Living the Normal Life
Title: Living the Normal Life
Fandom: La Femme Nikita
Pairing: Michael Samuelle/Nikita Wirth
Characters: Michael Samuelle, Adam Samuelle, OCs
Rating: A very mild R, I think
Genre: Post Series Fic
Length: Longish
Summary: What is life like for a widowed parent on the run?
~~~~~~~
“WOO HOO! Yoo-ee!” Adam burst up out of the water, droplets scattering wildly as he shook out his hair and ran splashing for the shore.
Michael looked up from the campfire he was stirring back to life. Eyeing his son’s naked body exploding from the cold Minnesota lake, new muscles sharply outlined under glistening skin, he received one of parenthood’s familiar shocks. Sometime when he had not been paying attention, Adam had left childhood behind and was fully entered into his long-hinted at puberty.
It won’t be long now until I can leave him, Michael thought. And received his second shock of the morning. The quick wave of anticipation he felt, as he always did when thinking of his return to Nikita, crested and broke, leaving only a messy mix of regret and guilt and painful desire in its wake. To Michael’s astonishment, he realized that he already missed the now vanished little boy he had brought to the northern United States almost six years ago. He fought to recall how small and slight Adam had been then, how thin and fragile his arms had seemed when Adam wound them tightly around Michael’s neck in joyful relief when he learned that they could stay for a long time. Michael was sized by the apprehension that if he failed to fully recollect everything about Adam’s childhood now, it might all disappear into a single blurred image.
Awash in the strange new sensation of wistful bewilderment, Michael realized that “a long time” had passed in the blink of an eye, and the little boy he had been so assiduously protecting and loving and nurturing and training to survive on his own was not nearly so little any more. Instead of filling him with relief for a task half completed, the knowledge carried with it a wholly unforeseen sense of melancholy loss. Looking now at Adam’s maturing body, Michael found himself wondering if, in his unending desire to get back to Nikita, he might have failed to cherish enough each and every irreplaceable moment of Adam’s childhood.
As Adam fought his way through the frisking dogs to reach his clothes, he must have seen something of Michael’s surprise and confusion in his expression, and following the direction of his father’s gaze flushed slightly and grinned. “What are you looking at Dad?”
“You’re growing up.”
Adam, ears burning, ducked his head in pleased embarrassment and reached for his clothes, “Uh, yeh-ah.”
Michael heard the implied ‘Duh,’ as Adam tugged his jeans up his still damp legs.
Smiling, Michael turned back to the fire and rifled through the pack of food, searching for the coffee. After getting the percolator set up, he sat back on his heels so he could admire the patches of blue sky visible through the canopy of bright yellow maple leaves. His gaze drifted down across their campsite to take in the dark surface of the small lake, mirroring the trees glowing in their autumn glory in the morning sun along the opposite shoreline.
As he turned his gaze back to rest on Adam, Michael realized that this was one of those parenting opportunities that should be seized. “Do you have any questions?”
Adam looked up from under his dark brows, intentionally dense, “about what?”
Michael grinned and turned back to breakfast preparation. “About growing up?”
After a few minutes, Adam glanced up from tying his boots, his voice studiously dispassionate as he asked, “How old were you when you first had sex?”
Looking at his son now, trying so hard for an expression of disinterested nonchalance, his face lit by the clear rays of the early morning sun that eliminated all shadows and planes, Michael could only see the child whose nightmares he had banished and tears he had dried and not the young man he had glimpsed just a moment ago. He considered lying, but then, looking into his son’s earnest brown eyes, he kept the promise he had made to himself and to the image of Nikita - to tell none but absolutely essential lies.
As Adam would be thirteen soon, it cost him something to answer.
“Fifteen,” he said as he gave the oatmeal a vigorous stirring, glancing up from under his eyelashes to catch Adam’s reaction.
Adam’s eyes went slightly round and his hands momentarily stilled while buttoning his flannel shirt. “Wow.” He paused, considering. “Was it hard?”
Looking at Adam’s serious expression, Michael squashed the desire to laugh at the unintentional double entendre. “Was what hard?”
“You know.” Adam shrugged helplessly, “figuring it all out?”
Michael considered for a moment, trying to decide what he could say, what would be true and yet what Adam would be able to understand. “It was awkward, and over very, very quickly, but everything is right where the books tell you it is.”
Adam looked at Michael, an expression of confused wonder on his face, “and girls like it?”
Michael had to laugh then. “When boys are awkward and fast? No. Generally not.”
“Then why…?”
“It gets better as you get older.”
Adam grinned saucily and cracked his knuckles over his head. “Uh, gee, Dad? Is that supposed to be a hint? To wait till I’m older?”
Returning the grin, Michael said, “Yes.”
Adam rose, picked up a stick and turned to throw it for the dogs. “Do as I say and not as I do, huh?”
“Something like that.” Michael kept his tone light, even as his heart squeezed painfully tight at the thought of Adam following in his own treacherous footsteps.
Apparently feeling the conversation was now over, Adam laughed and hurled the stick out over the still surface of the lake, a stillness immediately broken by the dogs charging in after it.
Michael decided that he had not said quite all he wanted to before the moment was lost. “Adam.”
Adam looked over his shoulder. “Yeah?”
Michael raised his voice enough that his words wouldn’t be lost over the clamor of the dogs. “You will be a sexually active adult most of your life. There is no reason to rush.”
Adam stopped playing with the dogs and turned back to Michael, raising his shoulders and eyeing him skeptically. “Are you going to tell me to ‘wait for the right one’ now?”
Michael shook his head. “No.”
“Oh.” Adam dropped his shoulders, obviously a little surprised by this answer. “Why?”
“It could be a long wait.”
Adam came over to the fire and squatted down, peering into the frying pan. “How old were you when you found the ‘right one?”
Michael did not have to close his eyes to remember that night on the barge. He could still catch the scent of gas and saltwater, old oil and rust. He could still see the moonlight shining weakly through the filthy portholes, and in the gloom of the interior, Nikita burning with an incandescent flame. It rose up in front of him like it was yesterday. Caught up in memory, he did not even pause as he answered, “thirty-four.”
“It took nineteen years?” Adam’s horrified tone snapped Michael back to the present. “Oh man! I hope it was worth the wait.” A disbelieving chuckle followed this remark.
Michael turned his attention back to the fire, hastily taking stock of the state of their meal. He was deeply relieved to announce that breakfast was ready. Watching Adam inhale an amount of food that would have made a pro-wrestler blush - they had recently traded in backpacking for car-camping when Michael realized that he would have to fill an entire pack with food just to get Adam through thirty-six hours - he reflected wryly on the way age changed perception.
It had never occurred to him to measure the time from his first sexual experience to Nikita, much less consider it ‘waiting.’ After all, he had loved more than one of his partners before Nikita, and he had loved his first wife deeply and without reservation. If he had never met Nikita, he would never have suspected that he had not yet encountered the ‘right one.’ He would have gone to his grave believing that he had and her name was Simone.
And yet… after Nikita, he had never been the same. The tumultuous decades of his life before they found each other paled in comparison to the intensity of all that had happened since that first, fateful encounter in the white room. From that day on, the longer they were in contact, the more inevitable their final coming together was, in all its passion, and glory, and pain. If they could have avoided it, knowing what was coming, maybe they both could have, would have, done so.
He promptly chided himself for that ridiculous speculation. He had known. He had known with certainty that their lives would be near unbearable; full of betrayal, manipulation, and lies of almost unimaginable magnitude. And he could no more have stopped himself that night than he could have held back the tide. That her love and passion would match his own was something he had longed for and counted on, and yet, in the moment of confirmation, had been a revelation that shattered his world.
