His English is good not accented. Probably not Gogol, but what's he doing here? What's she doing here?

Division has to have come in after them. Or Amanda and this is a hallucination from ibogaine or one of her new drug cocktails. It makes sense - and her wrist is almost free. Almost...there.

Wait for it, Nikita. Her chin comes up and her eyes cut through the dark. "I'm not telling you anything, Amanda. You can just go screw yourself."

Edited Date: 2012-06-01 05:56 am (UTC)

"Are you on drugs?" Jason asks in all seriousness, eyes narrowed around the bizarre charge of his being Amanda. "Stop squirming," he barks, flush giving away to teen impatience. "I'm trying to help you. You don't have to tell me anything, I don't want anything." He reaches for her bound wrist. "I'm just trying to get you down."

"You know, you're awfully chatty for a hallucination," Nikita says, almost conversationally, keeping her freed wrist in its broken cuff while he works on the other.

None of it makes any sense at all. If she's in one of Amanda's ibogaine puzzle-boxes, she should recognize everyone in the dreamscape. They should all be trying to lead her toward whatever Amanda wants to know. He's helping free her, so that's one point in favor, but her thoughts are too clear.

Stop. Focus. Michael's life could depend on this. Alex, Birkhoff, Ryan, Sean, Owen... Michael. She steers her mind away from everything that might hurt them, seals it up, and watches, listens, tries to learn. Dreamscape or not, she has to get away.

"Who do you work for?"

"I don't work for anyone," says Jason fiercely. He's independent, his father had seen to that, and Jason lets that familiar ache bolster him, guide him through what's rapidly becoming a situation he can't predict.

"I'm on my own, just - let me get you down, and I'll explain." His fingers work swiftly at the straps around her wrist. "You're on an island. You're stuck here, we all are."

I don't work for anyone. The words slip through her confusion, ringing clarion like a struck crystal and echoing more like a gong.

It sounds true. Too close to what she wants to hear. Especially if it's one of Amanda's lucid dreams, she must remain skeptical. If it's not and this is somehow real...

"Sorry," she whispers, even as her freed hand comes down, hard and fast, for the (non-lethal) knockout blow that might be her only chance to regain the advantage. To save Michael. And kill Brandt.

A whisper of sound overhead. A nightbird in flight, or the flat of a hand coming down, and Jason moves on instinct, catches most of the blow on his shoulder which hurts, but doesn't incapacitate.

Dancing back a safe distance, Jason's expression folds with anger and a hurt whose intensity makes no sense until one remembers his youth, and the endless string of losses he's faced of late. "Stop it!" he shouts at her. "I'm trying to help you!"

"Why?" she hurls back, using the distance and time to release her other wrist and start on her ankle. The word tears from her chest, not a bandage ripped off but a knife slicing through a fresh-scabbed wound.

Why is he trying to help her? Doesn't he know she's a dead woman? Why couldn't he just let her die and let the damage be contained and... but no, no, no that's not him, that's Michael.

Oh god, Michael.

One ankle kicks free and then the other. She drops to a crouch, snarling through the too quick pulse rising panic and haze of pain and confusion. It feels too real to be a dream, too surreal to be real, he's not acting like Division and only one thing matters anymore:

"What did you do with him? Where is he? Where is he?"

Recognizing her for the dangerous creature she is, Jason adopts a defensive posture, thinks, sudden and clear, I'll have to knock her out. She's hurt, and it's obvious she's been tortured, but it's equally obvious she's marked him for an enemy, and Jason will buy himself what time is needed without remorse.

"I don't know," he says, beginning to circle, "I didn't do anything, I don't know who he is."

"Right. You don't work for anyone," she taunts him, a raw snarl rising to her lips. It doesn't matter that it makes no sense that he'd free her and then fight her. She knows him now. He's a predator, like her.

Another time, this might be fun, but Brandt has Michael. The longer she's gone (if she can even get back) the less incentive he has to keep her alive. That doesn't make any more sense than the tropical bird calls, the jasmine wind or the boy in front of her. But focusing on Michael has kept her alive before.

Her attention locks on the kid. She moves with him, waiting for an opening or for him to show a weakness.

"I don't," Jason snarls back, "I just live here." And maybe it's Bucky's influence, or Steve's, but he tries one last time before going for the contents of the gauntlets wrapped around each of his wrists.

"You don't know where you are, stop trying to knock me out and listen. You don't know where you are, you're on the island now!"

Maybe it's Michael's influence or the desperate plea in his voice that reminds her so much of Alex - I can do this, Nikita! - but she gives him a chance. One. Dark eyes stare across dark space, reach across time and training and the no ones they work for:

"Then let me go." Please. I have to find him. I have to find, Michael. "Let me go."

Vulnerability doesn't have to make you weak, Nikita, Amanda's voice across an eternal divide. The lesson's still valid after all this time. Nikita uses the pause, the susurrus of four booted feet in jungle grass to lull him, then lunges.

Straight into him. She's not aiming for a kill. Just to knock him out, roll and run into the night. Let me go.

The quality of her voice changes, the pleading no less plaintive, but quieter now, and Jason almost thinks -

- but no, one minute she's across the clearing and the next she's there, but Jason's ready, gets his forearm up in time to deflect, free arm rearing back to strike a blow of his own but she's gone again.

"Stop!" Jason barks, fingers twitching, and now there's a miniature pressure explosive in his hand. One way or another, she will stop.

One second, the boy and his eyes are her whole universe, the next, she's past him, gone, and he's forgotten. Nothing now but another shadow. Another memory. At least he's not another ghost, not another nameless face she killed.

She's past him and into the trees, no idea where to go but go, go, flee. The boy is nothing and everything is Michael. She has to find him. She has to. Her pulse beats loud and erratic in her ears. Her chest hurts. Eyes bulge painfully. Her hands tingle, too numb to feel the breeze. Her feet too numb to feel the ground. But it's her heart that betrays her--

Her heart. Broken. Skips beats.

She stumbles and falls, crying out quietly, "Michael." If his face won't be the last thing she sees, his name will be the last thing she hears.

The explosive has just begun to whine in his hand, and Jason concentrates, more sensing than counting the seconds that signify the optimal release point, arm drawn back to throw, but -

Disengaging the device, Jason lets his arm fall as her body does, the slender length of it folding to an unconscious sprawl on the forest floor. Though he's careful of a ruse, Jason comes forward anyway, and when she doesn't move, presses his fingers to her throat. She's alive, but her pulse is erratic. Shock, he decides, and after the device he's freed her from, he isn't surprised.

He pulls her carefully into his arms, hesitating only a moment before he begins to carry her towards the path. She'll wake soon enough, and if she's still fighting him, he needs to be ready to restrain her.

On this part of the island, the nearest safe house belongs to Finnick O'dair, and Jason runs.