Disclaimer: I own nothing. Sean/Alex, post 2x05. Warnings for minor masturbation and, um, 'mild language.' My characterization may be a little off, I haven't written Nikita fic in the longest time. Alas, no plot bunnies. Also, no beta, so all mistakes are mine.

It's tiny moments.

Moments when she feels so alone she can't breathe, or when he happens to be in the right place at the right time telling her not to lose herself, not to let revenge utterly consume her, when sometimes she worries that it already has.

She's beginning to feel again, after turning everything off after things with Nikita, after accepting that she has to lose herself in the darkness to feel okay with all the death and despair, and how desperately she needs to get revenge.

She still goes home, whether she's pretending she's feeling or not, and sits naked in her shower, sobbing as the water nearly drowns her—and there's a part of her that doesn't care, while the more resilient part of her twists the knob, turning off the water, grabbing the towel to clean up the mess she's made, and simply resolves not to think about this—whatever this is, until the next time it happens, and maybe even not then.

They start to happen more and more frequently—detours, that is.

She doesn't like them(or at least she doesn't want to). She has to stay focused, and ignore how good they make her feel.

Despite herself, she loves knowing that she's doing something worthwhile.

Three months later, they're joking on spontaneous missions that aren't really supposed to happen, and pretending that they don't feel an undercurrent of sexual tension(or maybe that's just Alex, she's not entirely sure).

She likes him, in a weird sort of way. She respects him. She likes that he actually seems to care about what he's doing—he's not like all the other damaged people, hurting so badly that they can barely think straight, unable to feel much of anything, let alone care more than telling themselves they're doing the right thing, barely capable of believing in anything better.

She's also incredibly jealous, but that's beside the point, because she's chosen this life, chosen revenge over simply living her life—which is impossible, to say the least.

She hasn't had an episode in almost a month when they get stranded in California after saving a senator's life, taking out a high profile assassin who Amanda had wanted to recruit, of all things.

It's becoming increasingly clear that neither one of them is quite Division—and they don't really care.

Alex grabs her bag, heading into their hotel room (they were traveling as a 'couple' for security reasons, not that it really mattered to her).

It didn't really matter that they were sharing a room until she lifted her shirt over her head, grabbing for a t-shirt when he'd made an 'ahem' sort of noise, and she'd headed into the bathroom with a roll of her eyes.

She sat down on the toilet seat, listening as he turned on some late night rerun of Friends, and she suddenly felt the pressure of the op weigh down on her.

They'd lost someone—a girl, who'd been killed by the assassin because they'd waited, trying to talk to him before he'd gotten to his real target. She'd been completely innocent, uninvolved. She'd been killed for fun; her body had been utterly decimated.

It hurts.

She starts to undo the straps on her shorts at that, taking only the time to yell that she's showering before turning on the water, desperately holding back her tears. She almost tears off her t-shirt, pulling off the rest of her clothes hurriedly.

She steps into the shower, letting the sobs out, letting them wrack her body as she tries to turn the water on as high a setting as she can.

She pulls her knees into her stomach, trying to smother her sobs between her knees and her stomach. She can't do this anymore.

She can't be this person, and fight for something that doesn't seem all that important anymore(she doesn't want to be like Nikita, who at least has Michael), and she doesn't know who she is, or what she wants, or what the purpose of her fucking life is.

She is strong, powerful, she has a goal she tries to remind herself, but it doesn't quite cut through her pain.

She cries her heart out for the next ten minutes before she hears the bathroom door opens—she curses herself for not locking it—and senses Sean leaning down in front of her, placing his hands on her shoulders.

"Alex—" he says, shaking her gently. "Are you okay?"

She looks up at him, barely moving her head enough to make eye contact, and knows she doesn't even need to shake her head. But she does, almost imperceptibly.

She watches him lean in, getting his suit sopping wet in order to turn off the water and realizes he was probably waiting for her to get out to change, not that it really matters, but these thoughts are comforting.

She's reminded of the nightmares she still has sometimes about Thom, about killing him, and the guilt, and how she'd done everything in her power to focus on anything but him.

Even now, it aches inside of her, it's a festering wound, one that'll never completely heal, that consistently gets cut open even more deeply, and that'll one day kill her with its sickness, its disease.

But that hasn't happened yet, she reminds herself as he picks her up—he's stronger than she'd thought, she realizes, which is weird, but also comforting—and holds her naked body in his arms. It's the least sexual thing in the world, for which she is eternally grateful, and the fact that she's still sobbing openly is the weirdest part about it.

He closes the short distance to the queen beds, setting her down on one, not that it matters which, because they'd barely just claimed them, and grabs a towel, rubbing her dry, not saying a word.