In the end, they both had decided that satisfying their need for each other was worth risking not only their own lives, but also the lives of everyone around them. For each other they had broken just about every rule there was, and not just Section rules either, several of the Ten Commandments too. How on earth could he ever explain to a twelve-year old that finding the ‘right one’ could be one of the most dangerous things you would ever do?
Even now he was doing dangerous things when it came to Nikita. Telling Adam the truth about his age when he and Nikita first came together was a ridiculously careless thing to do. In time, and sooner rather than later, his quiet, thoughtful son would put two and two together and start asking questions that Michael did not yet know how to answer.
************
After they finished eating, Michael directed Adam to wash up the breakfast things while he collected and checked the gear they would need for the day’s hunting. While they worked, Michael kept glancing over at Adam out of the corner of his eye, trying to find in Adam’s wiry, twelve-year-old body the remnants of the softly rounded child he barely remembered, trying to guess at the hints of the young man to come.
He also used the time to review all he had accomplished with Adam, and to consider again what still lay ahead as he prepared Adam for the day he would leave him to return to Nikita.
Most important, they were still free.
There were two basic strategies for hiding from enemies and friends. One was to keep moving, never lingering in one place too long or forging any deep ties to a place or to its people. The other was to pick a spot with lots of natural cover and nestle in, acquiring as much protective coloring as possible. With a small child in tow and otherwise all alone, rendering him extremely vulnerable to predators and scavengers alike, Michael took the lesson from nature and chose camouflage.
After traveling around the globe long enough to be certain as he could be that they had avoided or evaded any immediate pursuit, Michael had clutched Adam tightly to his chest, looked over his shoulder one last time, and then dove in to St. Paul, Minnesota. He had chosen Minnesota because it was in the United States, yet close enough to Quebec and French Canada that Michael’s own faint accent and fresh new French surname would pass without notice. In the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul (side by side at the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers) there was also a large enough polyglot population that his dark eyed, dark haired son would be accepted as his without notice. The twin cities also had the advantage of being relatively far from places where there was much chance that Michael would stumble across either enemies or allies from his old life. When they finally surfaced, he had them settled into a quiet neighborhood, Adam was enrolled in first grade and Michael was working as a house painter.
Michael worked, not because they needed the money, but because normal men, innocent men, worked to feed their families. A man who did not work would have caught too much attention and required too much explanation. He could, of course, have manufactured the credentials necessary for a white-collar position, but he wanted to avoid any employment where his Section-trained skills would be too apparent to any observer looking for such things, and his lack of ambition would have to be explained away.
He had chosen the trades because they were about as far removed from what he had done in Section and before as he could imagine, and because he could slip gently and easily into the fluid world of blue-collar laborers. Michael chose house painting because most of the other building trades required some sort of certification or licensure, and city or county permits; more contact with officialdom than Michael felt comfortable with. Painting required none of these, and so he had worked for and then eventually bought out a local painter. He had owned and operated the small painting business for several years now.
As time had passed, Michael had deepened and broadened their cover until it was now so thick and dense that Adam was no longer aware of it as a disguise, it was simply his life. He lived in a house like most of his friends, he went to school with children he had known since he was six, he played sports and the violin, computer games and chess. Along with all the other children he knew, he had learned to swim and to ice skate, and Michael, like all the other parents in their circle, had signed Adam up for soccer and little league and ice hockey and basketball and American-style flag-football.
Michael was also taking full advantage of their Minnesota setting to teach Adam to camp and to fish, to ski and to snowshoe, to canoe and to sail. He was doing these things because he genuinely loved most out-door activities and he wanted Adam to love them too. He knew as well that the day would come when Adam would need activities that gave him peace and solace in the face of loss. He knew from experience that Adam would need good memories of his father someday, and Michael hoped that, much as his own memories of similar times with his own father had done for him, these shared times would be as much a part of Adam’ healing as his grief.
Michael was also introducing Adam to outdoor life as a way of teaching Adam survival skills and independence in a way that looked, and felt, like the experience of many of Adam’s friends and acquaintances. He was teaching Adam to hunt for survival reasons alone. Hunting was the most socially invisible way that he could think of to train Adam in the use and care of firearms. Michael was confident that their cover was as good as he could make it, but he knew that chance could trip them up and send them on the run again. If that happened, he could not afford for Adam to be surprised or frightened merely by the existence of guns.
The two areas where there was the most continuity from Adam’s previous life with Michael and Elena, when they had still been a family, however artificial, were music and martial arts. Adam had already begun to play the violin even before Michael had left them, as he had already begun to study karate. Michael had continued both, for he could honestly share his love of music with Adam as he could share his love for the out of doors, and like guns, martial arts were part of a foundation in self-defense Michael was determined to give Adam. Fortunately, both music and martial arts were quite popular among Minnesota parents, so Michael didn’t look at all out of place in pushing Adam into either.
These patterns were all well established after six years of work, and Michael knew that the most difficult challenge ahead would be for him to stay within them now that Adam was entering his teens. These next six years were the time when Adam needed to separate from Michael, to become independent and able to stand on his own. Yet these coming years were also a time in which, ironically, Michael needed to be able to control their environment more closely than ever so that Adam did not venture out from under their meticulously constructed cover and draw unwanted attention to them both.
Unfortunately, without paying nearly enough attention to what he was doing, he had just altered his carefully crafted time-line of their family history by admitting how old he was when he first made love to Nikita. He knew, to his extreme irritation, that by doing so, he had just invited Adam to re-open the dangerous subject of the past. An invitation Adam was sure to accept.
Adam remembered Michael’s ‘death,’ and he remembered his kidnapping at the hands of the Collective, and Michael had been forced to explain both, often and at length, when they were first re-united. Adam had been far too young to fully understand what was happening or why, and as far as Michael could tell, there were no open wounds from those years, though he was sure he could see the scars. Nonetheless, and especially when Adam was younger, Michael had had to explain it all, over and over, as he reassured Adam that he would not be kidnapped again. More perplexing, and much more frustrating for a small child, Michael also had to explain to him how it was that his father had died and come back, but that his mother had died and would not.
So Michael had never been able to pretend the past had not happened, and he knew that he could not afford any unanswered questions that might push Adam to search for elusive answers elsewhere either. Following the dictum that the truth is always stronger, always better than a lie, Michael spun a story that was mostly true. He told Adam that his maternal grandfather had been an important man in his country, and that he had been killed by terrorists, terrorists Michael had seen, and so had to hide from, thus leaving his family to keep them safe. Michael had explained that the terrorists were very determined, and found Adam and his mother anyway, for Adam remembered leaving a house in the middle of supper one evening and losing his beloved teddy-bear forever. The terrorists were so determined, in fact, that they had eventually found Adam, after Elena died, and kidnapped him to force Michael out of hiding.
Michael assured Adam, endlessly, that the police had been able to use the kidnapping to capture and imprison the kidnappers forever. However, he also explained to Adam that they had left Europe and moved to the United States, just in case, and further, that, just in case, they would not tell their new friends about their past unless it was absolutely necessary.
It was hard to keep repeating the same story over and over, but whenever Michael was tempted to brush off another of Adam’s questions, he had only to recall the disasters that had flowed from Nikita’s stubborn desire to understand her own history. This would always drive him to answer clearly and in whatever detail Adam demanded.
The questions had slowed over the years, but every now and again Adam would surprise him with a request that he repeat the story, and Adam had an uncanny ear for the slightest alteration from the last time Michael told the tale.
Unfortunately, due to his unwary tongue, Michael was certain he would now have to find a way to incorporate Nikita into their narrative. Castigating himself again for his carelessness, Michael glanced over at Adam as they followed the dogs, who were following some scent known only to themselves.
Adam was walking across a field of late wildflowers and fading, waist high grass, his shotgun carried easily over his still bony shoulder as he tracked the dogs. His eyes were bright against the darkly tanned skin that was the heritage of his Persian mother, and his soft cheek wholly ignorant of the need of a razor. Michael reminded himself that while Adam was no longer a little boy, he was not nearly ready to be a man either, and that it would be Michael’s job to keep him safe and whole until he was.
