"Seven months."

"What?"

Madeline looked up.  She was sitting behind her mahogany desk, trying to compose a surveillance report that was due at the end of the day. One would think that in an ultra-secret anti-terrorist team, where secrecy was absolute, that paperwork would be nonexistent, if not treasonous.  Unfortunately, that wasn't the fact. Section One had just as much, if not more, than the FBI or other better known agencies. They only hid it better.

Up until Nikita had made her presence known, Madeline had been working on one of those need-to-know documents that was both the life-blood and bane of the section. The paradoxism of that idea described the entire unit. They were protecting the public by using the same methods that the enemy used in terrorizing it. The section brought killers and the dejected into their doors, trained them, and released them back into the population. They took the wrongly accused innocent and made their lives a living hell for the sake of the innocents that had been smart enough, or lucky enough not to be shunned.

Nikita was one of the more recent additions to elite group. She had been a street person in the wrong place at the wrong time. Her loss, their gain. Nikita had been molded and shaped by the best. Trained to a perfection that was almost unheard of. The girl truly had a gift. Madeline had always known that. She had noticed it the first time they had ever met. She had seen deep pain in those corn-flower blue eyes, but what had struck her deeper was the icy control that held it back.

She had gathered all she could on Nikita's background and what she found hadn't been pretty. A slut of a mother who's boyfriends who'd been drunkards and molesters.  The odds were fairly high that those men had done a bit more than play cards with her Nikita while her mother was off in some substance-induced stupor. It was no wonder Nikita had left so young. The girl had been forced onto the streets when she was no more than a baby. Fortunately for the section, this had created a need to survive deeper than anything that could be trained.

Oh yes, Nikita knew how to survive. She had lasted eight years without help or love. Those years had forged a deep anger and control in the woman. Nikita was the personification of Section One. She was an oxymoron with both sides fighting each other brutally and reaching no further than a stalemate.

The icy control that Madeline had first noticed detected was, at this moment, wrapping the woman across from Madeline in a cloud. Nikita was standing in the doorway, resting lightly on the molding.  Laziness was radiating from her in deceptive waves.  Madeline didn't need to do anything more than look the blonde in the eye to see she was anything if relaxed.  Nikita may have been well trained in hiding her emotion, but Madeline had done the training.

Nikita was dressed in what passed for normal attire. Clunky combat boots were at odds with the skin-tight pants glued to the girl's almost anorexic form. On her head she wore a stocking cap reminiscent of the Cat in the Hat. It covered all but a few whips of the thin white-blonde hair curling around the collar of a half-way buttoned silk blouse. And, as per/usual for the past two months, it was all black.

Madeline internally winced at the reasoning for that particular ensemble shade. What could she do. It had only been two months and Nikita needed time to recover. They all did.

"I said, seven months."

"What about seven months, Nikita?"

"In seven months, I want you to cancel me."

This little announcement made an impact similar to that of a two-by-four between the eyes.  What the hell..? She couldn't do this, not just because...

"Cancel you? Nikita, really.  Isn't that a bit extreme? I know you were devoted to Michael, but please..."

Nikita shifted slightly in her pose. Madeline was silenced by the light movement. She looked up into the younger woman's eyes and was suddenly afraid. In them was something dark. It was as if a miasma of death had suddenly surrounded the vivacious young thing that was currently camped on her doorstep.

"I'm not doing this because of Michael." Nikita's tone was soft but hard. "I'm doing this for myself. I want to be left alone for seven months and then canceled."

"Left alone?"

"Completely."

Madeline steeled her features. Something was going on and it wasn't good. To all accounts and purposes it had seemed that Nikita had settled in to the section and accepted her lot in life. There had been some problems at the beginning but in the past five years, she had risen to be the top agent.

So, when Ops had died, of a stress induced heart attack, the year before, and Madeline had been promoted, Nikita had taken Michael's place as task leader and trainer. Michael had, of course taken Madeline's old position. That was until two months ago when a recalcitrant suspect had, unexpectedly, pulled a knife during an interview, ending Michael's life before the guards had subdued him. Nikita had been devastated.

