Author's Note: Hello! Wow, it's been a long time! Too long, as a matter of fact, since I visited this story. Well, the good news is I'm back and am more than excited to finish this piece. So for those who have been following me and my stories, THANK YOU for your kind words and patience! I'm gearing up for final exams within the next week and I turn 21 this upcoming weekend, so I will have a lot on my plate, but as far as writing goes, this story is on the top of my priority list. I hope to be pounding out chapters rapidly, but cannot promise anything. Again, thank you so much for your continued support and I hope you enjoy what Firefly has in store for you!

Sincerely,

Chelsey Nova

"Good morning, Leese."

At the sound of his voice, Lisa immediately propelled herself forward on the bed, getting ready to face him, to attempt to face whatever lie ahead. She had not slept well the night before, each handful of minutes in which she dozed were plagued with nightmares and feelings of dread that instantly sparked her to consciousness. All night she had been overcome with visions of his face, of his voice, and now here he was, in the flesh, preparing to... offer her breakfast?

Lisa's eyes fell upon the old, silver tray Jackson was currently balancing in his arms, and her heart sank deep into her empty stomach. Upon the tray, mocking her, sat a bowl of something she could not recognize, accompanied by silverware, bread, an orange and a tall glass of milk.

His voice startled her back to reality. "Breakfast in bed. I'm sure you don't get service like this at the Lux," he chuckled dryly.

Lisa could practically feel her mouth watering at the sight of the beautiful breakfast he was offering her. He was going to feed her. Almost instantly, this seemingly pleasant sentiment was epitomized with a more crude and vulgar meaning.

He was going to feed her.

Her tormenter, her would-be killer was going to provide her with the one thing she was craving more than anything at this moment.

She needed him.

No.

Lisa could not, would not accept this simple fact. It wasn't the way things were supposed to be. She was not going to break down and display to him that she needed him to ensure her survival. No way in hell it was ever going to happen.

When Jackson placed the tray upon the edge of the bed and turned his back on her, preparing to walk away, Lisa reciprocated the tray violently - with the cry of a fierce warrior, she hurled the tray hard, and it crashed into the wall on the opposite side of the room.

Jackson cocked his head at the sight that lay before him. Large globs of oatmeal dribbled down the wallpaper, and the glass containing the milk had shattered into millions of pieces. The only part of her breakfast that remained unscarred was the orange.

His jaw tightened.

She should be fucking grateful. Fuck her. She'll live to regret it.

Jackson spun around to face her. He smirked in appreciation of her barbaric appearance. Her chest was heaving, her eyes were wildly animalistic and panting breaths tore through her mouth.

At least I know she's still in there somewhere. She's still a fighter, still has the ability to do something.

Jackson approached her, a predator stalking his prey, and stood firmly beside her. He leant down, and harshly whispered into her ear, as if he were afraid someone would overhear them. "I would have eaten that if I were you." He could see Lisa cringe regrettably at her actions, and she shrunk away from him, coiled away from the blow she expected to follow his words.

Jackson merely chuckled, and strode to the other side of the room, to the scene of the crime, and began picking up what remained of her breakfast. "You know, skipping breakfast is like trying to run your car without any gas. My father always said that to me."

Lisa seemed taken aback at this little invite into his past. Her eyebrow quirked in momentary confusion and then she recovered. She snorted. "You mean, he used to say that before you killed him?"

"What?" A look of confusion colored his face momentarily, and then one of recognition lit up in its place. He turned his head to look at her. "Oh, Christ, Leese. No. That was a joke. You know, sometimes people tell jokes." He shifted his gaze to the mess that lay at his feet and continued, meticulously placing the food back on the tray. "No, it was quite the contrary, actually. I had a very loving home up until I was ten, when a car accident took Mom and Dad away."

"Oh."

She hated the way that one simple word sounded. So small, so wounded, almost sympathetic.

It was hard to imagine, yet there it was. The image of Jackson as a child felt foreign, yet she couldn't force it from her mind. The vision of a bright-eyed ten year old boy came into painfully sharp focus. The picture was so clear that Lisa thought she could have counted the handful of freckles scattered across his nose. She thought back to the memories she had made with her father as a girl, midnight fishing on the banks of the Miami River, listening to music as she helped him rebuild his old Roadrunner in the garage and laughing until her sides hurt as they danced around the shop, pretending his tools were instruments. She pictured Jackson in her place in these scenarios and herself standing on the sidelines of her own memories. She saw him in the mud alongside the river, struggling to reel in a bass and rocking out to Bob Seger as he sat perched upon the rusted hood of an antique car. An older man was playing air guitar on a giant wrench beside him. His face was blurred, but Lisa could only assume it was Jackson's own father.