************
In the end, Michael did not have very long at all to plan his approach to acknowledging his love affair with Nikita. Late that same afternoon, Adam raised the subject as they were ambling down a fire road that cut through the state forest, open shotguns under their arms. Their weary pair of black labs were still casting about in the lead, but by only twenty feet or so. The slowly sinking western sun was warm and yellow, but the late September shade was cool and damp, making Michael glad he had chosen to wear his canvas jacket under the bright orange hunting vest. It had been a good day, they had each gotten off several shots and Adam had bagged two grouse which, following a pattern familiar to parents everywhere, Michael carried in the game bag.
“Dad.” Adam paused to kick a rock. “When you were thirty-four I was already two years old.”
Well, here it is, Michael thought. “Yes,” he agreed mildly.
“Nikita, right?” Adam refused to look directly at his father, concentrating instead on the dogs.
“Yes.”
“She’s not your cousin, is she?” Adam struggled to keep his tone as even and bland as he could and mostly succeeded.
“No.”
“Did mom know?”
“I don’t think so.” Michael still hoped this was true.
“So, Nikita was your mistress, right?” There was a hard edge in Adam’s tone that Michael did not fail to hear.
“No.”
“No?” Adam’s voice dripped with disbelief.
“No. I wouldn’t do that to her or your mother.”
“But, you said-“
“Yes. Then I walked away. Hurting Nikita terribly in the process.”
“But, she came to visit us. Just before you ‘died’.” The look of challenge in Adam’s eyes was unmistakable.
“She needed my help and came looking for me. She didn’t know about you or your mother or I’m sure she wouldn’t have come.”
That made Adam break his stride. “Didn’t know?”
“No.”
“So, why did she stay?” Adam raised his shoulders in confusion.
“She and your mother liked each other. Your mother invited her to stay.”
Adam curled his lip. “That’s twisted.”
You have no idea, Michael thought, but all he said was “Yes.”
After a moment Adam dropped his gaze and turned back towards the trail.
They walked on in silence, which if not exactly companionable, was not openly hostile either. Michael guessed what had to be coming, but waited for Adam to get to it on his own.
Adam suddenly called the dogs to heel in an impatient tone, scolding them for drifting behind as they made their way toward their campsite. Then, after taking off his cap, scrubbing his head and putting his cap back on, he spoke again, “You had to leave Mom and me because you saw the men who killed my grandfather.”
“Yes.”
“And she told everybody you died.” The ‘even me’ though unvoiced, hung in the air. Michael could hear all the hurt Adam still felt over this lie. It settled in his gut and stirred up all the guilt he carried there.
With a silent plea for forgiveness directed to his memory of Elena, Michael answered, “Yes.”
“And then the terrorists found us and we had to disappear too. And they still found me, even after Mom died, and kidnapped me.”
“Yes.”
“But Nikita was with you when you got me back from the kidnappers.”
“Yes.”
Adam nodded slowly, then fell silent. By this time they had gotten close enough to their campsite for the dogs to rush ahead and plunge into the small lake. Adam said nothing else until after they had put up their guns, unloaded the day’s game and begun preparations for the evening meal. Michael was re-starting the fire and Adam was searching out small stones and skipping them across the still, reflective surface of the water, when he spoke again. “Where you ‘with’ Nikita the whole time?”
Michael had realized that there was no way out of this particular mine field except through it. “Yes.”
Adam started throwing smaller rocks and broken bits of shale against a small reef. “Anything else you lied about?”
The throw that followed this remark was so hard the shale shattered into several smaller pieces, each hitting the water with solid little plunk.
Michael finished what he was doing, then walked over to where Adam was standing, the last of the wavelets caused by the shattered shale still breaking against his boots. Michael reached out and put his hand on Adam’s shoulder, “Adam, look at me.”
Adam turned, crossed his arms defensively across his chest and thrust out his chin. Michael looked down into a pair of slightly suspicious, slightly angry eyes. Oddly enough, they reminded him of Nikita, despite being brown and about a foot lower. “Adam, I was convinced that leaving permanently was the best way to protect you and your mother. I was wrong, but I believed it at the time. What you were never told was that Nikita was at the hospital that day too, she also saw the men who killed your grandfather.”
Adam pulled his head back in surprise. “What?”
Michael let go of Adam’s shoulder and stuffed his hands into his pockets as he turned to look out over the water. “Yes. She had to hide as well, so we went together. She helped me through my grief over losing you and your mother. She forgave me for not telling her about my family.” Michael paused to shake his head slightly in continuing wonder for that act of compassion, then continued, “In time we were together.”
Michael swiveled around and ducked his head to look Adam in the eye again, “and so when we were finally told about your mother’s death we came for you - but the kidnappers got to you first. Once I got you back, I knew you and I needed to leave Europe and start over in a new place.”
Adam narrowed his eyes. “You told me that she didn’t come with us to the States because she had a family of her own.” Adam cocked his head and asked, in a tone dripping with contempt, “was she cheating on someone too?”
Michael frowned and answered as firmly as he knew how. “No. She was not. She stayed because her father, who was old and ill, needed her.”
Adam dropped his arms, then stuck his hands in his back pockets. “And now?”
Michael draped his arm over Adam’s back, and squeezed his shoulder ever so gently. “She has her responsibilities there. You and I have our life here.”
Adam released a deep breath; his shoulders dropping as the tension started to ebb away. He pursed his lips, then, speaking softly, said, “Yeah. I guess we do.”
Michael hugged him harder.
Adam leaned into Michael’s one-armed embrace for a moment before breaking away, asking, “So, what’s for dinner?”
************
Over the next several weeks Michael waited for Adam to raise the subject of Nikita and the past again, but Adam did not. Gradually Michael relaxed as the routines of fall absorbed them both. Adam was fully engaged by the new environment of seventh grade and his various extra-curricular activities. Michael was working hard to finish the last of the exterior paint jobs he scheduled for the outside season, especially as most of his summer crew had returned to high school or college by now.
Truth was, between them he and Adam shared very little down time. Their days were taken up by the business of living. For Adam there was school and its ever-increasing amounts of homework, music lessons, sports practices and games. For Michael the endless record keeping of running a small business plus visiting potential clients, providing estimates for painting jobs large and small, and scheduling the work once his bid was accepted, filled his days and took time in the evenings too.
On Wednesday nights and Saturday mornings they worked out at their Aikido dojo. Adam was studying with the children’s class, and as part of his own program to keep at least the foundation of his own skills intact, Michael sparred during periods of open mat time with a handful of fellow students who could, more or less, meet him in skill and proficiency.
Weekend afternoons and evenings found Adam increasingly occupied with friends, with Michael regularly driving groups of boys in perpetual motion to various destinations - the local mall, the movies, each other’s houses. Sunday mornings they went to church, Adam was an altar boy now and sometimes served Saturday evening mass or Sunday eventide too.
It had been easy enough for Adam to blend into their new world in Minnesota, but it had been much more difficult for Michael. He had to adapt the silence and stillness that allowed him to survive Section to a much noisier, busier world. He quickly realized that he needed help, and more camouflage, and so they joined a large, active church not long after establishing themselves in St. Paul. Elena had been introducing Adam to her own reviving Islamic faith, but Michael had decided that on his own, he would do a better job if he stayed within the Catholic traditions of his own upbringing. The church congregation had more than stepped up to the task of providing for Michael and his motherless son, enveloping them both with comfort, community and friendship.
The camping trip at the end of September had been their last period of uninterrupted time together. Their quiet life seemed to be moving on, the ripples from the past invisible in the bustle of their days.
