1. Blood and Bruises (1/2)

my only faith is in the blood and

uises i display.

he leaves division in the dead of night. he says no goodbyes, he lets no one know that anything might be amiss. he knows it won't last long, but any advantage is worth its weight in gold when dealing with his former employer, especially when you know how to exploit it like he does.

michael takes the first flight to hawaii, travelling under an alias, with impeccable fake identification and a new haircut to match the photos. again, it won't fool them for long, once they realise he's missing. but it'll stall them for a bit. most likely they'll assume he's gone to ground somewhere on the mainland.

and all right- he should've. air travel is risky. ever since 9/11, there are too many cameras around, too much security, he can't hide from all of it, and it'll be harder to escape under the nose of all these guards and police and, shit, the military guards who're no doubt hiding behind the scenes.

but he arrives at the house. it's not the same one that he picked out all those years ago; he finds out later that that one was demolished and replaced with some timeshare condos. it doesn't really matter though. the salty sea-

eeze that whistles through the two bedroom hut he hires for cash is enough. he sees his daughter sleeping soundly in the smaller of the rooms. he sees his wife curled up in the rocking chair on the small wooden deck.

he sees the future he could've had. he sees the future that kasim and percy and division took away from him.

he knows what he has to do.

he has to take down division.

nikita doesn't think she's ever seen division this disorganised. michael is gone. it took them two days to realise he has dropped off the face of the earth and disappeared. birkhoff can't find him. amanda doesn't know anything and is on a rampage because percy clearly doesknow something, but isn't letting the rest of them in on whatever it is. instead, he has just barked short commands to find michael "yesterday" and retreats to his locked office to scheme or plot or whatever it is he does.

nikita is lost.

she flits between the departments, helping where she can. birkhoff is tracking the past, where michael went, what michael did, but he's good at disappearing. they know he spent a day in hawaii, but went off the grid shortly after, with a good chunk of cash in his pocket.

amanda has mocked up a psych profile and is trying to predict where he'll go next. theories are produced and she speculates on his motivations, but they are lacking in any solid answers for the same reason birkhoff's traces go nowhere... they don't know why michael ran.

on day three, percy calls a meeting. high level management only, but nikita finds herself invited along as well.

percy stands at the front of the room and explains everything: "six years ago, we had a division agent in deep cover with al qaida defect, his name is kasim tariq. he cemented his position within the group by targeting a naval base in yemen. michael was assigned there before he joined us and his wife and daughter were killed in the car bomb that tariq set off."

percy pauses in his story to display a recent picture of tariq on the electronic display behind him, along with the standard bio specs division provids for any target.

"division disavowed any ties to tariq immediately, and soon after michael was recruited into our ranks, though considering his psychological state at the time and the, uh, embarrassing nature of tariq's defection, we decided to keep tariq's previous division ties from michael in order to keep the peace.

"it seems that michael has discovered this fact and has misconstrued events. i believe he's under the impression that division was behind the death of his family, thus his rather hasty exodus from us. it's imperative we find him and de

ief him as soon as possible. nikita, i am putting you in charge of the manhunt. birkhoff and amanda will assist you from communications, but you will be the leader on the ground."

"yes sir." nikita nods obediently.

"the sooner we find him, the better. dismissed."

he settles for a while in a hunting cabin in north dakota. off the grid in every way, no internet connection, no telephone line. he needs to travel along unsealed roads 30 miles to the south before he gets to the closest town and a single bar of cell phone reception.

the cabin itself is bare bones, and clearly hasn't been used in a few decades before michael moved in. he spends the first few weeks performing necessary repairs as quickly as possible so that he'll be able to live here throughout the coming winter. it's hard work, but he relishes it. patching the roof and floors, repairing the cracked plumbing pipes and the ancient gas-powered water heater; every night he collapses into bed exhausted from the work, so exhausted he doesn't even dream.

so it takes a few months, well into the hard winter before the nightmares come, and by that stage he's snowed in, and trapped with nothing but his bitter memories to torment him and the ghost of his family to haunt him.

he hears hayley's infectious laugh in the next room, smells elizabeth's perfume on his pillow when he wakes in the morning. he goes entire days without being able to shake the feeling that they're just behind him, watching him, judging him, hating him, for not discovering the truth sooner, for not doing anything about it now he knows. it takes everything he can to keep from storming back into division, guns a-blazing, fully prepared to take down every single person who gets in between him and killing percy. but he knows that he has to wait. taking down percy is a bigger task than simply killing the man- if he goes, someone else, some other unknown potentially worse entity will fill the void, and more innocent people will die.

no. this is the long-haul.

so when hayley whispers in his ear asking him to read her a bedtime story, he drowns her out by picking at the holes in division's armour, and when elizabeth caresses his cheek after he shaves, he takes comfort in imagining how he'll push the knife between division's ribs.

when the snow begins to thaw, and the trees begin to show signs of life again, he packs up his cabin. he has a war to start.

when she reads the new assignment percy gives her, she's surprised to say the least. it's a cushy one, a long-term undercover op, recon, no wet work, working at an it company that has contracts with the defence department, and she'll even have support for the technical stuff- birkhoff will be doing the bulk of the work once she hard-wires them into the system, but when he plugs the holes and uncovers the moles she'll be the one that takes the credit.

