| Subject: Chapters 17-19 (The End.) |
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Sanlin
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Date Posted: 11:52:07 03/28/01 Wed
In reply to:
Sanlin
's message, "It's Absurd (crosspost from Leigh's AU/HR Board)" on 11:24:57 03/28/01 Wed
Chapter 17: ‘Mirror, Mirror’ (Suggestive scenes and dialogue)
Michael, lying back with Nikita snuggled protectively against his chest, stroked her hair, sensing the growing tension in her.
She kissed his fingers, holding them captive against her mouth. “What now?”
“We could be called into Section at any time.” Silently, he willed away the anxiety and burgeoning tightness in his chest this announcement caused, struggling to keep his limbs from tensing and flexing around Nikita like bars of steel. He wanted to hold her to his heart and never let her go again. Never send her back to the darkness that was, too often, their lot in Section.
“Until then?” she ended her question on a kiss, turning to him and feathering her hungry, seeking lips against his. Sweetness mixed with desperation as he opened to her and their tongues met and mingled over the knowledge he would be lost to her, again, when they left this place.
“You’re mine, ‘Kita… and I’m yours.” Whether it was a moment or a lifetime, he would spend it in her arms.
She relaxed into his embrace and they spent a few minutes in gentle exploration, memorizing every sweet curve and secret place to keep them through the coming coldness and emptiness of their sterile servitude.
“Get ready.” Michael rained feather-light kisses on Nikita’s face and brow. “I’ll straighten up, here. We’ll meet, downstairs, for… breakfast.”
The way Michael’s accent caressed the last word sent pleasant shivers, hot fingers of sensual longing, up and down Nikita's spine. She would never get enough of him. No matter how many times they were together, she would always crave more of him. Sometimes, she wished things could stay exactly like they were when they made love: Michael and her, just melting together, joining their bodies and souls forever.
“Mmmmm… Always profiling.” Nikita scratched her nails along Michael’s chest possessively, trailing them down towards his navel where he intercepted her hand and captured it in his own. He rubbed his rough, callused pads over her sensitive palm and knuckles, his fingers dancing and twining with her own.
She laughed, loving the way he touched her; at turns playful, sensual, and wild. She nipped and nibbled her way free of his grasp as he gave her tummy a parting sensual lick and rained butterfly kisses along every proffered inch of her departing exposed skin. “I won’t be long,” she promised.
Nikita was still giggling as she walked to the bathroom. She opened the door and turned on the light.
Outside, Michael had already begun stripping the sheets from the bed when he heard Nikita scream his name. He crossed the room in a heartbeat and was in Cold Op mode by the time the reverberations of her panicked cry were fading in his ears.
Not knowing what to expect, Michael swept into the bathroom in a diving crouch, prepared to defend his love, his reason for living, against anything…
Nikita was alone in the room but very pale, staring directly into the bathroom mirror. Her lips were moving and he could barely make out what she was saying over and over. “It isn’t me… It isn’t me…”
“’Kita?” he questioned cautiously, still searching for what had caused the blood to drain from her face, leaving her pale and trembling.
“Michael!” Suddenly, she seemed aware of his presence again, and turned to bury her face against his chest.
“Shhhh, my Love… Shhhh…” He held her, stroking her tense, quivering form. Her skin was ice cold. Hairs bristled along her forearms and stood upright on the back of her neck. He could see gooseflesh raised along the entire length of her arms. “What happened?”
Her voice was muffled, he was holding her so close to his heart but he heard her words and could feel her heartbeat pounding against the cage of her chest. “The mirror… When I turned on the light, I saw two reflections, side by side. Both me… and not me.”
Michael gazed into the mirror. It showed his reflection and Nikita’s, but nothing out of the ordinary. “There’s nothing, now. What did you see?”
Shivering in his embrace, she pulled back, staring into his concerned, storm-colored eyes. Her own cerulean blue ones were quickly filling with tears and still wide open from shock. “Two faces, both like mine, but distorted. The one on the left was fading into the background, swallowed by darkness… and she looked so terribly afraid, Michael… like she was drowning, or dying.”
Michael considered this information calmly and carefully. “And the other?”
Nikita shuddered. “That one was directly in front of me, staring right at me… God, her eyes, Michael… It was like they were cut from blocks of ice; cold and cunning. She was smiling, like she’d won.”
“Won?” His voice sounded thoughtful, intrigued.
“It was the way she smiled… like she’d pushed the other me into the darkness, and there was no one to stop her, now.” Nikita looked at Michael, desperately hoping she was making some kind of sense to him.
Michael drew Nikita back into his protective embrace, stroking her hair and rubbing soothing circles into her tensed neck and shoulders. “Could it be from our last conversation? Knowing we could be called back in anytime? Perhaps you were still half-asleep and your mind fashioned a phantom from your fears?”