He hands her a long t-shirt, and she realizes she doesn't really care about the rest of it, and he's probably sensing it, which means she should probably give him more credit—and her thoughts need to calm down. She can't go there right now. She needs to focus on the here and now, though the here and now is mostly her crying as he dries her off.

It should be incredibly insulting, or demeaning, or terrible that he's seeing her in such a vulnerable state, that she's letting someone she still barely knows do this for her, see her like this—but somehow it's okay. He understands her, and they aren't very different at all, and somehow that makes it okay.

He pulls the shirt over her head, because she's simply incapable of doing it herself. He looks into her eyes, wiping away a stray tear as she finally seems to stop crying, and is just hiccups awkwardly.

She notices that Friends is no longer on, and that he looks genuinely concerned about her. He kneels down in front of the bed in front of her. "Are you okay?"

"Not really," she says, leaning down onto the bed.

He gets up, walking over to pull the comforter from the other bed, laying it over her body, sitting down on the bed next to her.

"Alex, things happen. And we don't get over them, but we do get through them. And if there's anything you need me to do, I'm here for you."

She's not sure why he's offering, but she sits up, leaning into his arms without a second thought, clearly surprising him, letting his arms encapsulate her.

She's never felt safer in her life, which is a scary thought-one she doesn't really think through because it's clear, she'll think later, that any person who had been there would have done the same thing, and Sean just happened to be that person, so of course she's latching onto him as being 'safe' when he really, really isn't.

He holds her for close to an hour, just making soft, patting circle on her back, letting her cry, letting her talk when she starts, letting her lean back, and pull him down with her, letting his body fit against hers comfortably, in a weird sort of spooning position neither one of them would ever allow otherwise.

"Thank you," she says softly, after telling him a lot more than she means to. About Division, Amanda, Nikita, Thom, her father, everything she doesn't want to tell him, but can't help anyways.

It's a bad idea, it gives him power over her, but she does it anyway, trusting in his 'good guy instincts,' in the morals that he so espouses, hoping that he won't.

She wakes up in the morning to breakfast in bed, clearly him trying to stem off another sob fest. He is a guy, after all, and they don't even like to see girls they like cry, let alone ones they don't.

"Thank you," she says. And they both know it's for more than just breakfast.

They don't talk about it, and she's grateful.

She's not as grateful (at least she doesn't want to be) when he starts texting her, telling her when Amanda's in a mood, or telling her to be careful on a mission, or any number of things that aren't dangerous in and of themselves.

It's her fault, in the end, when she picks up the phone one day and calls him.

"Hello?" he says simply, clearly confused as to why she's calling him, and probably wondering if something's wrong, or if it's really her, because this is, well, new for them.

"Hi," she says. "It's Alex."

She takes to calling him for random reasons that aren't really important.

It's to talk about missions, to talk about Amanda, and Division—but it starts to turn to a million other things.

She finds out how he became part of Oversight, and she tells him everything she really shouldn't about Nikita and her life before Division. She tells him silly things like her favorite color, and he tells her his. It's unnecessary and nice.

He won't talk to her after a mission in Paris.

She takes a risk, okay, and she almost dies.

It isn't a big deal, but then she realizes she put him in danger, and he's clearly not happy about that.

They're silent all the way back to Division, and it's the loneliest trip she's ever had to go on, because he's there, but he won't talk to her.

They stop right outside of Division, and she opens the door, yanking the door open and slamming it shut.

He gets out, walking over to her, sitting down on the hood of the car next to her.

"You were being reckless," he says, the consummate professional. "You could have gotten yourself killed."

"There's always that risk."

"Not like that, Alex. Do you have a death wish or something?" she feels him turn to her, but she won't close the difference between them, won't look at him when she answers.

"No. I don't. Why would you even think that?"

"The trip to California," he says. "You were having a breakdown, and if you're that much of a loose cannon, and that unstable, maybe you shouldn't be working for Division anymore."

"I don't work for Division—" she bites out, turning towards him, clearly ready to rage. "You don't know me, you know nothing about me. I'm biding my time until I get what I want, and then I'm out. You know that."

"Then you need to draw the line—" he says loudly, practically yelling, losing his cool(he only ever does that when there's a matter of morality or someone's life at stake so she really doesn't understand why he's being like this).

"I did. You're the one who keeps taking me with you on these missions," she points out, perfectly levelheaded.

"Sometimes you offer, and sometimes you simply don't say no."

"I can't say no—" she says before she has the chance to think about it.

"Why not?" he places his hands on her shoulders, looking into her eyes.

Alex's eyes widen, and she doesn't entirely understand the look in his eyes, which honestly scares her.

"Because this is my life, Sean."

Something shifts in his eyes, and she can see it. "Then live your life, and don't take stupid risks." He pulls back a little, removing his arms from her shoulders and for a brief moment she thinks he might kiss her.

He doesn't.

