The First Two of Many...

[cybermathwitch]

(This would be what you call a rough draft.   Eventually, I will post them in my fic journal (koren_m) with pretty headers but for now you get them raw.)  (General disclaimers for La Femme Nikita fandom apply - not mine, yadayada, belong to Joel Surnow and USA etc etc etc.  Lyrics on the second belong to Tori Amos.)

First, for mlsky: Five Times Michael and Nikita Communicate Without Words:

Five times Michael and Nikita communicate without words.

1.  She doesn't know what caused his pain when he comes back from an extended mission, but Nikita is well enough acquainted with anguish and loss that she can recognize it when it lights in Michael's eyes.  One long, dark look across the conference room table that says "I am hurting" and hears "I wish I could take your pain."  Madeline sees this, and files it away.

2.  At first, Nikita thinks that Michael doesn't laugh, because she never hears him.  It isn't until she sees him fighting a smile while listening to Walter and Birkoff that she realizes his laugh exists - it is just an immensely quiet thing.

3.  Michael knows the only way to bring Nikita back in is to fake her capture and he is agent enough to accept what that is going to entail.  But each time he hits her, for every blow, he hopes she realizes that in this backwards way it means "I love you" not "I want to cause you pain."

4.  Sometimes it feels like all they have left of themselves is moments out of time because of course they don't exist.  One moment when she desperately wants to exist and hold on to time is when she feels Michael's hand on her shoulder.  It's the only way he knows how to say "hang in there". 

5.  There is no point in time that bodies in the dark have been less eloquent than words - they take full advantage of that fact in what little time they have.  They lay together in the dark, on the boat, and together they don't speak but instead let the gentle rocking of the ocean speak through them.

And then, for the lovely and supremely evil the_disco_fairy: Five Original Times Prompted with Tori Amos Lyrics:

These are moments in two different universes that I'm (dabbling) at writing stories in.

1. "And in the doorway" 

From the doorway of his grandmother's house, sees trees, carefully trimmed hedges, and just the vaguest hint of where the road might be that leads further down the road to Anna's house in one direction and to Ben's in the other.    He's looking out the door on the outside now, but he can clearly remember when he was brought here as a little boy and what it was like to look through the doorway in the other direction.  At the time, at barely five years old, he couldn't understand the meaning of "Mommy and Daddy won't be coming home" and he didn't know what to make of the two women who 'welcomed' him into their home and told him to call them Grandmother and Aunt Ellen. 

He could understand that there were no more sticky pancakes and syrup around a worn out wooden table, no more made-up bedtime stories that made him giggle until his stomach hurt, and no more laps to curl up in when it got too dark and scary. 

2. "The stay and laugh"

"Stay," Cora says to the young woman who walks in wearing clothes that had seen better days and the guarded expression of someone who doesn't believe in a better, safer world.   It's her lot in life, she's decided, to keep up with and take in the strays that seem to filter through her life.  She gets a suspicious look for her trouble complete with narrowed eyes.  "You can go back to the room you rented, and tuck in with your charms, but I can guarantee you we've got the best shields and wards in town.  Whatever it is you're running from?  It's not gonna find you here, hon."

3. "As violins fill with water"

Jacob watched him from the shore as Ben walked purposefully out to the edge of the pier, his antique violin in hand.

"You sure you want to do this, Benji?" he called out when his best friend stopped.

"Never been more sure in my life," he replied, but there was a slight tremor in his voice that only Jake or Anna would hear. 

Ben looked down at the instrument in his hands and didn't see wood and string.  He saw years of small practice rooms, tables full of juries and halls full of people.  He saw all the things his parents had wanted for him, and all the things he'd wanted for himself that he'd let be shoved off to one side.  Deliberately, he didn't think about how much pleasure he actually got from music... for a little while at least he would need to appreciate it in other ways.

This wasn't about the music.  This was about becoming who he wanted to be. 

So he let go.

He saw, rather than heard the splash as it hit the surface of the ocean.

He felt, rather than heard Jake walk up behind him.

Jake set his hand against the back of Ben's neck and tightened briefly.  In reply, he leaned sideways just a little so that his head rested on Jake's shoulder and they stayed that way as they watched the violin fill with water and drift under.

4. "Screams from the bluebells"

The flowers were screaming.  No one else seemed to notice, but Aurora couldn't sleep it was so loud.  She got up from her bed and headed for the stairs down to the store - she grabbed a piece of fabric as an after-thought.  Cora disapproved when she went downstairs naked.

The center panel of the old stained glass window that looked out over her flowerbed was clear and she pressed her nose against it trying to see.  There were shadows outside, creeping along the edges of her garden like an oily ivy, pocked with disease. 

"Rory?  You down here?" Cora's voice drifted over from the hallway.  Aurora just kept staring, waiting to be found.  "What's wrong?" Cora asked softly, as softly as the fuzzy robe she settled around her shoulders to keep off the chill.  Aurora never noticed the cold, or the heat and it perplexed her when other people did.

"The flowers.  They're crying out.  There's something bad in the garden."

Cora looked out the window next to her, through a pane tinted blue.  "Want me to call Michael up to come see?"

Aurora blinked a long, slow blink.  "Possibly.  Tomorrow.  Tonight we shouldn't go outside."

5. "Can't make them go away"

Ten minutes after nine, exactly, Anna sat down on the rickety step of the old tree house, wondering why she was putting herself through this again.  And again.  And again.  They called, she came - since she was seven she'd been their beck-and-call girl and she was tired.  She was just plain tired - of the situation, of their families, of them - especially herself and how helpless she was around them. 

"Hey, Anna-banana?" a low voice called and she looked up to see a figure walk out of the dark.  She knew it was Jacob without looking up because she knew his voice better than her own mother's.  And he was the only one who called her "Anna-banana".  Ben had never tried because he knew it made her make a scowling face.  Jake just *liked* her scowling face.  By the time she was sixteen she didn't even mind anymore.

Ben was a few steps behind him.  She wondered if they realized they walked in step with each other.  She wondered if they would care.  Was it because of all the years they'd spent in each other's pockets at school, or was something else going on?  At twelve she'd been terrified they'd go away to school together and she'd never see them again, because why would they want to hang around with a girl anyway?  Didn't boys that age, she'd wondered, want nothing at all to do with girls?

But now, at age twenty-five, she knew better.  No matter where they went, or who any of them became, she'd never be able to make them go away.