“No, Michael.” Nikita’s voice was adamant. “It was there, real as life. And now I feel like something’s terribly wrong. As if I don’t figure out some puzzle or secret soon, I’ll be those women… The person I am will be lost to the darkness and there’ll only be that smiling thing left… a soulless, obedient shell, serving the machine in Section. I feel like I’m losing myself, Michael, and I don’t know why.”
“Shhhh… We’ll figure it out. If Section’s involved, or anyone else, we’ll find out what’s wrong.” He held her strongly, promising, “I won’t let anything happen to you. No one’s going to take you from me.”
Even though Michael was holding her, it felt like he was slipping farther and farther away from her. Everything seemed to be crumbling, falling away into the darkness. She grasped Michael, holding onto him tightly, as if he might suddenly pass right through her fingers, as ethereal and formless as smoke. Fighting to hold back her sudden urge to burst into tears, and barely quelling the silent scream building at the back of her throat, she thought, ‘Oh, Michael… Even if you can protect me… Who’s going to stop them from taking you, from me?’
************
Chapter 18: ‘Curiouser and Curiouser’
Abandoning all other thoughts but comforting his angel and searching out the heart of this unexpected and unexplained mystery, Michael gathered a blanket from the bedroom. He placed it around Nikita’s shoulders and led her downstairs, intending to make her a cup of tea.
He settled Nikita on the couch and walked to the kitchen to put the kettle on.
As Michael busied himself around the kitchen, Nikita, still shivering, spotted a newspaper lying underneath the coffee table. ‘Where did that come from?’ she thought. ‘I don’t have newspaper delivery.’
She glanced at the front page, lying face-up towards her. Two stories were visible. One headline proclaimed “Missing Mouse Mystifies Management” and the other read “Top Dog Runs For Re-election.”
It was the pictures that caught her attention; Mickey Mouse and Goofy? Puzzling out the byline from the first story, she silently read “Disney is in a tizzy over the bizarre disappearance of its most famous employee. Star and actor Mickey Mouse, disappeared from his multi-million dollar home in the Hollywood Hills last Friday. Top executives at Disney fear their leading mouse may have fallen victim to a rat, in the dog-eat-dog world of motion pictures.”
Was this a gag item set up by Michael? Why hadn’t she seen it last night? Nikita looked at the other story. “The clumsiest President to occupy the Oval Office since Gerald Ford announced he will be seeking a new leash on his stay in the White House at the upcoming Primaries. President Goofy’s first term in office has been most notable for several public relations fiascoes involving tripping over everything from punch lines to podiums. His future running mate, Pluto, seems unable to keep the President out of the doghouse when it comes to putting his worst paw forward.”
Nikita turned towards Michael saying, “Do you know where this paper came from?”
“Paper?” Michael broke away from his preparations and walked towards Nikita.
“Yes, this…” Nikita looked underneath the coffee table, seeing the floor… and nothing else. She glanced up at Michael, startled. “It’s gone! There was a newspaper lying there a moment ago with crazy, gag headlines. I thought you might have put it there!”
“Ni-ki-ta…” Michael’s tone was kind, but concerned. He kneeled in front of her, stroking her cheek.
“I’m not making this up, Michael! I saw it!” Something colorful caught the corner of Nikita’s eye. Carefully, she reached out and turned Michael’s head towards a vase of flowers sitting on the kitchen counter. “Tell me you don’t see that!”
Michael drew in a sharp breath. The flowers were normal enough, but what was perched on them was not. A rainbow-colored butterfly, its six-inch-long, translucent wings a shimmering kaleidoscope of shifting colors, calmly regarded him as if he was the exotic, improbable creature. Like a chameleon, sometimes the butterfly blended with the bright flowers in the vase. Other times, it took on vibrant pink hues or cooler shades of mauve and aquamarine, perhaps according to its current mood.
The butterfly rose suddenly, on burnished wings, flying towards the closed French doors leading from the apartment to Nikita’s patio outside. It passed over Michael and Nikita’s startled heads and, untroubled by the niceties of physics, flew straight through the locked glass doors. It vanished outside, with a final parting wink of the false, psychedelic eyes decorating its luminous wings, soaring off into the sunlight.
Nikita would have swallowed her gum if she’d been chewing any. As it was, she choked on her tongue. It took her a moment to find her voice and rasp, “What the H*ll is going on, Michael? Things haven’t been right since I came home last night. Making phone calls to Elmo? Seeing newspaper headlines about Mickey Mouse that vanish without a trace afterwards? And I’ve never seen anything like that butterfly. I’m only now starting to notice things out of place, things that shouldn’t be and it’s getting worse. I’m remembering events that don’t make sense. Not here and now, at least. But they feel right, when everything else here is …” She faltered, looking for some way to express the growing chaos and disturbances surrounding them.
