Identity - Part Four

Once the door had shut, Michael let himself slump back in the chair and shut his eyes, trying in vain to focus his scattered thoughts, to find some sense in all of this. Too much of what the woman Nikita said made sense, giving weight to the lingering doubts over the last few months, and there was also that feeling of recognition when he had seen her in the hotel. If it was all a lie, if Simone wasn't who he thought she was, then who was he? Agent of the Legion or agent of the Section? And was there really any difference between the two?

The door opened again, not Nikita returning but the other woman--Madeline--coming inside, shutting the door behind her, and he straightened in the chair, twisting his wrists hard in the cuffs and the pain clearing his head a little, driving away the weariness and confusion. He would need all his wits to deal with this one, she would be far more subtle in her approach than Nikita, and if there was a "bad cop" here it was Madeline.

Madeline smiled a little, as if she could read his thoughts, and walked behind him; as much as he wanted to turn his head and watch her, keep her in his line of sight, he held himself still, knowing that would concede a point in this game. An opening of a drawer and a rustle of paper, the click on her heels on the floor as she made her way leisurely around the chair to stand before him, holding a folder in one hand, and he lifted his head to look at her warily.

"How far back do you remember, Michael?"

"Why?" he asked, eyebrows knitting, trying to see the purpose of this approach.

Madeline gave a shrug of slim shoulders. "It's a simple question. How far?"

Despite himself he considered that question, sifting through memories to find something past the last two months, but there was only bits and pieces, nothing concrete, no more than fleeting impressions. "Two months." he said flatly.

"How long have you been with the Legion?" she asked crisply.

"I...don't know." He knew that he had married Simone five years ago but beyond that he was sure of little, when he had asked her about it she had always shifted the subject and after a time he had stopped asking.

"And who were you before you were Michael?"

That question brought his attention to her, eyes narrowing as he lifted his head to stare at her, Madeline's brown eyes imperturbable as she returned his gaze. "Try to remember, Michael. What was your name before you joined the Legion? Surely you changed your name."

Vaguely he could remember a voice calling his name, his old name, and remember as well the querulous note in that voice he had hated so much...when he had been younger the sound of that voice woke fear, fear of a beating if he didn't respond quickly enough, but when he was older and less inclined to simply accept the beating, the voice prompted only disgust. Memories forgotten or so long set aside that it was as if it had happened to someone else entirely...

"I don't remember--" As much a lie to himself as to this woman, a denial of who he had been so long ago.

"Your name was Louis Millot. You were born in Montreal, Quebec, on July 14, 1967. Your mother died when you were six and your father--Jacques Millot--took you back to Paris with him. Your father was a drunk and he used to beat you--do you remember that?"

He remembered...he remembered mornings he had walked quietly around the tiny flat, trying to make as little noise as possible, knowing that if his father woke up from last night's binge he would be angry and abusive. Fetching bottles for him, buying food because his father couldn't be bothered to, burying his head in the pillow and crying at night after a beating, trying to smother the sound of his sobs because he knew it only angered his father more. His father's slow decline over the years, eventually giving up the pretense of working, and living most of his childhood out on the streets...

"He died when you were fifteen. You were out on your own, no family, no place to live."

And he did remember that as well, coming home one afternoon to find his father dead, having choked to death on his own vomit, no money to bury him and no money to pay two months' rent. Nothing more than what clothes and possessions he could fit in a bag before he was out on the streets, nowhere to go... He shook his head to clear it, trying to push back the memories, deny them, because in their wake came another memory, this one even more painful to bear.

"Then you fell in with this...group that called themselves Liberte." she continued, voice dispassionate, inexorable. "You learned a great deal from them--how to fight, how to kill, how to make bombs. You placed a bomb in a department store that killed 27 people, three of which were children, and you were injured when it went off prematurely, arrested by the French police. You were tried and convicted and sentenced to death--until the Section intervened. The Section, Michael, not the Legion. We gave you a second chance at life, a chance to atone for the things that you did as Louis Millot. I was the one that came to you--you remember that, don't you?"

When he had first woken here and seen her, it had come to him, the memory of being in that white room, Madeline standing in a corner watching him, coming to him when she had seen he was awake. Work for us and we will give you a new life, she had said, and for the boy he had been, scared and wanting very much to live, there had been no other answer. Eleven years ago Louis Millot had died and Michael had been born--it whirled through his confused mind, images of that long ago past, Bernard telling him and Yves to set the bomb, saying that it would not go off until after closing. Yves had died in that blast and he had suffered minor injuries, requiring treatment at a local hospital, but there had been witnesses to place him at the scene, in possession of the package that had concealed the bomb, and an anonymous phone call by Liberte to claim responsibility. More damning evidence since he was a known member of that group and enough to ensure a speedy trial and conviction.

And it all felt true, meshed with everything that he knew and had been told, explained how he knew to do the things he did. A killer then and a killer now--how had he been able to do it? How to reconcile what he did? The image of the man Dylan's face swam before him and he closed his eyes against it, swallowing hard, thinking, My God, what have I done? If this was all true, if Simone was indeed dead and he had been taken by the enemy, converted by them, then he had killed a friend in cold blood, just because they had asked him to--and what did that say about the man he had become? Bile rose in his throat at the thought and he swallowed again, struggling to banish the treacherous doubts and the weakness they brought. Don't question, just do, said the ghost voice of a long-ago trainer, and he had taken that advice to heart, that and everything else they had told him.

"You remember, don't you?" asked Madeline softly and not without a little pity. He had changed so much over the years, from that angry, defiant boy to the calm, controlled man, far surpassing their expectations, and even she--seeing potential in those beginning years of training--would not of guessed that he would come so far. Watching him grow and learn, guiding him along the way, he had been more like her own child than other of the other operatives she had seen through training. She had seen him through the worst and the best, watched the relationship between himself and Simone grow from that first meeting to their marriage, seen the devastation of her loss and his slow return with the appearance of Nikita.

Michael simply shook his head, letting his shoulders slump, not knowing what he was denying, himself or her. He could remember now those things long ago but nothing more recent--perhaps he had once belonged to the Section, had left them for the Legion...his mind tried to grasp eagerly at that thought, to explain away everything he had done, but he couldn't accept that. Too easy, too much of an escape, and he had enough sense left to know that wasn't the answer.

"Think about it, Michael. Take what you remember and put that against what you know now. You'll see the truth--you belong to the Section, not the Legion." Nikita had started on the groundwork and now the foundations of his identity were slowly eroding, eaten away by doubt and the resurface of memories he couldn't deny or explain away. It hadn't taken much to get Operations to agree to this, despite what she had told Nikita, because the two of them knew that Michael was the best possible candidate of the Section operatives to eventually succeed Operations and cancelling him without making an attempt to bring him back was not an option. Not only a personal loss but years of training and grooming gone, wasted--still, if it was necessary, to have Nikita be the one to do it would strengthen their control of her.

His head was averted from her and she wanted very much to go to him, to touch him and tell him it would be all right, but it was too soon for that, at this point he would rebuff her and it might affect what she had been able to accomplish here. Instead she said, "I'll leave you now to consider what you've learned." Removing the keys from the pocket of her blazer she unlocked the door and left the room.

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