| Subject: Priority Mail 206 |
Author:
Nikita507
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Date Posted: Thursday, March 24, 08:21:08pm
In reply to:
Nikita507
's message, "Priority Mail 204+" on Tuesday, March 22, 07:50:38pm
Michael sat there as his mind tried to process what Nikita had just said. It shouldn’t have been that easy.
Nikita rubbed her hands down her knees and to squeeze her feet as she placed her chin down on her knees. “I wasn’t inside the system for long….”
Michael blinked his eyes as he realized that it had to be a short period of time or Section would have found this information out. They should have found out no matter what.
Nikita swallowed hard as she shook her head slightly. “I was young… just starting school… I knew what was right and wrong… but I couldn’t tell that Roberta was bad yet…”
Pausing, Nikita rubbed her feet and then pulled them back up to her knees as she lifted her head off of her knees and looked towards the stack of gifts. She inhaled slowly and then she faced Michael again. “It was fall… Roberta had been picked up on some sort of charge… The first place was packed… I shared a bed for a couple days with a girl who still wet the bed…”
“Kita…” Michael finally spoke as he reached for her. Nikita shook her head and pushed his hands away. “That wouldn’t have been the worse… I bounced to a couple other places… I started a couple different schools… most of the details are blurry.”
Michael watched as Nikita swallowed. She was skipping a lot of details, but he wasn’t about to point that out to her. She had been young and it was possible that there were details that she wasn’t going to remember clearly. Or these were memories that she didn’t truly want to talk about.
“At some point I was allowed to see Roberta… and she looked good… promised me things… and then I got to this one house… it was a paradox…” Nikita commented as she shrugged her shoulders. She studied Michael’s eyes and rubbed at her forehead. “The woman was named Anna… she liked us kids… and there were a lot of us there… but enough room that I had my own bed.”
Michael waited. He knew that there had to be something else about this place. He could see it on Nikita’s face as she lost some color. “The man… he worked some sort of manufacturing job… he preferred the boys… and there were more of them than me and one other girl… and back then I didn’t realize that foster parents got paid to keep us… and it was clear that to him we were an income source.”
“That’s awful,” Michael spoke and Nikita nodded her head up and down. She placed her head down and closed her eyes. Michael was able to reach out and touch her hair. He touched her for some time and he could feel her hesitating. He didn’t want to stop right here. He needed to know more. “Did this man… hurt you?”
“Not him,” Nikita shook her head as she didn’t push Michael’s hand off of her. She looked up at Michael with her blue eyes and closed them as tears dripped. Nikita swallowed hard as she again moved her hands to squeeze her feet. “They had a foster son that the man liked… he was a teenager… and his eyes… told me… he was bad…”
Michael blinked his eyes as he waited. Nikita took some deep breathes and squeezed her eyes tight for some composure. She looked up at Michael and then sat up from her knees, rubbing her elbows. “He tortured me… and the man thought it was funny… and Anna… I didn’t know… I still don’t know for sure… but I think he battered her… that she had no power…”
“What happened?” Michael asked as he wanted to help Nikita through this conversation. She didn’t need to drag it on too much. Nikita rubbed her left hand against her neck as she pushed away from her place until she was leaning against the headboard. She stared off to wall and Michael worried for a second that she was going to get trapped inside of the memory.
She didn’t need that right now.
“I don’t know what I did… but one night… he was on top of me… pulling at my hair… slamming my head back… I don’t know he was thinking of touching me… or something… but he said that he was going to kill me… slowly,” Nikita rasped as she shook her head. “I ran away. I ran to Roberta and we left.”
Michael swallowed hard. “That must have been hard.”
“I was young…” Nikita explained as she shrugged her shoulders. “But I really didn’t want to go… Anna tried to be nice… she was nice.”
Michael folded his hands as he sat there. “Not all foster families are like that, Kita.”