But not gone. Maybe it was just fall in Minnesota, but as the leaves disappeared from the trees and the skies began to fill with snow, Michael felt a melancholy growing within that he couldn’t seem to squelch no matter how hard he tried. And he did try. He at last hired a third full-time employee so he could take larger commercial jobs or work two private jobs at once. He accepted a call to serve on the physical renovations committee at their church. He forced himself to accept one out of every three invitations from male acquaintances to join them for a drink or a card game. He accepted every invitation he could from the group of longtime friends they had made in the six years they had lived in the city. He was as involved as ever with Adam’s life, preparing with Adam for a cello - violin duet at the fall parent and child recital, keeping an eye on homework and grades, staying abreast of new friends and monitoring new activities, serving on the parent council for the middle school.
He knew though that things had gotten desperate when he discovered himself playing bouncer at the middle school Homecoming dance.
“Hey Mike, your turn on the hallway run.” Frank Coleman was one of the assistant principals and the father of one of Adam’s soccer teammates.
“Great.” Michael grimaced, then turned toward the hallway that led to the open restrooms. The only advantage to this as far as he could tell was that the music from the deejay was slightly less deafening once outside the gym that was serving tonight as a dance hall. Rousting precocious young couples from their trysts in the darkened hallway was hideous work. He hoped that Adam would not be out there - not that he really suspected he would be, but how mortifying for them both if he was. Walking as loudly as possible in his circuit of the open hallways, most were gated closed, he came across only two sets of entwined couples, who fled before his shadow, giggling as they sped back toward the relative light and noise of the gym.
As he made his way back toward the gym himself, he tried to remember what he had thought about girls when he was their age. He found himself imagining instead what Nikita had looked like at thirteen, all bony arms and legs and enormous blue eyes. He rubbed his hand across his face in exasperation, scrubbing his chin through the neatly trimmed beard that he (and half the tradesmen of Minnesota) cultivated. You are a sick man Michael, he thought, you were twenty-three years old when Nikita was thirteen.
Yes, said a quiet voice from deep inside his head, but she’s not thirteen now.
Driving home that night, a companionable silence fell after they dropped off the last of Adam’s friends. Adam was staring out the window into the darkness beyond when he asked, “Dad, what do you think about dating?”
“I think you’re too young.”
“No. Not for me. For you.”
“For me?”
“Yeah. When was the last time you went on a date?”
Before you were born, before I came to Section, before I went to prison for killing innocent people with bombs, Michael thought. He said, “I don’t remember.”
“Exactly. Why don’t you?’
“Go on dates?”
“Uh, yeah.” Adam half laughed, long since accustomed to his father’s habit of answering one question with another question.
“I don’t meet that many available women.”
“Dad. Chicks hit on you all the time.”
“Chicks?”
“Yeah. Like the one last week when you took us to the batting cages.”
Michael remembered her, a reasonably attractive bottled blond somewhere in her thirties, who kept ‘accidentally’ bumping into him. All he said was, “Hmmm.”
“So, why don’t you date?”
Michael thought for a while about how to answer this question. He had considered it. Dating was a natural part of their cover. In fact, his failure to do so had drawn the attention of his adult friends and acquaintances. Their priest had even mentioned Michael’s determinedly single state with some concern. But he could not bring himself to do it, it felt too much like valentine work - just the consideration of which made his skin crawl.
“I don’t know when I’d find the time to meet someone, much less go out on dates.”
“Oh.” Adam let out a slightly self-conscious chuckle and started fiddling with the seat belt strap. “But, don’t you get, like, well, you know, missing ‘it’?”
As the answer was simultaneously ‘all the time’ and ‘not especially,’ it took Michael a moment to respond. Eventually he said, “not enough to be desperate.”
“Uhggg.”
Michael swallowed his grin. “Why are you suddenly so interested in my dating life? You thinking about dating yourself?”
Adam looked carefully at his fingernails. “Jake is going-with Erin Andersen.”
“Ahh. What’s ‘going-with’?”
“Da-ad. You know.”
“I grew up in France, remember? It might be different here.”
With the conversation safely redirected into the complex social mores of the middle school dating scene, the rest of the trip home passed uneventfully.
***********
As he lay awake and alone in his bed that night, watching the line of moonlight drift slowly across the sloped ceiling of his dormer bedroom, Michael wondered if celibacy was what was wrong with him after all. Maybe he was feeling grumpy and out of sorts because he knew exactly when he had last had sex with another person. And it had been a very long time. In the six and a half years since leaving Nikita’s temporary section quarters, he had had less than a dozen fleeting encounters, most with strangers in inappropriate places, and he had not had one of those in more than three years.
It certainly was not that he had intended to be celibate out of loyalty to the promise he had made to Nikita about coming back to her. He had not really thought about it, but if he had asked himself then he was reasonably sure he would have assumed that he would have a series of brief, casual affairs.
Instead the realities of being a full-time father to Adam eliminated any immediate prospect of a regular sex life. At first, he had been entirely too paranoid to leave Adam with a sitter; formal daycare, and then, elementary school, with all its checks and safety precautions had been bad enough and he wasn’t up to doing background checks on babysitters just so he could go cruise the bars in the hopes of meeting a potential girlfriend.
He had also quickly realized that Adam was terrified that his father would disappear again. Not that Adam was clingy. He was too cautious even for that. But he obviously wanted to know where Michael was at all times; if Michael lingered in the kitchen or the bathroom, Adam was sure to wander in, just checking on his whereabouts. And for several years Michael had woken up four or five nights a week to discover Adam curled up beside him in his bed. His son had lost so much, so quickly; Michael could not bear to worry Adam any further by complicating his life with girlfriends Michael did not really want anyway.
When he finally began to have the odd night to himself, once Adam was willing to go to the occasional sleep-over at a friend’s, it was such a relief to be alone that the last thing he wanted to do was rush out for a one-night hookup.
Sometimes too, he did feel, for want of a better word, hunted. He was aware that as a responsible, attractive single father he was a prime catch in a limited field. But there were weeks when he felt he could not go outside without being sure to receive at least one awkward invitation a day. It could make him want to retreat inside his house and bar the door behind him.
His bed squeaked faintly in protest as he rolled over in an unsuccessful attempt to find a more comfortable spot. The irritating noise was the result of having chosen an old iron bed frame from a junk dealer merely because it reminded him of a bed in his grandmother’s house in a small town a few hours outside of Marseilles. He had purchased the story and half bungalow on a quiet old street as part of his quest to offer Adam as much stability as he could, certain that Adam would withstand the future better for having firm roots now. He had furnished it in about a week - with the unsurprising result that some of the choices had been unsatisfactory over the long run. The worst mistakes - like a dinette set whose ponderous “Victorian” styling turned out to be more than Michael could take - had been rectified. Minor problems, like his squeaky bed, they were still living with. And it still reminded him of his grandmother.
He wondered if maybe it was time to revise his attitude about dating. Casual did not have to mean meaningless or secret. Dating did not have to be like valentine work, it could simply be a man and a woman getting to know each other. But, if he did start dating, whom should he date? He reviewed all the single women he knew, from work or the neighborhood or the dojo, and rejected them one by one as potential candidates. This one was too young, that one smoked, this one had children, that one was a friend, she was a student at the dojo, the other had a annoying laugh, in short, none of them would do. Obviously, he reasoned to himself, if he’d been attracted to someone he already knew, he would have asked her out already; probably, most likely, possibly anyway. Besides, he thought, no point in fouling my own nest.
He stared up at the moonlit ceiling, seeking inspiration there - and not finding any. He decided that the best he could do was stay open to possibility when he met new people. But, as he had pointed out to Adam, their lives were so full that he really did not meet all that many new people - with the exception of clients and that was not a road he was prepared to take for a whole host of reasons.
Which left him exactly where he was - alone, frustrated, and wide awake in the middle of the night.