Michael sank down onto the couch next to her. His expression was caught somewhere between shock and thoughtfulness. For once, perhaps the first time in his career or life, Section’s Top Op seemed temporarily nonplussed. “Something’s been done to us by Section or someone else. Psychotropic agents, mind control, some new technology… It has affected our perception of reality. They’ve done it before, Nikita, to you and me. But whatever it is, this time it’s becoming unstable, slipping, and losing its control over us.”
Michael’s assessment surprised Nikita. “Isn’t it getting stronger? Things are becoming more—“ Abruptly, she thought of the CD she’d played when she’d been conversing the previous night with Elmo. “It’s absurd! Michael, I think someone’s been sending us messages, but they’re coming through, concealed in these surreal things we’ve been experiencing. I think the women I saw in the mirror represent aspects of myself. The fading woman was my emotions. The ice maiden… I think that’s Josephine, my Section self: cold, unfeeling, cunning, and blindly obedient. And this place, where we are now: I almost feel like I’ve been locked in a dungeon with my libido and imagination to keep me company. And you’re here, too, Michael. Somehow, this is all about you and me.”
“Good, Nikita!” Michael had an eager gleam in his eyes. She could see his formidable brain working things through. “Last night, I was the same. Doing things that seemed right at the time, but now seem irrational, unreal, holding the fading logic that dreams do, upon waking. If whatever’s happening was getting stronger, I’m sure we’d still be oblivious to the wrongness of things.”
Thinking of their activities over the past several hours, Nikita quipped, “I’m sure we’d still be… Oh, no.” Nikita’s face fell, not liking where her thoughts were heading. “This has Madeline stamped all over it. Using our love for each other to keep us blind to what’s going on around us. Making sure we stay… distracted… so we wouldn’t notice what’s being done to us.”
“But someone within Section, or on the outside, is helping us; dropping hints and clues. Maybe even disrupting the process enough so we can think for ourselves and try to discover what’s happened to us. Perhaps it’s the only way they could get through to us. But now it’s dangerous. Our world is literally falling apart around us.”
“Michael, did you ever feel like the world was a soap bubble, or a pane of glass… and that a single misstep, one clumsy movement, could shatter everything? I know what the newspaper and butterfly were telling us now. We have to break through this, move past all these… illusions, hallucinations. They’re holding us here. I’m afraid, if we don’t break free before the disturbances become too great, we’ll be lost here...”
************
Chapter 19: Through the Looking Glass
“How do we know what’s real and what’s an illusion?” Nikita cast a suspicious glance around her apartment, wondering how much of what she saw was part of their prison.
Michael placed his hands on either side of Nikita’s face, stroking her eyebrows gently with his fingertips and staring into her eyes. “Think, Nikita. What’s out of place?”
Suddenly, a thought occurred to Nikita. Despite the gravity of their situation, she had to laugh. “‘One of these things is not like the others. One of these things just doesn’t belong.’ Well for one thing there’s all of the cartoon characters and puppets from children’s television shows, and that TV. I’ve never owned one.”
“Good.” Michael kissed her cheek and nuzzled her neck affectionately with his rough beard stubble. “Focus, Nikita,” Michael prompted. “Let go of the illusions…”
Nikita concentrated intently on the television set.
At first, nothing happened.
Michael held one of her hands, between his, stroking her fingertips and tracing the lines of her palms with his calloused thumb. She tried again. This time she imagined the set breaking, like a pane of glass, into a million pieces.
Without warning, the television set imploded into fragments of light and darkness. It folded inwards upon itself until nothing remained. Nikita stared in shock as the last fragments of the set glittered eerily, then winked out of existence. “That’s the strangest thing I’ve ever seen! Try it, Michael!”
Michael focused on some boxes resting on the kitchen counter. He imagined a giant paintbrush painting over them in his mind. Then he watched stroke by stroke as his careful efforts brushed the boxes out of existence.
“It’s working!” Nikita couldn’t keep the excitement out of her voice. Still sitting next to Michael, on the couch, she made a pile of CDs explode like confetti into a glittering shower of colors. She laughed triumphantly.
“Let’s go,” Michael growled, rising from the couch with Nikita following, hard on his heels. They stalked through the apartment, dispelling anything that seemed out of place or unfamiliar. Their progress was impeded occasionally by chaotic events springing into existence around them. Nikita made the antique bathtub, which had escaped from the bathroom and was heading down the hall towards them on its lion’s claw legs, burst and vanish like a soap bubble. Michael threw a mental blanket over a tiger that appeared abruptly, stalking from the doorway to Nikita’s bedroom.
Gradually, they made progress, until Nikita was finally satisfied. “That’s it. There’s only one thing left: the apartment itself. It shouldn’t have a second floor like this. And the stairway is all wrong.”
