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The door buzzed and clanged open to let Nikita and Alex pass through before slamming shut behind them. Alex had enough practice by now to avoid flinching at the noise but she couldn’t stop the feeling of dread that suffused her insides.The feeling grew as they went through each checkpoint and set of doors, the guards at each one examining the visitor passes they wore and comparing the photos on the white plastic badges to information on their computers as if they were weighing the souls of all who went by.
Each hallway they were needlessly directed down shared a sense of misery and despair that added to Alex’s dread. She knew these feelings intimately because she had been trapped in such a place twice before: once in the brothel and once in Division. No matter their facade, all prisons had the same feel to them and as each step took them further inside this one’s confines, Alex felt as if she were descending straight into the bowels of hell.
The entire time they walked Nikita never looked left or right, following their assigned escort and steeling herself for what was to come. Alex never took her eyes off Nikita, ever vigilant and knowing that the true dangers of this place were not external.
In the end it was inevitable that Nikita would want to come, would insist on coming. It took six months for her to decide and inform the rest of them the first time but Alex supposed like a magnet being drawn to a lodestone, Nikita would always be drawn back to this place, to this person, to her. This was not their first time here and Alex didn’t think it would be the last.
The first time Nikita told them she was coming here reactions had been mixed. Birkhoff laughed, thinking it was a joke until he realized she was serious. Then he was outraged, telling Nikita she was insane and ranting about how ridiculous she was being. Michael had been furious immediately. He’d covered well in front of the group but Alex had seen the anger etched into his skin. And the fear. She’d heard them arguing later, not the specific words but just the raised voices had been enough.
Sam simply hadn’t understood why Nikita felt like she had to do it and had such as much before saying that if Nikita wanted to throw herself in the viper’s nest, it was none of his business. Sonya had partially understood the reasons. She had been a protege too for a while, though never quite the same way Nikita and Alex had been. She understood some of it so she said little.
Alex understood almost all of it so she said nothing. Some knowledge goes beyond the capacity of words.
Besides, she knew that look on Nikita’s face. The one that marked her certainty that this action was right and masked her fear that maybe this time she was wrong. Fighting that look was pointless and Nikita didn’t need them to fight her. So Alex held her tongue on all her objections and doubts, letting her own mask slide into place so she could give Nikita the necessary support.
Nikita had initially suggested she go alone but on that one point all of them were united against her so she’d reluctantly agreed to be accompanied.
Birkhoff had forcefully and colorfully refused while Sonya had declined more gracefully. Sam would have Nikita’s back physically but his lack of understanding would have left Nikita emotionally undefended so no one asked him.
Michael...Michael would do almost anything for Nikita but he could not do this. After everything they’d gone through he simply didn’t have the strength in him to watch Nikita risk herself this way again.
There was no need to ask Alex but Nikita did anyway because Nikita always asked. She always made sure Alex was certain even when it was Alex’s plan, even when Alex volunteered. Alex simply looked at Nikita and said, “I’ll find the next rocketship,” and that was the end of the discussion. They understood each other.
So here they were, having pulled strings no ordinary person even imagined existed to get regular visiting privileges to a supermax prison that matched some of Alex’s ideas of hell, right down to the devil within. The very devil Nikita kept coming to see.
Alex knew that without these visits from Nikita, Amanda would slide even further into insanity than she already was. Nikita was her lifeline. And Nikita had too many debts to repay to just leave Amanda to rot.
Others might say Nikita owed Amanda nothing, but Alex wasn’t one of them. She owed similar debts to Nikita. They were not the sort that could be remunerated with mere money. She’d owed some to Amanda once too but those had been repaid in betrayal, Amanda’s manipulations, and Sean’s blood.
Her debts to Nikita were unpaid, could perhaps never be paid so she gathered her strength and walked into hell at Nikita’s side.
But when they finally reached the door that marked the end of their long walk into the innermost level of hell, Alex stopped. Her debt to Nikita didn’t extend into that room, and they both knew it.
Besides, Nikita didn’t want her in the room anyway. Whatever it was that lay between Nikita and Amanda that drove Nikita to dive into and share Amanda’s darkness and madness, it was personal and oddly intimate.
Alex understood.
So she stood sentinel for Nikita, the candle in the darkness, and the guide to lead her back out again. It repaid a small portion of the debt Nikita always claimed didn’t exist between them.
Michael always wanted to be the shield that stood between Nikita and the pain she threw herself at time and time again. He couldn’t stand by without interfering and watch her do it.
Alex could.
It was a different kind of strength. It was what got her through the brothel, knowingly sent her into Division, and now she walked into this new prison, this fresh hell side by side with Nikita, full of her own volition. It took a different kind of strength. And maybe, a different kind of love.
She had always had love in abundance for Nikita.
Nikita was the bond that held them all together in this world that tried to forget the hell they’d been through. In the end, they’d all belonged to Nikita, even Amanda.
Alex saw her face once as Nikita was leaving. For all that part of Amanda was always under Nikita’s skin, buried in her thoughts and actions, that one glimpse of Amanda’s face let Alex know that Nikita haunted Amanda’s soul too.
It never got easier. Alex kept thinking it would, that over time these visits would hurt less, the past would dim in the brightness of a new world. They had all found joy in their lives these last few years but hell and its devils still waited for them. So they guarded each other still.
When Nikita finally emerged from that room, Alex let out a soft breath of relief only then knowing that Nikita would return; it was an uncertainty she had each visit.
Nikita looked the same yet somehow she was different after each time she went in and came back, as if the burden she carried on her soul weighed heavier. Alex wanted to take it from her but knew she never could because Nikita would not let it go. So Alex did the only thing she could, the thing she did best because she’d had the most practice.
She turned away from the darkness and began ascending out of hell, Nikita’s soul tethered to her own and following.
And Alex never looked back.