The bed squeaked when he rolled over again.
************
Fandom: La Femme Nikita
Pairing: Michael Samuelle/Nikita Wirth
Characters: Michael Samuelle, Adam Samuelle, OCs
Rating: A very mild R, I think
Genre: Post Series Fic
Length: Longish
Summary: What is life like for a widowed parent on the run?
~~~~~~~
“WOO HOO! Yoo-ee!” Adam burst up out of the water, droplets scattering wildly as he shook out his hair and ran splashing for the shore.
Michael looked up from the campfire he was stirring back to life. Eyeing his son’s naked body exploding from the cold Minnesota lake, new muscles sharply outlined under glistening skin, he received one of parenthood’s familiar shocks. Sometime when he had not been paying attention, Adam had left childhood behind and was fully entered into his long-hinted at puberty.
It won’t be long now until I can leave him, Michael thought. And received his second shock of the morning. The quick wave of anticipation he felt, as he always did when thinking of his return to Nikita, crested and broke, leaving only a messy mix of regret and guilt and painful desire in its wake. To Michael’s astonishment, he realized that he already missed the now vanished little boy he had brought to the northern United States almost six years ago. He fought to recall how small and slight Adam had been then, how thin and fragile his arms had seemed when Adam wound them tightly around Michael’s neck in joyful relief when he learned that they could stay for a long time. Michael was sized by the apprehension that if he failed to fully recollect everything about Adam’s childhood now, it might all disappear into a single blurred image.
Awash in the strange new sensation of wistful bewilderment, Michael realized that “a long time” had passed in the blink of an eye, and the little boy he had been so assiduously protecting and loving and nurturing and training to survive on his own was not nearly so little any more. Instead of filling him with relief for a task half completed, the knowledge carried with it a wholly unforeseen sense of melancholy loss. Looking now at Adam’s maturing body, Michael found himself wondering if, in his unending desire to get back to Nikita, he might have failed to cherish enough each and every irreplaceable moment of Adam’s childhood.
As Adam fought his way through the frisking dogs to reach his clothes, he must have seen something of Michael’s surprise and confusion in his expression, and following the direction of his father’s gaze flushed slightly and grinned. “What are you looking at Dad?”
“You’re growing up.”
Adam, ears burning, ducked his head in pleased embarrassment and reached for his clothes, “Uh, yeh-ah.”
Michael heard the implied ‘Duh,’ as Adam tugged his jeans up his still damp legs.
Smiling, Michael turned back to the fire and rifled through the pack of food, searching for the coffee. After getting the percolator set up, he sat back on his heels so he could admire the patches of blue sky visible through the canopy of bright yellow maple leaves. His gaze drifted down across their campsite to take in the dark surface of the small lake, mirroring the trees glowing in their autumn glory in the morning sun along the opposite shoreline.
As he turned his gaze back to rest on Adam, Michael realized that this was one of those parenting opportunities that should be seized. “Do you have any questions?”
Adam looked up from under his dark brows, intentionally dense, “about what?”
Michael grinned and turned back to breakfast preparation. “About growing up?”
After a few minutes, Adam glanced up from tying his boots, his voice studiously dispassionate as he asked, “How old were you when you first had sex?”
Looking at his son now, trying so hard for an expression of disinterested nonchalance, his face lit by the clear rays of the early morning sun that eliminated all shadows and planes, Michael could only see the child whose nightmares he had banished and tears he had dried and not the young man he had glimpsed just a moment ago. He considered lying, but then, looking into his son’s earnest brown eyes, he kept the promise he had made to himself and to the image of Nikita - to tell none but absolutely essential lies.
As Adam would be thirteen soon, it cost him something to answer.
“Fifteen,” he said as he gave the oatmeal a vigorous stirring, glancing up from under his eyelashes to catch Adam’s reaction.
Adam’s eyes went slightly round and his hands momentarily stilled while buttoning his flannel shirt. “Wow.” He paused, considering. “Was it hard?”
Looking at Adam’s serious expression, Michael squashed the desire to laugh at the unintentional double entendre. “Was what hard?”
“You know.” Adam shrugged helplessly, “figuring it all out?”
Michael considered for a moment, trying to decide what he could say, what would be true and yet what Adam would be able to understand. “It was awkward, and over very, very quickly, but everything is right where the books tell you it is.”
Adam looked at Michael, an expression of confused wonder on his face, “and girls like it?”
Michael had to laugh then. “When boys are awkward and fast? No. Generally not.”
“Then why…?”
“It gets better as you get older.”
Adam grinned saucily and cracked his knuckles over his head. “Uh, gee, Dad? Is that supposed to be a hint? To wait till I’m older?”
Returning the grin, Michael said, “Yes.”
Adam rose, picked up a stick and turned to throw it for the dogs. “Do as I say and not as I do, huh?”
“Something like that.” Michael kept his tone light, even as his heart squeezed painfully tight at the thought of Adam following in his own treacherous footsteps.
Apparently feeling the conversation was now over, Adam laughed and hurled the stick out over the still surface of the lake, a stillness immediately broken by the dogs charging in after it.
Michael decided that he had not said quite all he wanted to before the moment was lost. “Adam.”
Adam looked over his shoulder. “Yeah?”
Michael raised his voice enough that his words wouldn’t be lost over the clamor of the dogs. “You will be a sexually active adult most of your life. There is no reason to rush.”
Adam stopped playing with the dogs and turned back to Michael, raising his shoulders and eyeing him skeptically. “Are you going to tell me to ‘wait for the right one’ now?”
Michael shook his head. “No.”
“Oh.” Adam dropped his shoulders, obviously a little surprised by this answer. “Why?”
“It could be a long wait.”
Adam came over to the fire and squatted down, peering into the frying pan. “How old were you when you found the ‘right one?”
Michael did not have to close his eyes to remember that night on the barge. He could still catch the scent of gas and saltwater, old oil and rust. He could still see the moonlight shining weakly through the filthy portholes, and in the gloom of the interior, Nikita burning with an incandescent flame. It rose up in front of him like it was yesterday. Caught up in memory, he did not even pause as he answered, “thirty-four.”
“It took nineteen years?” Adam’s horrified tone snapped Michael back to the present. “Oh man! I hope it was worth the wait.” A disbelieving chuckle followed this remark.
Michael turned his attention back to the fire, hastily taking stock of the state of their meal. He was deeply relieved to announce that breakfast was ready. Watching Adam inhale an amount of food that would have made a pro-wrestler blush - they had recently traded in backpacking for car-camping when Michael realized that he would have to fill an entire pack with food just to get Adam through thirty-six hours - he reflected wryly on the way age changed perception.
It had never occurred to him to measure the time from his first sexual experience to Nikita, much less consider it ‘waiting.’ After all, he had loved more than one of his partners before Nikita, and he had loved his first wife deeply and without reservation. If he had never met Nikita, he would never have suspected that he had not yet encountered the ‘right one.’ He would have gone to his grave believing that he had and her name was Simone.
And yet… after Nikita, he had never been the same. The tumultuous decades of his life before they found each other paled in comparison to the intensity of all that had happened since that first, fateful encounter in the white room. From that day on, the longer they were in contact, the more inevitable their final coming together was, in all its passion, and glory, and pain. If they could have avoided it, knowing what was coming, maybe they both could have, would have, done so.
He promptly chided himself for that ridiculous speculation. He had known. He had known with certainty that their lives would be near unbearable; full of betrayal, manipulation, and lies of almost unimaginable magnitude. And he could no more have stopped himself that night than he could have held back the tide. That her love and passion would match his own was something he had longed for and counted on, and yet, in the moment of confirmation, had been a revelation that shattered his world.
In the end, they both had decided that satisfying their need for each other was worth risking not only their own lives, but also the lives of everyone around them. For each other they had broken just about every rule there was, and not just Section rules either, several of the Ten Commandments too. How on earth could he ever explain to a twelve-year old that finding the ‘right one’ could be one of the most dangerous things you would ever do?
