A/N: Jaka - Lisa wa dai jyuugo shou ni araware dete to omoimasu. Ima, Florida ni daigaku ni itte imasu. Yonde iru de arigatou gozaimasu!

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'Good morning, Jackson. How are you feeling today?'

Jackson looked up from his drab scrubs to see Dr Greene walk into his Miami hospital room. It had only been a few days since he was flown out of Benin and the doctor had met him at the Miami airport to take him to the organisation's headquarters in the city. Jackson had been placed in one of the rooms reserved for injured employees and had not yet been allowed any visitors aside from Greene. The first couple of days were aimed mostly at recuperation, but the day before, Greene had assured him that they would be talking about the Abuja incident.

'I'm feeling fine, doctor. The pain has dulled incredibly.'

'Wonderful,' Greene replied. 'Now Jackson, let's get down to business.'

He waited for a response from Jackson, but he just received a blank glare.

'All right then,' he said, taking a seat beside his patient and tapping his pen on the papers clipped to the clipboard in his lap. 'Now, you spent nine days in the Nigerian capital of Abuja working on the assassination of Sani Abacha. In the end, knowing what you did about his tastes and lifestyle, you were able to poison him and the woman you sent to kill him. Everything went according to plan. Why did you try to kill yourself after a job well done?'

Jackson stared at him. 'It just seemed like the thing to do at the time.'

Greene shifted to prop his cheekbone against his hand. 'Suicide isn't something that one randomly does. There have to be other things that tied into it. You need to talk to me, Jackson.'

'There's nothing else, no special meaning. I just felt like shooting myself and then lying down face-first in the bathtub.'

'Is it about your parents?'

'Is it ever about my parents?'

'Lyna then? Or perhaps Melissa? Sharena?'

'Women are and will continue to be an ongoing issue,' he replied quite matter-of-factly. 'But I've never lied to you before and won't start now—in Abuja, I just felt the random urge to shoot myself. I'm not always dictated by my emotions.'

'You're very rarely dictated by your emotions.'

'At the time, it seemed like the logical thing to shoot and then drown myself.'

'Okay,' Greene said slowly, taking a few long notes on the clipboard before looking up again. 'But tell me Jackson, if you wanted to be efficient, why did you shoot yourself in the stomach? That has to be one of the more slow and painful ways to die.'

Jackson gave him a very cold look. 'If you have to know, I was trying to shoot myself in the chest.'

'And…?'

'I missed.'

Greene and Jackson looked at each other for a few long moments before Greene finally spoke. 'You… missed?'

'I missed.'

'You missed your chest when holding the gun at an arm's length?'

'Yes,' Jackson replied, setting his jaw.

'Professional decorum doesn't allow me to—'

'God, go ahead, laugh. It's absurd,' Jackson said, but Greene didn't laugh.

'Jackson…' he said, leaning forward. 'Do you understand that you've done something wrong here?'

Jackson rolled his eyes. 'Yes, doctor, I understand that I've done something wrong.'

'But do you understand why it's wrong? I don't feel like you have a very firm grasp of the meanings of life and death,' Greene said.

'You're not talking to a child, you know.'

'Does that insult you, Jackson? To be talked to like a child?'

He rolled his eyes again. 'Would it insult you if I hit you?'

'And that's why you're tied down,' Greene replied with a very fake smile, gesturing to the padded bindings on Jackson's wrists and ankles. 'Jackson, I'm going to start you on medication. I didn't feel it was needed until this point, but now, I think we'll need to go ahead and start a regimen. Melissa has told me that you've been nervous and anxious lately. Have you been?'

'Yes,' he said reluctantly.

'Then we'll get a medicine for anxiety disorder and another to help with your obsessive-compulsive tendencies. Do you sleep at night?'

'No, I work at night.'

'Then sleeping pills.'

'When will I work?'

'During the day when everyone else does,' Greene replied, beginning to fill out some pages in his prescription book. 'Are you depressed?'

'What? No!' Jackson replied. 'What are you trying to do here?'

'Antidepressants also,' Greene added, writing quickly. 'And I'd say you have antisocial personality disorder too. You never feel any consequence for your actions.'

'Is this was this is about? Making me feel consequences?'

Greene smiled. 'It's about making you feel better.'

