Guts Over Fear ◇ NIKITA

Honey, I'm Home

It had taken two days to follow Nikita's tracker to the source, partly because Nikita herself was mobile for the first day. Alys was quiet as she let her hair out of her ponytail and finger-combed it, walking down the stairs. It was muffled, she couldn't comprehend the words, but she heard Nikita's voice, her heart skipping a beat and her pace quickening. She froze when she saw Nikita standing over an unconscious man, a gun that had been pointed at him lowering. "Is that a 'Welcome home' present?" she asked softly, her green eyes drifting between him and Nikita.

"It is if you want to patch him up for me?" Nikita asked with a smile. "You do owe me."

"You and Amanda throw patients at me to keep me busy," Alys pointed out, taking off her coat as she finished walking into the highly windowed room.

"When you're not busy, you like to tamper and spy," the brunette pointed out, watching as Alys carefully pulled back the rag on his thigh. She got a quick look before putting it back to stem the bloodflow.

"That's basically what Nerd said," Alys chuckled, turning to the table filled with medical supplies and getting herself prepared.

"What are you doing here, Aly?" Nikita asked, all kind and comfort and safety in her voice. Alys still wasn't used to the way Nikita made her feel. She knew it would most likely always be that way. She just knew it. She had even felt this way during her session with Amanda.

"I needed to get out, clear my head... Who is he?" Alys was reluctant to take off her bracelet, but looking at the state of the unknown man, she'd have to. With a light breath, she took it off and stashed it in her pocket before pulling on some gloves.

"His name is Owen. He's a Guardian." She turned to Nikita with a raised brow and looked at the handcuffs on his right wrist keeping him bound to the cot. "He protected one of Percy's Black Boxes." Alys knew little about the Guardians, but the word regimen stuck in her head. She grabbed Owen's left hand and sighed when she found a small tranquilizer in the middle of his palm, gently removing it and laying his arm at his side. "Roan got ahold of him."

Roan had been the one to recruit Alys, his cold, hard eyes haunting her whenever he was mentioned. She'll never forget how inferior she felt to him when he glared at her from the passenger seat of that police car what felt like a lifetime ago. "And this fresh wound?" she questioned, a teasing smile playing at her lips.

"He's hostile." She closed her gun case and walked around it before sitting at her computer but continuing to watch Alys's concentrated medical skills.

"Then I'm glad you put him under. Most people like that are hard to work on when they're awake," Alys reminded, thinking back to Nikita's early time as a Recruit. Keeping the rag close by, she began cleaning away the excess blood.

"And I'm glad you came," Nikita replied. A smile crept up on the blonde, not really noticing it until she looked up at Owen.

"I hope you don't take offence to me taking someone else's pants off in front of you," she laughed, grabbing the scissors from the tray and cutting along the tops of his compression shorts.

"As long as you're not taking advantage of him I don't think I mind," Nikita chuckled, studying her profile. Alys rolled her eyes and carefully pulled the fabric away from his legs, not really caring if her eyes wandered before she focused on his leg again.

"So this is serious then, going after Division?" she asked in a soft voice, not daring to let her eyes wander to Nikita as she cleaned out Owen's wound.

"Yeah. It started when I took Birkhoff." Alys shook her head, fighting a scoff.

"Amanda interrogated me with no obvious reasoning to it. Pretty sure Mom and Dad are going on a mole hunt or will soon. So, based on that, I'm pretty sure it stared somewhere before you attacked the nerd." Alys took a deep breath and switched out her tools, threading some suture into a needle. "I can't take out my tracker, but I have had it jammed for the past few days... I needed to see someone other than Birkhoff," she tacked on, sparing Nikita a quick glance.

"Mom and Dad can't be too happy about that," Nikita frowned.

"Well, I'm not too happy Mom drugged me." Alys reasserted her focus and began to stitch together Owen's leg. "Percy knew the risk he was taking giving me access to the real world. I've been loyal so far, this is the only time I've even wavered. But I'm going back." She tightened the stitch before tying it off and starting again.

"I can take out your tracker, Alys. You don't have to go back there," Nikita tried, but the blonde shook her head and sighed.

"I do. Besides...you could use someone on the inside." There was that and the fact that she had a kill chip inside her neck. She would've come out and said something but she knew how Nikita would react to that. She never liked worrying her. "For now, my place is Division." Alys put down the needle and grabbed a band-aid, gently placing it on Owen's leg before pulling the sheet up over the lower half of his body.

"It doesn't have to be." She looked at Nikita from the corner of her eye, not daring to fully face her just yet. "You could stay here, be my someone on the outside." She stood from her desk and took a few steps towards Alys, a determined frown on her lips.

"No, Nikita," Alys spoke, having to force the words out. After a long pause, she added, "I'm more use to you there." She turned away from Nikita and tucked her hair behind her ears, taking several deep breaths.

"Why are you always turning my help down?" She sounded hurt, Alys knew that tone of voice all too well. "You help so many people daily, why won't you let anyone help you?"

"Because when people help me, they die!" Alys snapped, feeling an angry heat wash through her body. "Before I was even brought into Division they killed the people calling themselves my parents, they killed some innocent cops, and they're not turning a blind eye to their own people, let alone the rogue assassin they created." Her breaths were visible now, her shoulders and chest rising with each intake. "I swear, if you die because of me, too, there won't be much anyone can do to stop me."

Gently, Nikita put a hand on the blonde's shoulder, wrapping her arms around her fragile form and resurecting the feeling of security within her. "Nobody's killing me, Alys," she softly assured, feeling the blonde's hands clasp tightly around her wrists. Alys fought hard not to cry, she was sick of it by now. "I'm sorry about Noah."

"Thank you," she whispered, sinking back into Nikita's chest. And for a moment, Alys was home, wrapped in comfort and an old love, her mind filled with nothing but Nikita. She desperately wanted to take up Nikita's offer, but Nikita didn't have the skill nor the equipment to deactivate Alys's kill chip, and it's not like she could preform nuerosurgery on herself.