"Why do you care?" She asks suddenly. She doesn't understand him at all, and it's driving her insane.

Sean sighs, tilting his head to the side a little, a sad smile on his face. "It's what I have left. And it's better than becoming so empty and broken that I have nothing left to live for. Don't be like that, Alex—" He steps forward again, softly pushing her hair out of her face, and behind her ear.

"I should stop doing this. Getting emotionally involved—" he says suddenly, and she knows he isn't talking to her, so as she swears he's drifting closer, and she can't help but do the same, she struggles to maintain her sanity.

"Isn't your expertise emotional distance?" she teases, and there's a bit of a bite to her words.

"You do what you have to do, Alex—" he pulls away, and his hand leaves her cheek, and there's something weirdly wrong about that, so she quickly closes the distance, flinging her arms around his neck, drawing him in quickly and intensely for a kiss that leaves her breathless and incapable of thought.

The world is spinning—she feels heady and mindless, and she isn't quite melting into so much as rising to the challenge his mouth is putting out.

He pulls away eventually, his arms are around her midsection, and their faces are still so close they could easily be kissing again with so little effort.

She tilts her head slightly, pressing her forward against his, letting their noses graze each other, and her lips press gently to his—or maybe his press gently to hers, it's hard to tell where he begins and she ends.

It's breathy and quick, and over as soon as it begins. "We can't do this—" he says.

She doesn't know what to say to that. No. she can't do this. But she can't do this with anyone, and neither can he, and she thinks about Thom and Nathan, and it seems incredibly unfair.

People should be able to feel. They can't be kept in boxes, she thinks. She's been training so long, working toward a goal that feels so incredibly empty and unimportant sometimes, but it's all she has.

She looks deeply into Sean's eyes, and for the first time in the longest time she feels alive. She isn't using Thom or Nathan as a way to feel more human, to escape not feeling alive.

He breaks eye contact, pulling away from her, and she wants to punch him for being such an idiot.

"You're right," she says. "We can't."

"It was just a kiss—" he says.

"Well," she shrugs. "It was a nice kiss."

"A nice kiss?" he lifts an eyebrow, as if questioning her sanity. "Nice?"

"You were the one saying that it didn't mean anything."

"I didn't say that," he corrects her. "I said it was just a kiss. As in, it's not like we're making this into anything."

It's her turn to give him a look, a 'are you crazy?' look. "So it did mean something?" she asks, challenging him.

He smiles slightly, shaking his head. "I think we should get back to work."

Alex smiles in return, laughing a little at his awkwardness. "Fine." She really likes teasing him. It's nice.

Their second kiss is inside of Division's walls, and it has to be the worst idea either of them has ever had, because making out in a closet tends to be a bad idea.

It starts to happen frequently—glances when no one is looking, brushes of skin against skin, kisses when they can't get caught.

"I hear you're supposed to come into Division tomorrow." He doesn't even bother to say hello.

"What's it to you?" she asks, flipping through the channels on her television before giving up and throwing down her remote, leaning back against her pillows.

She can hear the smile in his voice. "Amanda's on a rampage."

"Ooh, what happened this time?" she curls up, playing with the tie straps on her sweatpants. "And is it the kind of rampage that'll be fun to watch? Because I'd like to see her lose it."

"Oversight's exerting more . . . control. She screwed up something important, and—" he sounds hesitant to continue talking.

"You don't have to tell me, I can guess," she says, letting him go, smiling at his sigh of relief.

"Yeah," he says, and they lapse into silence.

Alex slides her free hand down a little, fiddling with the edges of her underwear mindlessly.

"So, um. How was your day?" she asks, a hint of humor in her voice.

She listens to him as she just kind of plays with herself, delicately slipping over skin, over the material of her panties, enjoying the soft sensation as she listens to him talk. God, she loves his voice, she thinks, completely missing his question, she realizes, once his voice gets a little deeper, with slight concern.

"What?" she asks. "Sorry, I just zoned out for a moment."

She realizes that she's actually masturbating to the sound of his voice and nearly drops her phone. "Shit—" she says before she can stop herself, clutching her phone more tightly. "Um, I need to go."

"Oh," he says, and she can hear the disappointment. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. But, um. I don't think we should do this anymore."

"What, be friends?" he jokes slightly.

"Yes, exactly." She sits up, pulling her hand out of her pants. What was she doing? She winces. "Except not. No. We can be friends. I just—"

"I understand," he says, and it reminds her of the first day she met him. "Goodnight, Alexandra."

"Goodnight, Sean." Alex ends the call, tossing her phone across the bed, enjoying the noise it makes when it slides right off the side, hitting the ground.

She can't do this.

A/N: I haven't decided whether there should be more, or whether I should leave it here. Thoughts? Am I a forever alone shipper? I know Sean/Alex isn't a popular pairing, but I rather like them.