“Two things, Nikita.” Michael’s voice was soft, but serious.
A sudden chill raised goose bumps all along Nikita’s arms. Her heart shuddered in her chest, and she looked at him, instinctively knowing what he meant. “No.”
“Ni-ki-ta. If you hold onto anything, you’ll never leave this place. Madeline and Operations know the one thing you’d never willingly leave behind.” Michael stared meaningfully at her. “Don’t move. Just relax.” Calmly, his jade-green gaze still locked on hers, Michael walked straight towards her.
Nikita flinched reflexively as Michael drew closer to her. “Michael, this isn’t going to… Michael!”
Michael’s body passed right through hers, without any resistance.
“Michael! That’s not possible. We…” Nikita paused, thinking of their night of passion. That had to be real.
Michael, now standing behind her, looked as solid as ever once again. He spoke quietly, his eyes shining with passion. “The love is real, Nikita. My love lives, in you…”
“…and yours in me, Michael.” She paused, shaking her head. “What if you’re wrong?” Nikita’s voice was anguished. “I can’t leave you, Michael!”
“I’m always with you, ‘Kita,” Michael’s voice chided her gently. “It’s time to go. You can’t stay here.” Michael placed a hand on her arm. His fingers felt warm, solid and real now. He pulled her towards the bathroom. “You know where the exit is…”
Nikita shivered. She did know, but her feet didn’t want to move. “Michael, I’m scared.”
Michael kissed her hand comfortingly and led her into the bathroom. He stopped, standing near the full-length mirror where Nikita had received such a fright that morning upon seeing two reflections. “Don’t look back. The only way out…”
“…is through the looking glass.” Nikita gazed at her reflection in the mirror. Everything seemed so normal, the mirror and her image, but she could feel an instinctive pull towards the object.
“Trust me.” Michael held out his hand, keeping his eyes focused firmly on Nikita so she wouldn’t glance behind her, where the world was fragmenting into pieces and nightmarish chaos. He kept his voice perfectly calm. “I’ll be with you, always. Now, go!”
Nikita took his hand for one last moment and then stepped forward, falling into the mirror’s surface. She passed directly through the mirror as if it were water. Nikita tried to cry out but no sound came. It was like she was falling down a long, dark hole or passing through an endless, black tunnel. She held on as long as she could, trying to hold a picture of Michael’s face in her mind as a beacon. Somewhere along the way she lost consciousness, still falling into the endless darkness…
*****
Gingerly, Nikita tried to open her eyes. It was dark all around her. For a moment, she thought she was still in that black tunnel, falling forever. Her vision cleared even further. It was like a tunnel but there were lights and netting. It was obviously man-made. She was lying on her back and, propped near her head, she sensed… Michael! He was alive!
In a flash, it came flooding back to her. She’d been subjected to the Gelman process; a form of brainwashing and mind control. Madeline had ambushed her on a mission, drugged her, and forced her to undergo that terrible treatment. What had seemed a day to Nikita had been… how long? Days? Weeks? She’d operated as a soulless robot for all that time, killing indiscriminately. She’d been blindly obedient to Madeline and Operation’s every command; incapable of fear, love, sympathy, or human emotions. The human, feeling part of her had been locked away and cut off deep inside her own mind until Michael and his selfless, abiding love for her had helped free her trapped psyche, releasing her suppressed emotions.
Through it all, Michael had worked tirelessly. Risking his life by kidnapping first Adrian, the former “mother of Section” and the first victim of the Gelman process, and then Nikita herself. Taking Nikita to this remote hideout, Michael had used the information provided by Adrian, until he finally succeeded in bringing Nikita back to herself.
“I slept,” Nikita croaked weakly, as if she hadn’t used her voice in years.
“Yes. A little,” Michael said, softly.
“There’s still pain.” Nikita felt like she’d just been resurrected from the dead. Her body and head ached terribly.
“It’ll go away.” Michael stroked her temples soothingly.
“When?” Nikita’s voice cracked with anguish.
“When you let it go, Nikita.” Michael kissed the left side of her face and began working his way upwards, towards her temple. He continued to kiss her face, eyelids, and mouth, his lips brushing over her features as gently as the wings of a butterfly… He nuzzled the side of her neck like a great cat, rubbing his beard stubble against her throat, marking her passionately as his alone.
“Michael, I love you.” Nikita surrendered herself to the sensual, arousing touch of her love, her soul mate. The only man she’d ever loved. Michael.
Michael needed no words. His hands and mouth were too busy worshipping his beloved, so recently and narrowly returned to him from a condition of living death. He wouldn’t be satisfied until he had soothed and loved every cherished part of his sole reason for existence and for struggling unceasingly against Section’s dark machinations. His Nikita.
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