Even now he was doing dangerous things when it came to Nikita. Telling Adam the truth about his age when he and Nikita first came together was a ridiculously careless thing to do. In time, and sooner rather than later, his quiet, thoughtful son would put two and two together and start asking questions that Michael did not yet know how to answer.
************
After they finished eating, Michael directed Adam to wash up the breakfast things while he collected and checked the gear they would need for the day’s hunting. While they worked, Michael kept glancing over at Adam out of the corner of his eye, trying to find in Adam’s wiry, twelve-year-old body the remnants of the softly rounded child he barely remembered, trying to guess at the hints of the young man to come.
He also used the time to review all he had accomplished with Adam, and to consider again what still lay ahead as he prepared Adam for the day he would leave him to return to Nikita.
Most important, they were still free.
There were two basic strategies for hiding from enemies and friends. One was to keep moving, never lingering in one place too long or forging any deep ties to a place or to its people. The other was to pick a spot with lots of natural cover and nestle in, acquiring as much protective coloring as possible. With a small child in tow and otherwise all alone, rendering him extremely vulnerable to predators and scavengers alike, Michael took the lesson from nature and chose camouflage.
After traveling around the globe long enough to be certain as he could be that they had avoided or evaded any immediate pursuit, Michael had clutched Adam tightly to his chest, looked over his shoulder one last time, and then dove in to St. Paul, Minnesota. He had chosen Minnesota because it was in the United States, yet close enough to Quebec and French Canada that Michael’s own faint accent and fresh new French surname would pass without notice. In the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul (side by side at the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers) there was also a large enough polyglot population that his dark eyed, dark haired son would be accepted as his without notice. The twin cities also had the advantage of being relatively far from places where there was much chance that Michael would stumble across either enemies or allies from his old life. When they finally surfaced, he had them settled into a quiet neighborhood, Adam was enrolled in first grade and Michael was working as a house painter.
Michael worked, not because they needed the money, but because normal men, innocent men, worked to feed their families. A man who did not work would have caught too much attention and required too much explanation. He could, of course, have manufactured the credentials necessary for a white-collar position, but he wanted to avoid any employment where his Section-trained skills would be too apparent to any observer looking for such things, and his lack of ambition would have to be explained away.
He had chosen the trades because they were about as far removed from what he had done in Section and before as he could imagine, and because he could slip gently and easily into the fluid world of blue-collar laborers. Michael chose house painting because most of the other building trades required some sort of certification or licensure, and city or county permits; more contact with officialdom than Michael felt comfortable with. Painting required none of these, and so he had worked for and then eventually bought out a local painter. He had owned and operated the small painting business for several years now.
As time had passed, Michael had deepened and broadened their cover until it was now so thick and dense that Adam was no longer aware of it as a disguise, it was simply his life. He lived in a house like most of his friends, he went to school with children he had known since he was six, he played sports and the violin, computer games and chess. Along with all the other children he knew, he had learned to swim and to ice skate, and Michael, like all the other parents in their circle, had signed Adam up for soccer and little league and ice hockey and basketball and American-style flag-football.
Michael was also taking full advantage of their Minnesota setting to teach Adam to camp and to fish, to ski and to snowshoe, to canoe and to sail. He was doing these things because he genuinely loved most out-door activities and he wanted Adam to love them too. He knew as well that the day would come when Adam would need activities that gave him peace and solace in the face of loss. He knew from experience that Adam would need good memories of his father someday, and Michael hoped that, much as his own memories of similar times with his own father had done for him, these shared times would be as much a part of Adam’ healing as his grief.
Michael was also introducing Adam to outdoor life as a way of teaching Adam survival skills and independence in a way that looked, and felt, like the experience of many of Adam’s friends and acquaintances. He was teaching Adam to hunt for survival reasons alone. Hunting was the most socially invisible way that he could think of to train Adam in the use and care of firearms. Michael was confident that their cover was as good as he could make it, but he knew that chance could trip them up and send them on the run again. If that happened, he could not afford for Adam to be surprised or frightened merely by the existence of guns.
The two areas where there was the most continuity from Adam’s previous life with Michael and Elena, when they had still been a family, however artificial, were music and martial arts. Adam had already begun to play the violin even before Michael had left them, as he had already begun to study karate. Michael had continued both, for he could honestly share his love of music with Adam as he could share his love for the out of doors, and like guns, martial arts were part of a foundation in self-defense Michael was determined to give Adam. Fortunately, both music and martial arts were quite popular among Minnesota parents, so Michael didn’t look at all out of place in pushing Adam into either.
These patterns were all well established after six years of work, and Michael knew that the most difficult challenge ahead would be for him to stay within them now that Adam was entering his teens. These next six years were the time when Adam needed to separate from Michael, to become independent and able to stand on his own. Yet these coming years were also a time in which, ironically, Michael needed to be able to control their environment more closely than ever so that Adam did not venture out from under their meticulously constructed cover and draw unwanted attention to them both.
Unfortunately, without paying nearly enough attention to what he was doing, he had just altered his carefully crafted time-line of their family history by admitting how old he was when he first made love to Nikita. He knew, to his extreme irritation, that by doing so, he had just invited Adam to re-open the dangerous subject of the past. An invitation Adam was sure to accept.
Adam remembered Michael’s ‘death,’ and he remembered his kidnapping at the hands of the Collective, and Michael had been forced to explain both, often and at length, when they were first re-united. Adam had been far too young to fully understand what was happening or why, and as far as Michael could tell, there were no open wounds from those years, though he was sure he could see the scars. Nonetheless, and especially when Adam was younger, Michael had had to explain it all, over and over, as he reassured Adam that he would not be kidnapped again. More perplexing, and much more frustrating for a small child, Michael also had to explain to him how it was that his father had died and come back, but that his mother had died and would not.
So Michael had never been able to pretend the past had not happened, and he knew that he could not afford any unanswered questions that might push Adam to search for elusive answers elsewhere either. Following the dictum that the truth is always stronger, always better than a lie, Michael spun a story that was mostly true. He told Adam that his maternal grandfather had been an important man in his country, and that he had been killed by terrorists, terrorists Michael had seen, and so had to hide from, thus leaving his family to keep them safe. Michael had explained that the terrorists were very determined, and found Adam and his mother anyway, for Adam remembered leaving a house in the middle of supper one evening and losing his beloved teddy-bear forever. The terrorists were so determined, in fact, that they had eventually found Adam, after Elena died, and kidnapped him to force Michael out of hiding.
Michael assured Adam, endlessly, that the police had been able to use the kidnapping to capture and imprison the kidnappers forever. However, he also explained to Adam that they had left Europe and moved to the United States, just in case, and further, that, just in case, they would not tell their new friends about their past unless it was absolutely necessary.
It was hard to keep repeating the same story over and over, but whenever Michael was tempted to brush off another of Adam’s questions, he had only to recall the disasters that had flowed from Nikita’s stubborn desire to understand her own history. This would always drive him to answer clearly and in whatever detail Adam demanded.
The questions had slowed over the years, but every now and again Adam would surprise him with a request that he repeat the story, and Adam had an uncanny ear for the slightest alteration from the last time Michael told the tale.
Unfortunately, due to his unwary tongue, Michael was certain he would now have to find a way to incorporate Nikita into their narrative. Castigating himself again for his carelessness, Michael glanced over at Adam as they followed the dogs, who were following some scent known only to themselves.
Adam was walking across a field of late wildflowers and fading, waist high grass, his shotgun carried easily over his still bony shoulder as he tracked the dogs. His eyes were bright against the darkly tanned skin that was the heritage of his Persian mother, and his soft cheek wholly ignorant of the need of a razor. Michael reminded himself that while Adam was no longer a little boy, he was not nearly ready to be a man either, and that it would be Michael’s job to keep him safe and whole until he was.
