Hands smooth, soft despite their work. Hers are more callused. They share a cot because they can. She tends to Nikita's wounds. The heat between them rises. Jeanna Vogler is not her real name. She remembers each single name she has used, each person she has been. Each outlived its usefulness. She will not outlive hers. She does not believe in the mission, but the mission is all there is. She accepts this. She makes the mission her own. She becomes the mission. She believes in herself. That is how it starts. When the knife cut her open, she felt no fear. Seeing others rot before her eyes in the brutality of prison, the camps--of training, of war-- it is so easy to dismiss pain. Any pain. All of it. Eventually, it all falls away. Sharpness of clarity. Intent. This is what she knows. It keeps. She would be numb were it not for focus. She would be inhuman were it not for the necessity, her utility of the need to feel--- Jeanna needed to have some feelings, the semblance-- the essence of them-- in order to lure the enemy. The girl. Nikita's a whore; Section is her pimp. Red Cell is the fist of justice, she supposes. It doesn't matter now. Jeanna is a weapon. But all the cogs still deal in pounds of flesh; blood oils the machinery. All it takes is one unguarded moment. Catching that glimpse killed her for nothing. Getting close to the target does not make a miss any less of a defeat. There's something to be said for being good. In this instance, Nikita -is that her real name?- was better. Nikita, and her brother. Her heart beats true. It plays her false.

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