| Subject: Priority Mail 429 |
Author:
Nikita507
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Date Posted: Thursday, May 10, 08:51:12pm
In reply to:
Nikita507
's message, "Priority Mail 425+" on Wednesday, May 02, 08:12:43pm
Nikita stood in front of the long dressing mirror to study her reflection. The pale dress was unlike anything that she ever wore in her life. The pink sash made her look prim and proper, probably what most little girls wish to look like when they grow up. Nikita gazed to see Helen standing there, admiring the image of Nikita and in love already with this person she believed Nikita to be.
“You like it?” Helen asked nervously as she wanted her daughter to like everything.
“I feel very different in these clothes,” Nikita replied as she was easily telling the truth. It was like the few times that Madeline had her try on various clothes. It just didn’t feel right to be dressed up like this. It wasn’t her at all.
“You are different. You have a mother now,” Helen gently smiled as she was so happy with her daughter. Nikita felt a pang inside of multiple reasons.
“Helen, you’re a very nice woman, but I’m just not able to…” Nikita shook her head gently. Helen looked hurt and sighed, “You can’t call me ‘mother’?”
“No,” Nikita apologized as she did not want to hurt this woman’s feelings over this. “Not yet. As I was trying to say, I’m not quite as ready for this as you are.”
Nikita rocked on the bed, telling herself not to cry as she had since she collapsed in the living room. She was enduring what she had to right now and she had to get control. She had to find Erica and figure out what had happened – why only Erica was contacting her.
It was late morning. Everyone would be home soon unless Michael had them diverted to some other location. Nikita wasn’t even really sure where Michael was right now. It pained her to know if she was wrong about Erica and Logan if that meant that she was just wrong about this – the man that she was going to marry.
She had seen so many parallels in her relationship with Michael and what she was sure that she felt for Michael when she had seen Erica and Logan together. They were taking risks for each other and they always worked better together than when separated.
Logan held the small box in his hand as he moved down the dark hallways and paused. He looked at the room that would open up and give him even more privacy with Erica when she arrived back from debriefing. It had been a long two weeks while she was out in a mission in Asia and he had been forced to work on intelligence as he had sprained his ankle badly during the last mission. He had protested that he was fine but Operations had given the final orders.
He hadn’t had much contact with Erica. When he did have contact, it had to be about official business. Jason was always lingering and he was a confident of Operations.
Logan had heard the stories of how Operations had started as an operative that escaped from abeyance a couple times and somehow became a phoenix on more than one suicide mission. He had also heard that her trainer, the infamous Michael Samuelle, had been her one true love but that ultimately she had killed him in order to take over control of Section One. Not only had Operations killed her lover, she had killed her father.
Logan looked at the box and thought about Erica and her curly red hair. He couldn’t wait to just touch that hair again. It wasn’t so much the need to kiss her and touch her. But he needed to smell her hair and know that she was safe.
“Have you been shopping with your most recent stipend, Mr. Logan?” Operations spoke as she melted out of the shadows of the window that was opposite of the door that he was waiting to open. He had thought that no one had come down here. It was a long ago abandoned level.
“Ah…oh… Oper… Operations… I didn’t know that you were down here,” Logan shoveled the box in his pocket of the jacket. “I just… needed… some quiet…”
Operations stepped more into the light and he saw that her blonde hair had been released from the severe bun that she normally wore and that it was unbound completely, something that he had never seen. It was so very long and it was so purely blonde that it brought so much light into the hallway. Operations almost looked soft. “Sometimes that’s why I come down here… quiet… to remember…”
Logan felt a chill go up his back as he looked at this woman who looked nothing like the woman who could with one word have him killed. She looked like someone who was lost and alone.
“I used to come down here,” Operations continued to speak as she stepped towards the door and touched the handle. She didn’t speak and she looked back to Logan. “You should be absolutely sure about why you are down here. In case… the quiet isn’t enough…”
“It is,” Logan replied with a nod of his head. Operations swallowed and stepped closer. “I’m jealous of you sometimes, Mr. Logan. To be back… where you are… that would be a dream for me.”
“Ma’am?” Logan asked as his voice cracked. He almost jumped when Operations touched the pocket that he had shoved the box into. He had been so careful when he went out shopping. He went to a consignment store and paid with cash. He had gone to a consignment store with no cameras and the neighborhood only had one security camera at an ATM that had been in use each time he had passed it. “It’s a beautiful gesture and you seem to be a man that believes everything that is behind that gesture. Don’t let the shadows that linger in this place make you worry about what you feel.”
Operations started down the hallway and Logan turned looked at her. “It’s not real, is it?”
Operations stopped and tilted her head to the side but did not look all the way back. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“I heard that… you used to come down here… with Michael Samuelle.”
“You must have heard that from Walter,” Operations turned her head back to look forward. But she didn’t move. “I still don’t understand your original question, Mr. Logan.”
“You… you didn’t kill him, did you?” Logan asked and Operations simply continued to walk until she had blended and became one with the shadows again, never giving an answer.
Nikita rubbed her forehead as she heard that someone had come into the house. She squeezed the blankets hoping to be left alone. She had things that she had to do.
“Mommy… mommy… mommy!” Sabina hollered as she ran up the stairs and then launched herself into her mom’s arms. “You should have been there last night… they had these puppets… that were like five times the size of daddy… they were huge… and the people moved their arms… and they just floated down the parade… but they weren’t balloons at all…”
“Sabina…” Michael stepped into the doorway as he hadn’t been able to stop her. He had called Beatrice and hoped that she would get there first for Nikita. But Sabina had been too quick. She was slick as her mother and now he could see that Nikita was hurting even more but doing a good job in pretending with her daughter.
“Really?” Nikita asked as her voice cracked. “Was that all?”
“No!” Sabina laughed as she shook her head and bounced around on the bed beside Nikita. “There was all this music… and they had closed the streets… so I was able to dance where there normally are cars… and they had these horses that were decorated in lights… that changed… so they were like the horse that took Dorothy to the Wizard of Oz….”
”You little brat! You won’t ever listen to me! I’m your mother!” Roberta yelled at her as she shook her back and forth. The tears wouldn’t stop and she couldn’t even tell her mother to stop, that she was hurting her.
“You think you are so important…well, you little thing… I shouldn’t have had you ever…. I don’t know who you belong to… you are just some… street thing...”
“And then I got to help make my own cotton candy… and it was so much fun…. And Adam had made his cotton candy and it was bigger than my head….” Sabina spoke and Nikita wrenched away. She had thought that Erica and Logan would have children. But if Erica was trying to get in touch with her, that didn’t happen. Not only had Nikita almost ruined her own daughter’s life with what she had to do, now she had done it to someone else that should have been set with her soul mate.
“Sabina… we just woke up… maybe you should let your mom get a shower…” Michael declared as he stepped into the room and picked Sabina in his arms. “But dad!”
“Come on… Mick was getting pizza for lunch… and it’s going to be here… you don’t want Adam getting all the Hawaiian pizza because you are up here, do you?” Michael asked as he deposited his daughter out of the room. She looked at her mother and then at her father. “What’s wrong?”
“Go downstairs,” Michael replied and Sabina stomped her foot, but did as her father wanted her to do.
Nikita collapsed to the side again. She had gotten to that sitting position several times and Michael knew that she thought that she had to do something about this mysterious notification that she got, but her mind was fighting against her and so far, her mind and Nikita’s memories were winning by a landslide.
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