The vision was brief, a shooting star of a thought, and then it was gone.

The picture seemed strange, alien, yet... natural.

Human.

After all, everyone was a child at one point. Why would Jackson, a man of real flesh and blood, be any different?

Lisa was rattled from her thoughts by the smooth sound of his voice. "You know, Leese, not everyone is out to make your world a living hell."

It was automatic. "So what you're saying is, not everyone is like you?"

Jackson curled his lips, a sure sign that the next words to drip from his mouth would be poisonous and mocking. "Is that what you think? Well, it may not seem like it now, but you'll come around. One way or another, you'll see. And in the end... you'll be thanking me for everything I've done."

"And what exactly have you done, Jack? You've got quite the resume, don't you? Government overthrows and high-profile assassinations? Isn't that how it went? Those jobs don't exactly sound like they were done with the good of the people in mind. Don't give me this bullshit. You do nothing less than turn people's lives to shit, granted you let them live their life long enough to suffer from the repercussions."

Jackson's jaw jutted out at a frightening angle, and he spoke through gritted teeth. "You have no idea what you're talking about."

His blatant anger sparkled amusement in her. She had one over on him and she surged forward. "I think I do, Jack. You're a cold-blooded killer. And as much as you think you were doing someone a favor, Keefe's attempted assassination doesn't exactly read as community service in the media. You're a miserable human being. And you have no one to blame but yourself."

His words were hushed and choked by the anger boiling inside of him. "That's it, Leese. I was going to give it a few days, but you've just made my mind up for me. That's it."

With the intensity of a hurricane, Jackson bounded towards her and was at her side within a sharp second. "Get up," he growled, and yanked on her bared arm with a bruising grip.

She yelped angrily in pain. "Let me go! I'm not going anywhere with you!"

"Too late. We're already here, Leese. Now, get up."

"No!"

Jackson wrenched her arm so hard he thought he might have pulled it out of its socket. But he didn't care. She had brought this on herself. Lisa fell to the floor with a satisfying thud, and he tugged her towards him. When he ordered her to get up once more, she refused, splaying her legs out disobediently in front of her. "Don't think I won't drag you, Lisa. I think you'll learn it's best to do what I say."

She glared at him for a moment. The air crackled with thick tension around them and then she slowly pushed herself off of the floor. "Where are we going?"

"Someplace better suited for you," he smirked. "This is my room."

She trudged alongside him as he led her out into the dry heat of the summer day. He hadn't wanted it to come to this so soon, but she had pushed him over the edge. She had proved to him that she was fully ready for what he held in store for her.

They passed the multiple gray brick buildings and tall, rusted chain link fences and Jackson looked at Lisa as she observed her surroundings. This was her first time witnessing this environment, as she had been unconscious the first time she had been taken past the structures, and Jackson smiled proudly to himself as he was reminded of how effortless it had been to bring her here.

"It looks like a concentration camp," Lisa muttered miserably. She didn't sound as high-spirited as before, when she had been verbally assaulting him, but seemed taken down a peg or two. The drabness of the facility probably contributed to her sudden low spirits.

Jackson chuckled lightly, his mood abruptly cheered by the distinct joylessness of her own. "That was my exact thought when I first stepped foot in this place. I was a new student, just like you. Trust me, you'll learn to love it here."

Before she could respond, Jackson stopped suddenly and nudged a pile of branches and leaves aside with the toe of his Hermes shoe to reveal a chipped wooden door that lay on the ground. "This is your room."

"A cellar?" she cried in disbelief. She began squirming, trying to wrench free of his grasp, but Jackson was quick. He pulled her into him, and held her close and hard beside him.

"It's not that bad, Leese," he murmured in hushed tones, as though he were persuading a child. "You'll love it."

Jackson ripped open the door to her underground chamber with one hand, and pushed Lisa forward with his other. She reluctantly descended the stairs on her bare feet and turned to face him. Even in the darkness of the entrance to the cavern, he could see new tears dribble down her face. "Jackson, please..."