it's not exactly a job they give an operative who's botched the only important mission she's ever been in charge of.

she leaves her shiny new apartment, which has been styled perfectly by division with that 'lived-in' look, with half-full bottles of toiletries and a moth trap in the closet (complete with long-deceased moths) to get a

eath of fresh air and to give herself a bit of time to decompress away from division's eye- for all amanda's talk about independence on this mission, nikita knows the apartment will be tapped.

nikita walks a few blocks, hands shoved deep into the pockets of her new persona's grey winter coat and when she sees a cozy looking cocktail bar she slips inside, partially to get out of the cold, but mostly because she needs a stiff drink. she hates the feeling of complete uselessness not finding michael has left her with and although she knows that drinking away her sorrows is a bad idea, she needs to take the edge off before she cracks.

the bar is called canvas and is dimly lit, and has a charming rustic aesthetic to it, but it doesn't seem to be a particularly busy night. a few couples are scattered at little tables and benches near the front, but nikita chooses a seat at the bar.

she peruses the cocktail menu for a little bit, before settling on one simple glass of merlot, which she lets mull for a moment before she takes a sip. it isn't ketamine, but it does warm her throat as it goes down- better than nothing.

"penny for your thoughts?" a man asks her kindly from his seat, a few bar stools down from her own.

"they're hardly worth that much." she says with a sad smile, sending a glance his way. he's handsome, dark hair, cleanly shaven, and has

ight, happy eyes.

"now, don't sell yourself short." he says, "i'm sure there's something in there worth a penny or two."

she takes another sip of her wine. "well that's nice of you to say,"

he smiles, picks up his beer and shifts across two seats until he's on the bar stool directly next to her. "i hope you don't mind, but can i ask you something?"

nikita looks him up and down, but can't

ing herself to be suspicious. she's so tired, and there is nothing about this man that is setting off any warnings, and even if she is wrong, she can look after herself. "sure." she says.

"are you all right?" he asks, and it startles her. he must notice, because a tiny frown appears between his eye

ows, and he says: "i don't mean anything by it. it's just you look sad, or tired, but in that world-weary way. sometimes it's good to talk to someone about your problems who has no preconceptions about you... or your problems."

"are you offering to be my shrink for the night?" she laughs a little, because it is definitely not the pickup line she expected.

"only if you want. i promise there's no catch." he holds his hands up in surrender. "but if you want to talk, i'll pay for that drink, and we can talk about whatever you want."

she swills her glass around and takes a sip. "what the hell, sure. though to protect the innocent-" (the guilty) "- i'll just explain it hypothetically, is that fine?"

"of course."

"i'm starting a new job soon that i don't think i'm qualified for. in fact, my last job ended badly, i wasn't fired, but it led to a big loss for my company and instead of being fired they've transferred me... i'm just drowning my doubts in over-priced wine." she holds up her glass.

the man nods, "it sounds like you've been given a second chance, though, with this new job."

"it's hard, though. i feel like my mistakes are hovering over me like a cloud i can't escape from."

"yeah, it sucks. self-doubt." he gently nudges her shoulder, it's innocent, with a tiny hint of flirty, but just enough to spark something warm and tingly in her belly that isn't from the wine. "you need to figure out what your um

ella is, then, to help protect yourself from them."

"i like how you ran with my metaphor there."

he chuckles, "yeah, i thought it was pretty clever."

"so what's my um

ella?" she asks.

"well i don't know you, so i can't help you there, but i'm sure you have something on your side, or else you'd still be looking for work."

"i'll have to have a think about that." nikita says and glances at the thin watch on her wrist. the time has definitely gotten away from her, and she does have an early start tomorrow morning. she finishes off the last of the merlot.

"i have to go, but you were right, it is good to get it off my chest." she says, and holds her hand out, "nice to meet you, i'm nikita."

he shakes it, it's a nice firm grip, sold and reassuring. "i'm daniel, and hey, if you ever want to talk about anything..."

he reaches across the bar and grabs a napkin from a neatly stacked pile, and with a pen from his shirt pocket he jots down a cell phone number.

"give me a call."

"i will."

he is fighting a ghost, he realises that now, and it is hard not to be frustrated at his lack of progress. he uses his knowledge of procedures and protocol and the personnel to profile probable missions. news reports of innocuous deaths, some important, some not, become his

ead and butter. he reads the obituaries and compares the details found there to the ones found in the official death reports, and then he investigates those. it's a lot of dead ends for a lot of boring work, and by the time he finds a lead on something division is doing, they are long gone, and the trail has gone cold.

picking up patterns was never his strong suit, that was something better left to birkhoff or nikita, both of whom had more natural talent in that area. so after a few months, when his first idea of following the

eadcrumbs that division leaves behind fails, he decides to try a different tack.

he starts picking out potential division targets, particularly the ones that percy was becoming more and more fond of- the work for hire jobs. they vary in their flavour, sometimes it's straight-forward assassination work, sometimes it's corporate espionage. the only thing they have in common is that percy has had great success lining his pockets with the spoils of their work.

michael sets up his base camp in an abandoned building, mansion, really, right in the centre of manhattan. it has at least five escape routes, it's private, and after greasing the palms of a few out-of-work techies he found milling around the local apple store, it has a solid optic fi