************
In the end, Michael did not have very long at all to plan his approach to acknowledging his love affair with Nikita. Late that same afternoon, Adam raised the subject as they were ambling down a fire road that cut through the state forest, open shotguns under their arms. Their weary pair of black labs were still casting about in the lead, but by only twenty feet or so. The slowly sinking western sun was warm and yellow, but the late September shade was cool and damp, making Michael glad he had chosen to wear his canvas jacket under the bright orange hunting vest. It had been a good day, they had each gotten off several shots and Adam had bagged two grouse which, following a pattern familiar to parents everywhere, Michael carried in the game bag.
“Dad.” Adam paused to kick a rock. “When you were thirty-four I was already two years old.”
Well, here it is, Michael thought. “Yes,” he agreed mildly.
“Nikita, right?” Adam refused to look directly at his father, concentrating instead on the dogs.
“Yes.”
“She’s not your cousin, is she?” Adam struggled to keep his tone as even and bland as he could and mostly succeeded.
“No.”
“Did mom know?”
“I don’t think so.” Michael still hoped this was true.
“So, Nikita was your mistress, right?” There was a hard edge in Adam’s tone that Michael did not fail to hear.
“No.”
“No?” Adam’s voice dripped with disbelief.
“No. I wouldn’t do that to her or your mother.”
“But, you said-“
“Yes. Then I walked away. Hurting Nikita terribly in the process.”
“But, she came to visit us. Just before you ‘died’.” The look of challenge in Adam’s eyes was unmistakable.
“She needed my help and came looking for me. She didn’t know about you or your mother or I’m sure she wouldn’t have come.”
That made Adam break his stride. “Didn’t know?”
“No.”
“So, why did she stay?” Adam raised his shoulders in confusion.
“She and your mother liked each other. Your mother invited her to stay.”
Adam curled his lip. “That’s twisted.”
You have no idea, Michael thought, but all he said was “Yes.”
After a moment Adam dropped his gaze and turned back towards the trail.
They walked on in silence, which if not exactly companionable, was not openly hostile either. Michael guessed what had to be coming, but waited for Adam to get to it on his own.
Adam suddenly called the dogs to heel in an impatient tone, scolding them for drifting behind as they made their way toward their campsite. Then, after taking off his cap, scrubbing his head and putting his cap back on, he spoke again, “You had to leave Mom and me because you saw the men who killed my grandfather.”
“Yes.”
“And she told everybody you died.” The ‘even me’ though unvoiced, hung in the air. Michael could hear all the hurt Adam still felt over this lie. It settled in his gut and stirred up all the guilt he carried there.
With a silent plea for forgiveness directed to his memory of Elena, Michael answered, “Yes.”
“And then the terrorists found us and we had to disappear too. And they still found me, even after Mom died, and kidnapped me.”
“Yes.”
“But Nikita was with you when you got me back from the kidnappers.”
“Yes.”
Adam nodded slowly, then fell silent. By this time they had gotten close enough to their campsite for the dogs to rush ahead and plunge into the small lake. Adam said nothing else until after they had put up their guns, unloaded the day’s game and begun preparations for the evening meal. Michael was re-starting the fire and Adam was searching out small stones and skipping them across the still, reflective surface of the water, when he spoke again. “Where you ‘with’ Nikita the whole time?”
Michael had realized that there was no way out of this particular mine field except through it. “Yes.”
Adam started throwing smaller rocks and broken bits of shale against a small reef. “Anything else you lied about?”
The throw that followed this remark was so hard the shale shattered into several smaller pieces, each hitting the water with solid little plunk.
Michael finished what he was doing, then walked over to where Adam was standing, the last of the wavelets caused by the shattered shale still breaking against his boots. Michael reached out and put his hand on Adam’s shoulder, “Adam, look at me.”
Adam turned, crossed his arms defensively across his chest and thrust out his chin. Michael looked down into a pair of slightly suspicious, slightly angry eyes. Oddly enough, they reminded him of Nikita, despite being brown and about a foot lower. “Adam, I was convinced that leaving permanently was the best way to protect you and your mother. I was wrong, but I believed it at the time. What you were never told was that Nikita was at the hospital that day too, she also saw the men who killed your grandfather.”
Adam pulled his head back in surprise. “What?”
Michael let go of Adam’s shoulder and stuffed his hands into his pockets as he turned to look out over the water. “Yes. She had to hide as well, so we went together. She helped me through my grief over losing you and your mother. She forgave me for not telling her about my family.” Michael paused to shake his head slightly in continuing wonder for that act of compassion, then continued, “In time we were together.”
Michael swiveled around and ducked his head to look Adam in the eye again, “and so when we were finally told about your mother’s death we came for you - but the kidnappers got to you first. Once I got you back, I knew you and I needed to leave Europe and start over in a new place.”
Adam narrowed his eyes. “You told me that she didn’t come with us to the States because she had a family of her own.” Adam cocked his head and asked, in a tone dripping with contempt, “was she cheating on someone too?”
Michael frowned and answered as firmly as he knew how. “No. She was not. She stayed because her father, who was old and ill, needed her.”
Adam dropped his arms, then stuck his hands in his back pockets. “And now?”
Michael draped his arm over Adam’s back, and squeezed his shoulder ever so gently. “She has her responsibilities there. You and I have our life here.”
Adam released a deep breath; his shoulders dropping as the tension started to ebb away. He pursed his lips, then, speaking softly, said, “Yeah. I guess we do.”
Michael hugged him harder.
Adam leaned into Michael’s one-armed embrace for a moment before breaking away, asking, “So, what’s for dinner?”
************
Over the next several weeks Michael waited for Adam to raise the subject of Nikita and the past again, but Adam did not. Gradually Michael relaxed as the routines of fall absorbed them both. Adam was fully engaged by the new environment of seventh grade and his various extra-curricular activities. Michael was working hard to finish the last of the exterior paint jobs he scheduled for the outside season, especially as most of his summer crew had returned to high school or college by now.
Truth was, between them he and Adam shared very little down time. Their days were taken up by the business of living. For Adam there was school and its ever-increasing amounts of homework, music lessons, sports practices and games. For Michael the endless record keeping of running a small business plus visiting potential clients, providing estimates for painting jobs large and small, and scheduling the work once his bid was accepted, filled his days and took time in the evenings too.
On Wednesday nights and Saturday mornings they worked out at their Aikido dojo. Adam was studying with the children’s class, and as part of his own program to keep at least the foundation of his own skills intact, Michael sparred during periods of open mat time with a handful of fellow students who could, more or less, meet him in skill and proficiency.
Weekend afternoons and evenings found Adam increasingly occupied with friends, with Michael regularly driving groups of boys in perpetual motion to various destinations - the local mall, the movies, each other’s houses. Sunday mornings they went to church, Adam was an altar boy now and sometimes served Saturday evening mass or Sunday eventide too.
It had been easy enough for Adam to blend into their new world in Minnesota, but it had been much more difficult for Michael. He had to adapt the silence and stillness that allowed him to survive Section to a much noisier, busier world. He quickly realized that he needed help, and more camouflage, and so they joined a large, active church not long after establishing themselves in St. Paul. Elena had been introducing Adam to her own reviving Islamic faith, but Michael had decided that on his own, he would do a better job if he stayed within the Catholic traditions of his own upbringing. The church congregation had more than stepped up to the task of providing for Michael and his motherless son, enveloping them both with comfort, community and friendship.
The camping trip at the end of September had been their last period of uninterrupted time together. Their quiet life seemed to be moving on, the ripples from the past invisible in the bustle of their days.
