For the Sake of…Sanity
Disclaimer: I don't own anything related to Red Eye!
Summary: Jackson and Lisa reflect on each other. Part One: Jackson Rippner reflects on what could have been, had he been a different man. He knows that he could never have had Lisa Reisert, yet he can't stop thinking about her. Part Two: Lisa Reisert is surprised at her feelings when she is hit with news about Jackson's passing. Instead of happiness, she is full of sadness. She tries to remember the good times as she stands at his grave.
Part Two: Emotion
It had only been a quick segment on the news, yet it had hurt her all the same.
"In other news," the smartly dressed reporter on the TV droned on. "Suspect assassin, Jackson Rippner, has been pronounced dead. He passed away due to complications from injuries sustained during the attempt to assassinate Deputy Director of Homeland Security, Charles Keefe, and his family. Mr. Rippner was to face trial, and a possible jail term, had he recovered."
Lisa Reisert stopped breathing for a moment. Jackson Rippner was dead? How was that possible? The last time that she had asked the police about him (was it only an hour ago?), he had been recovering fine. Now, he was dead.
Why did she feel so saddened and crushed by this news? She should be happy and relieved. Now all she wanted to do was have a good cry.
Lisa did not sleep that night; she did not even try. She knew that she would get no rest. She had not slept at all since the red eye flight the previous evening. Not since Jackson knocked her unconscious with a head-butt.
The following morning, she applied a healthy amount of make-up to her face to hide the tell-tale circles under her eyes. She dressed in all black, out of respect, even though he had tried to kill her. Simple black high heels, a swishy black skirt, a black blouse, a blazer completed her mourning outfit. Jackson would have approved, she thought grimly as she stared in the mirror, conscious off all the bruises and cuts left from her fight with him.
She was the lone attendee of his solemn funeral. Only a few reporters flocked nearby, commenting on the turnout—or lack of. None of them dared to approach her in her grief. Surely, they wondered who she was and why she had come—she wished she knew the answer to that question herself—but they stayed far away, leaving her to witness the lowering of his closed casket.
Lisa had caught a glimpse of him before the highly polished wooden box had been closed. His brilliant blue eyes were closed in slumber and he had a genuine smile upon his pale face. His hair had been neatly parted and he was dressed in a fresh suit. He looked as she preferred to remember him—the kind stranger she had met in line, not the killer she had seen towards the end. The man she could have fallen in love with.
The grave was covered with the freshly dug earth and the reporters gradually faded, leaving her alone with her captor buried safely under six feet of ground. She kneeled beside the grave, and finally allowed the tears to come.
"What could we have done differently?" she wondered aloud. "Did it have to end like this? Why couldn't we have just been two strangers thrown together by chance? Why did you have to have that horrible job?"
Jackson smiling, his blue eyes staring straight at her as they sat at the Tex-Mex bar.
Lisa swallowed hard. She had tried to keep the memories at bay, but it was useless. Jackson had invaded her mind and he never left. Just because he was dead, it did not mean that he was gone for good. He would always linger.
He had been so deceptively charming. So likeable. He had begun to restore her faith in the male race only to destroy it. He blamed it on her female-based, emotion-driven feelings, but she had always secretly blamed it on him. What had transpired was his fault, not hers.
"Are you stalking me?" he asked her.
How ironic. Jackson asking her if she was stalking him, when in reality, he was the one doing the stalking. Eight weeks worth, he had told her later.
They had shared a laugh; a wonderful, abet short-lived laugh.
The concern and shock on his face after seeing her terrible scar. Before she had become increasingly driven in her fight against him. Before things had changed for the worse.
"Where any of those feelings real or I was just seeing things, Jackson? Am I going insane?" she asked the grave where he lay.
He looked up at her as he lay on the floor, his crimson blood a stark contrast to the light green shirt he wore. He knew the end was near. He had accepted his fate.
She could have finished him off then, yet something stopped her. She felt sorrow, pity, among other feelings for him. She could not even bring herself to look at him. Part of her wanted him to die, yet another part was clinging to the image of a king man in an airport line that she trusted and wanted to get to know better.
A glance here, a glance there. She memorized the good times and blocked the fights. She spoke to the silent grave and wept for what could have been and what she wanted. No amount of tears would change his death. Jackson was dead and whatever feelings he had for her had died with him.
She needed to let go of her feelings. She may have loved him at one point, or loved what she thought was the real Jackson. The nice man that she had seen at first, not the killer that she knew he was.
"Good-bye, Jackson," she whispered, kissing the earth which was damp with her shed tears.
She could have sworn that a ghostly whisper said, "I'm sorry, Leese."
But it could have been just a wish, like her wayward emotions were. Her wish for a nice Jackson, not the man who meticulously stalked her and threatened her. The man she thought she knew, the man she may have loved, under different circumstances…
If things had been different, who knew? But this much was certain: there was no future for Lisa and Jackson. Despite her emotions crying that she had done something wrong, she knew in her heart that it would have never worked.
It was only thing that kept her sane in her grief.
Author's Notes:
Lisa's probably a little OOC, but she's been through a lot. She's confused and so was Jackson. I tried to highlight the differences in feelings (hence the 'Logic' and 'Emotion') and hopefully it worked. Please let me know what you think! I need to get out of the loony bin more, I swear, so I can stop having all this time to come up with stories. Being sick really screws with your mind. Enjoy!