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“I can only promise you one thing. It’s going to get worse before it gets better. As long as you’re here, you’re safe.”
It was her first lie to me, though I don’t think she meant to do it at the time. She said she could only promise me one thing but she promised two.
It did get worse before it started to get better. I spent hours in that sauna, curled up in a ball in agony or, in the moments I had the strength for it, banging the walls trying to find a way out. I never even realized then that she had lied. Or the significance of the second promise.
She meant the words as comfort. She repeated them as an echo of her past trying to call forth the ghost of a memory of the woman who had taught them to her. She was trying to comfort herself as much as me in that moment. I didn’t know that until later either. Not until enough time had passed for her to share secrets with me, to tell me of her own addiction and the life she’d left behind after a false death and a rebirth deep in the heart of Division. The first time she said those words to me, she was talking to both of us and while the words were significant to her, they had no real meaning to me.
Later, after my own time in Division, which was no rebirth for me since I had been reborn choking on soapy water and my own vomit after a failed attempt at suicide, she said the words again. I had betrayed her, shot her, tried to steal Birkoff’s pain meds to get high again, rebelled against her in almost every way possible and still she gave me that promise. “You can stay here. This is a safe place.”
It meant more the second time. More because she explained to me her own history with the words and the woman who taught them to her. More because of the history that already lay between us, that bound us together and made us more than mere friends or family. More because of the love we have for each other.
For Nikita, for both of us really, saying the actual words “I love you” didn’t come easily. But she found other ways to say them. That was one of her ways. “This is a safe place” didn’t just mean the physical space we were in. She was letting me know she was safe, that she cared, and that she would take care of me even when I didn’t want her to, maybe even especially when I didn’t want her to. It was safe for me to let her love me.
Nikita was willing to let herself be recaptured by Division to protect me. She was willing to follow me into my own personal hell to retrieve me from Ivan’s brothel. She willing to break my arm and shoot me in an attempt to slow down my quest for revenge and keep me from being Amanda’s tool. She was even willing to try to talk my mom into leaving Semak and coming with us despite my mom’s betrayal.
All of that she did out of love and she did for me. Love is spoken in hundreds of thousands of different ways in this world and not all of them involve words.
She was right in the beginning. It did get worse before it got better. And as long as I’m with her, I’m safe.
Not safe in the way most people think of it, safe from physical harm, safe from all the trials and travails of the world. Not safe like that. Nikita has never promised me that, not since I volunteered myself to be her mole and infiltrate Division. The safety that she promises has more to do with a peace of mind that is unknown to most people.
She is promising to always have my back. She is promising to always know who I am even when I don’t know or remember. She is promising that even when I am descending into hell, she will have my back.
She is promising to keep the essence of who I am safe.
That sort of safety is rare and almost impossible to find. It is what keeps me going when everything and everyone else has failed me. “As long as you’re here, you’re safe.”
With Nikita, I am cared for. I am protected. I am loved.
And I am safe.