But not gone. Maybe it was just fall in Minnesota, but as the leaves disappeared from the trees and the skies began to fill with snow, Michael felt a melancholy growing within that he couldn’t seem to squelch no matter how hard he tried. And he did try. He at last hired a third full-time employee so he could take larger commercial jobs or work two private jobs at once. He accepted a call to serve on the physical renovations committee at their church. He forced himself to accept one out of every three invitations from male acquaintances to join them for a drink or a card game. He accepted every invitation he could from the group of longtime friends they had made in the six years they had lived in the city. He was as involved as ever with Adam’s life, preparing with Adam for a cello - violin duet at the fall parent and child recital, keeping an eye on homework and grades, staying abreast of new friends and monitoring new activities, serving on the parent council for the middle school.
He knew though that things had gotten desperate when he discovered himself playing bouncer at the middle school Homecoming dance.
“Hey Mike, your turn on the hallway run.” Frank Coleman was one of the assistant principals and the father of one of Adam’s soccer teammates.
“Great.” Michael grimaced, then turned toward the hallway that led to the open restrooms. The only advantage to this as far as he could tell was that the music from the deejay was slightly less deafening once outside the gym that was serving tonight as a dance hall. Rousting precocious young couples from their trysts in the darkened hallway was hideous work. He hoped that Adam would not be out there - not that he really suspected he would be, but how mortifying for them both if he was. Walking as loudly as possible in his circuit of the open hallways, most were gated closed, he came across only two sets of entwined couples, who fled before his shadow, giggling as they sped back toward the relative light and noise of the gym.
As he made his way back toward the gym himself, he tried to remember what he had thought about girls when he was their age. He found himself imagining instead what Nikita had looked like at thirteen, all bony arms and legs and enormous blue eyes. He rubbed his hand across his face in exasperation, scrubbing his chin through the neatly trimmed beard that he (and half the tradesmen of Minnesota) cultivated. You are a sick man Michael, he thought, you were twenty-three years old when Nikita was thirteen.
Yes, said a quiet voice from deep inside his head, but she’s not thirteen now.
Driving home that night, a companionable silence fell after they dropped off the last of Adam’s friends. Adam was staring out the window into the darkness beyond when he asked, “Dad, what do you think about dating?”
“I think you’re too young.”
“No. Not for me. For you.”
“For me?”
“Yeah. When was the last time you went on a date?”
Before you were born, before I came to Section, before I went to prison for killing innocent people with bombs, Michael thought. He said, “I don’t remember.”
“Exactly. Why don’t you?’
“Go on dates?”
“Uh, yeah.” Adam half laughed, long since accustomed to his father’s habit of answering one question with another question.
“I don’t meet that many available women.”
“Dad. Chicks hit on you all the time.”
“Chicks?”
“Yeah. Like the one last week when you took us to the batting cages.”
Michael remembered her, a reasonably attractive bottled blond somewhere in her thirties, who kept ‘accidentally’ bumping into him. All he said was, “Hmmm.”
“So, why don’t you date?”
Michael thought for a while about how to answer this question. He had considered it. Dating was a natural part of their cover. In fact, his failure to do so had drawn the attention of his adult friends and acquaintances. Their priest had even mentioned Michael’s determinedly single state with some concern. But he could not bring himself to do it, it felt too much like valentine work - just the consideration of which made his skin crawl.
“I don’t know when I’d find the time to meet someone, much less go out on dates.”
“Oh.” Adam let out a slightly self-conscious chuckle and started fiddling with the seat belt strap. “But, don’t you get, like, well, you know, missing ‘it’?”
As the answer was simultaneously ‘all the time’ and ‘not especially,’ it took Michael a moment to respond. Eventually he said, “not enough to be desperate.”
“Uhggg.”
Michael swallowed his grin. “Why are you suddenly so interested in my dating life? You thinking about dating yourself?”
Adam looked carefully at his fingernails. “Jake is going-with Erin Andersen.”
“Ahh. What’s ‘going-with’?”
“Da-ad. You know.”
“I grew up in France, remember? It might be different here.”
With the conversation safely redirected into the complex social mores of the middle school dating scene, the rest of the trip home passed uneventfully.
***********
As he lay awake and alone in his bed that night, watching the line of moonlight drift slowly across the sloped ceiling of his dormer bedroom, Michael wondered if celibacy was what was wrong with him after all. Maybe he was feeling grumpy and out of sorts because he knew exactly when he had last had sex with another person. And it had been a very long time. In the six and a half years since leaving Nikita’s temporary section quarters, he had had less than a dozen fleeting encounters, most with strangers in inappropriate places, and he had not had one of those in more than three years.
It certainly was not that he had intended to be celibate out of loyalty to the promise he had made to Nikita about coming back to her. He had not really thought about it, but if he had asked himself then he was reasonably sure he would have assumed that he would have a series of brief, casual affairs.
Instead the realities of being a full-time father to Adam eliminated any immediate prospect of a regular sex life. At first, he had been entirely too paranoid to leave Adam with a sitter; formal daycare, and then, elementary school, with all its checks and safety precautions had been bad enough and he wasn’t up to doing background checks on babysitters just so he could go cruise the bars in the hopes of meeting a potential girlfriend.
He had also quickly realized that Adam was terrified that his father would disappear again. Not that Adam was clingy. He was too cautious even for that. But he obviously wanted to know where Michael was at all times; if Michael lingered in the kitchen or the bathroom, Adam was sure to wander in, just checking on his whereabouts. And for several years Michael had woken up four or five nights a week to discover Adam curled up beside him in his bed. His son had lost so much, so quickly; Michael could not bear to worry Adam any further by complicating his life with girlfriends Michael did not really want anyway.
When he finally began to have the odd night to himself, once Adam was willing to go to the occasional sleep-over at a friend’s, it was such a relief to be alone that the last thing he wanted to do was rush out for a one-night hookup.
Sometimes too, he did feel, for want of a better word, hunted. He was aware that as a responsible, attractive single father he was a prime catch in a limited field. But there were weeks when he felt he could not go outside without being sure to receive at least one awkward invitation a day. It could make him want to retreat inside his house and bar the door behind him.
His bed squeaked faintly in protest as he rolled over in an unsuccessful attempt to find a more comfortable spot. The irritating noise was the result of having chosen an old iron bed frame from a junk dealer merely because it reminded him of a bed in his grandmother’s house in a small town a few hours outside of Marseilles. He had purchased the story and half bungalow on a quiet old street as part of his quest to offer Adam as much stability as he could, certain that Adam would withstand the future better for having firm roots now. He had furnished it in about a week - with the unsurprising result that some of the choices had been unsatisfactory over the long run. The worst mistakes - like a dinette set whose ponderous “Victorian” styling turned out to be more than Michael could take - had been rectified. Minor problems, like his squeaky bed, they were still living with. And it still reminded him of his grandmother.
He wondered if maybe it was time to revise his attitude about dating. Casual did not have to mean meaningless or secret. Dating did not have to be like valentine work, it could simply be a man and a woman getting to know each other. But, if he did start dating, whom should he date? He reviewed all the single women he knew, from work or the neighborhood or the dojo, and rejected them one by one as potential candidates. This one was too young, that one smoked, this one had children, that one was a friend, she was a student at the dojo, the other had a annoying laugh, in short, none of them would do. Obviously, he reasoned to himself, if he’d been attracted to someone he already knew, he would have asked her out already; probably, most likely, possibly anyway. Besides, he thought, no point in fouling my own nest.
He stared up at the moonlit ceiling, seeking inspiration there - and not finding any. He decided that the best he could do was stay open to possibility when he met new people. But, as he had pointed out to Adam, their lives were so full that he really did not meet all that many new people - with the exception of clients and that was not a road he was prepared to take for a whole host of reasons.
Which left him exactly where he was - alone, frustrated, and wide awake in the middle of the night.
The bed squeaked when he rolled over again.
************