She was begging like a dog. Jackson grunted disapprovingly. He half expected her to whimper and sprout a tail so she could tuck it between her legs. He could feel a bubble of disappointment swelling in his chest. "This is your first lesson," he grumbled. "I'm going to teach you how to make due with what you have. You're going to learn to become handy and survive any situation with the most basic tools at your disposal." Jackson spread his palm over the white-washed door, readying himself to close it if she should attempt to flee. "You've never known desperate, never tasted real hunger. In here, you will." He began to close the door, but paused at the timid sound of her voice.

"I'm scared."

He sighed deeply. "In real life, you don't have time to be scared. You have a few seconds to make a decision and then react. Food and other necessities may not always be available to you. You're going to have to learn to cope with that, even if you don't taste food for days on end."

"But you're suddenly forcing this on me. When would I be faced with a situation like this in reality?"

Does she have to ask so many fucking questions? he thought bitterly, but answered her as calmly as he could. He figured it was the least he could do before he closed the door on her. "Lisa, you have no idea what your reality has become. Do you think that your actions against me all those months ago were going to go unpunished? You intercepted a brash message. Now you're going to have to deal with the consequences. In my field, you don't screw up a mission and live to tell about it. This simple fact applies to both of us. My bosses and whoever else they may decide to involve in this... they're after us. And trust me, compared to them, I'm a fucking saint-"

"If they wanted to hurt us, wouldn't they have done it already?"

"You think they haven't tried?" he uttered. "I've intercepted a few 'brash messages' myself these past few months."

Watery disbelief glittered in her eyes. "You-you've been protecting me?"

"Yes, Leese. I've seen half of what they have planned for us. At first, I thought you needed protection. You defeated me, of course, yet look at how easy it was for me to re-enter your life, to bring you here. I knew you weren't ready, so I took it upon myself to look out for you. Now..." he paused. "You need to learn to look out for yourself," he finished softly.

"Jackson?"

"Yes, Lisa?"

She bit her lip. "Why were you protecting me?"

He harshly drew in a breath, and released it slowly. "That's enough questions for now, Leese," he murmured. "I'll be back to check on you tomorrow." Before she could protest, he quickly lowered the door. He pulled a key from the pocket of his slacks and slid it in the rusted padlock. It turned with a deafening click.

The next few days were... lonely.

Jackson felt the first sting of aloneness mere minutes after he had closed the cellar door on her. He had taken a few steps away from the hole in the ground when he realized he already missed talking to her. It had taken him all day, but he finally managed to force the feeling away.

That night, as he crawled between the sheets of the bed in his room, the stab of loneliness returned and pierced his heart when he inhaled the brilliant scent of Lisa. It lingered in the stitches of the pillowcases, the bedspread. It seemed to overwhelm the entire room. His dreams that night were accented with the thought of her and that beautiful smell.

Over the course of the next few days, Jackson returned to the cellar. He afforded Lisa little water, and no matter how much she pleaded with him, not one shred of food. On the third day, she ceased begging.

Jackson took pity on her, however, and allowed her to retreat from the cavern once a day. He offered her five minutes and not a second longer. He escorted her to a row of outhouses on these trips, and stood outside of the small structures as she relieved herself. He thought it better that she hold onto one scrap of what was left of her dignity- he was not about to force her to sit in her own filth.

She never uttered a word as he ushered her back to her little hole in the ground; her ability to speak had fled with the realization that she was not to be fed or freed.

On the sixth day, when Jackson unlocked the cellar door, she was not waiting expectantly at the door for him. Fear gripped him; perhaps it had been too much for her. Perhaps she wasn't as strong as he thought she was. Perhaps he had killed her.

He lowered himself into the cellar, and skimmed his hand over the wall made partially from earth. Usually, a lantern hung from a wooden peg on the makeshift wall, but today, his hand was greeted by the projecting peg and nothing more.

A shuffle from somewhere deeper in the cellar attracted his attention, and as he progressed through the cavern, he could see a faint flicker of light dancing on the walls.

In one corner, slumped over a mound of earth, sat the fragile form of Lisa. The lantern was perched next to her.

Jackson approached her slowly. "Leese?" he whispered.

Lisa weakly lifted her head and briefly met his gaze. Then she lowered it once again.

He took another step towards her and crouched down beside her. "Lisa?"

Her eyes rolled over to look at him, and Jackson brushed her matted hair away from her face. There, dangling from her mouth, was the remains of a large bug.

She had been surviving for these past few days on insects.

Jackson gently gripped her shoulders and he could not contain the smile that spread over his lips.

"You're ready."