About two years after Nikita's introduction to field work, she and her enigmatic superior had set up shop together. While not hot-footing it across the world to diffuse potential threats to world harmony, they had begun a relationship. At the time, Madeline had not been too sure about the intelligence of that move. She had once told Nikita that the section took precedence over every relationship that would ever arise in her life.

Somehow, some way, the tall woman had proven Madeline wrong. And, while that in itself was a feat, Nikita had not stopped there. The svelte woman had also succeeded in breaking down the walls in Michael's cold heart. Over the past two years, Madeline had watched, with a measured amount of envy, at the complex and beautifully crafted web of a life those two had created.

And now here Nikita was, begging to be killed not two months after Michael's death. A dyslexic version of Romeo and Juliet indeed.

"Why, Nikita? If not for Michael, why?"

The tall woman rolled lethargically off of the lacquered wood and moved cautiously into the room. A panther ready to strike. Palming the door closed behind her, she moved to stand in front of the auburn haired woman.

"I'm going to have a child and I would like to live a normal, stress free life until the time to which this little one will make an appearance. Two days after that blessed event, I wish to be killed."

"Oh." It took everything Madeline had inside not to drop her jaw. Two surprises in one day. This was very unpleasant to a woman who made it her business to know everything.

"I would prefer not to die, but that is impossible, isn't it?" Nikita's mouth twisted in a mirthless smile.

Madeline knew there was another choice. Nikita was the best, she deserved a vacation. Seven months wasn't too bad. She'd been working with them non-stop for the past five and had not wavered in loyalty in four. The older woman trusted Nikita more than anyone else in the section, which wasn't much, but in this business relativity was everything.

"You won't be canceled, Nikita, but I will grant you your seven months. The child will be placed for adoption at the end of that period and it will be the end of it."
Nikita's eyes burned.

"No, Madeline."

Madeline's features tightened. It was the first time in years that the blonde woman had addressed her by her first name. No one called Ops by anything other than her title. It was unprofessional.

"My child, OUR child will *not* be raised by strangers. Karla will be it's mother. And I will *die* when this little one is born. I have gone through hell because I wasn't able to have a normal life outside these walls. I cannot, will not, go on knowing that my baby is out there somewhere." The lethargy that had surrounded Nikita burnt away like mist at dawn. So, instead of a sleeping wild cat, Madeline now had to deal with a lioness fully aroused and protecting her threatened young.

"This baby will know who I am. Can't you see this is important to me?"

"Of course, Nikita, but why? I though you'd found some measure of peace with your job." Madeline was starting to get angry. This surprised her a bit. After all, she prided herself on control in all forms. What was wrong with her?

"Ha." Nikita smiled coldly. "Yes, I found peace." She placed her hands flat down on the desk and leaned in to look Madeline straight in the eyes.

"I found peace with Michael and what we had together. When we were out of these walls, we became normal people. We could laugh and go to movies and have snow ball fights. Now if I were a normal woman I could go on with my life after his death. I'd be able to talk to other women and get support, not worrying about whether or not I'll suddenly be flown off to Zambisia to assassinate a drug lord! As you once said, the Section is everything. Michael tempered the effects of that for me. He's gone now. If I weren't carrying this baby I would have blown my head off a month ago. I can't go on with my life without Michael. He was my life line in the section. Without him I would have gone insane along time ago. He helped me separate myself from this place and I can't do it when he isn't here."

Nikita's face began to crumble but, once again, the control she'd honed came into hard play. Eyes as cold as glaciers she stared Madeline down.

"Nikita," Madeline whispered. "Don't do this. You're the best we have."

"Go to Hell."

Pivoting lightly on her boots, Nikita turned to flee the room, but was brought up short by what might have been an agonized plea.  Had it been anyone else, that was.

"Nikita."

Spinning, the blonde woman brought her stormy eyes up and glared hardly at the stoic woman behind the desk. Almost imperceptively, the titian haired woman inclined her head.

"Seven months."