“I know that,” Nikita declared as she looked at Michael but then she shrugged her shoulders. “But they could be… our daughter could be… somewhere bad and have no way… no one to run too… not even someone bad like Roberta…”
Nikita shook her head as she lifted her hands. She then rubbed her eyes and looked at Michael. “Michael… I was in that house before Christmas… Anna was letting me help bake with her… and I saw gifts… and I didn’t get to have that Christmas… it all happened before… and I was gone… and I left that…”
Michael had all of the parts slip together and he moved to sit beside Nikita. “You should have told us… me…”
“I just wanted to replace those thoughts… with a real Christmas…” Nikita huffed as she dropped her head and shook it. Michael wrapped his arm around Nikita and pulled her head to his chest. “Even if we had the storybook Christmas this year… it isn’t going to delete those memories, Kita.”
“I know… but still…”
Michael licked his lips. He didn’t need Nikita to say anything more. “There are so many things I wish I could redo… forget… rewrite… and some will haunt me… like you and Helmut…”
Nikita looked at Michael and rolled his eyes. He placed a kiss on Nikita’s forehead. “I get it now, Kita… and I know that it is going to be hard for us this Christmas…”
“I need to have this Christmas with you and Adam… even though I know that our daughter… could be… out there… in a bad foster…” Nikita’s words broke apart as she caved for a moment and sobbed. Michael rubbed her back and waited for her to pull away from his chest. “I could start looking for her right now… but that isn’t going to help me… help my soul… it won’t make me feel any more human… I need this holiday to put more space between me… and… and… you know… me when I was Operations… I need this…”
Michael nodded his head as he felt his eyes tearing up. “Kita… you had a role you had to play.”
“Don’t sugar coat it, Michael. I was Operations. I made decisions on who died and who was sacrificed…. I did it on the grandest scheme of all… the closing of Section… I wasn’t a human during that time… I couldn’t… and I just know that I need this… especially since it was…” Nikita stopped and leaned her head down into Michael’s chest as she thought back to what she had done this time last year. Michael stroked her head for a long time, long past when the tears had stopped.
Just when Michael was sure that Nikita was about to drift to sleep, she pulled her head up and looked at Michael with drier eyes. “Mick… how is he?”
“He has been trying to find her from the moment he realized what happened… he wasn’t trained formally for any of that Nikita…. He is devastated that he had to tell us this,” Michael explained as he reached over and cupped Nikita’s cheek. “But right now… it isn’t time to think about Mick.”
“It is,” Nikita shook her head and brushed Michael away from her cheek. “He isn’t going to come over for Christmas.”
“I think he is too scared not to come,” Michael corrected and Nikita winced. “He won’t pick up the phone if I call.”
“No,” Michael shook his head from side to side. “I don’t think he will come here either, Kita… he feels completely responsible… he is beating himself up like I see that you are doing to yourself.”
Nikita didn’t comment and looked at Michael. “I’m going to the lab with you tomorrow.”
“Kita…”
“To see Mick,” Nikita declared as she looked at Michael. “I have too.”
“Kita…”
“Don’t,” Nikita whispered as she shook her head from side to side. “He needs me… and I need him.”
Michael knew better than to argue with Nikita right now. He didn’t reply and he continued to sit there. He felt Nikita moving next to him and he looked at her. “Ellie is downstairs.”
“Why?”
“Davenport… I told him… and he told her…” Michael replied as he didn’t see the sense of hiding it. Nikita nodded her head and looked up at the ceiling. “And Adam will know.”
“Davenport will tell him,” Michael took Nikita’s hands and squeezed them. “You are on edge, Kita.”
“Maybe if I bake…”
“Maybe you should ask for the help before you lose the control that you are trying to hold onto.”
Nikita stared at Michael. She closed her eyes and Michael pressed his head against hers. “Please, Kita… Ellie can help you right now… I can feel you… you are jumping out of your skin right now…”
It took a long time and finally Michael felt Nikita moving her head up and down slightly. “But just this once, Michael… I can’t go back to that… all the time.”
“I agree.”
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