---

From his hospital room, Jackson was able to teleconference with another manager on the Continent for his next assignment, the assassination of Galina Starovoitova, a Russian politician. For once in his life, the huge time change was helpful, and in the middle of the night when he preferred to be working, his colleague, Yuri Kolchin, liked to work in the early morning hours from his office in St Petersburg. Kolchin worked within Russian government, more specifically in the Main Intelligence Department of the General Staff, and had a very trusted assassin that he was prepared to use for the attack. The entire plan was to be set in motion on 20 November, which was by that point only about a month away.

Hurricane Mitch delayed Jackson's impending release, although he wasn't quite sure why because when it reached Miami, it had already been downgraded to a tropical storm and just caused a couple of days of bad rain, which everyone in the Miami area was accustomed to by this point. By the time Jackson was released from the care of Dr Greene, he had missed an entire term of college, but thanks to Melissa's note taking and videotapes of his courses, he didn't miss a term of work. Carrying a bag full of his newly prescribed medications, Jackson followed a burly driver to a car and got into the backseat. Almost immediately, he recognised the fact that they were going the wrong direction to go to his apartment. He perked up from his lazy posture and glared at the driver in the rear-view mirror.

'Didn't anyone give you directions?' he hissed. 'My apartment isn't near the water; it's inland.'

'Not anymore it isn't.'

'What is that supposed to mean?' Jackson asked, but he got no response.

As the skyline changed, he watched it closely, trying to figure out exactly where he was being driven. They were getting closer and closer to the ocean, and by the time they got off of the Interstate, Jackson had narrowed the final destination down to the four buildings that were situated along the oceanfront. The one they stopped in, however, was obviously incomplete, so when the driver parked under it, Jackson just gave him a dark look.

'You could have killed me back at the headquarters.'

The man laughed. 'Killed you? You're being moved to better housing. The patron really liked how you handled the Abacha assassination, so he's given you a bonus.'

Jackson thought back to the hotel room in Abuja nearly five months earlier; Lyna had mentioned a bonus in passing, but he didn't imagine upgraded housing as a bonus. The door opened and Jackson stepped out and was led to an elevator. The driver presented him with a keycard and Jackson scanned it; the driver provided the current code. It was silent as the lift slid up the shaft, and when the doors opened, Jackson looked in to the undecorated condominium to see a tall, grey-haired man. Although Jackson had never actually met him before, he'd seen his picture in all of the false information about the organisation that was released for the general public to digest.

'Monsieur Poulain,' Jackson said immediately, stepping out of the elevator car. 'Je suis enchanté.'

'I was very disappointed to hear about your problems in Abuja, but Philip assures me that you're doing much better now,' Mr Poulain said in accented English, smiling at Jackson. 'I fear we are not keeping you busy enough and that you may be becoming bored.'

That seemed reasonable. 'It's a possibility, sir.'

'Then we will give you more assignments, dear boy,' he said, coming over to pat Jackson on the side of his face. 'We have several high-profile assassinations that have come to us over the last few weeks—you know, the pre-Christmas rush. There will also be more coming in post-New Year's, I'm sure of it. Perhaps you would also be interested in taking more active roles in your assignments?'

Jackson looked the man in the eyes. 'What do you mean by "active"?'

'Well, we certainly won't have you firing any guns,' the boss said with a little laugh and Jackson frowned. 'No, we would be delighted if you'd begin overseeing in the field. It will be a lot of travel, but it will keep you occupied.'

'Of course,' Jackson replied.

'Good then,' he said, and made a move to get into the elevator before Jackson turned to look at him.

'If I'm living here, where is Melissa?' he asked, furrowing his brow.

The boss gave him a serene smile. 'Living safely with her husband and baby girl far away from here.'

'Her baby—wait!'

The doors slid closed and Jackson was left staring at the cold metal, alone. Pinching the bridge of his nose, he turned around and looked about the place, but what interested him the most was the ocean view from the wall of windows across from him. He walked across the poured concrete floor and looked out at the churning sea below. No one was out because it was nearly December, so all he looked at in the dreary weather were the waves crashing on the beach. As he looked out at the endless sea, hazed by the poor visibility of the clouds, it started to rain, the droplets pattering on the huge picture windows. He let his forehead rest on the glass for a moment but was jarred from his musings by his cell phone ringing in his suit pocket. He numbly felt for it and pressed it to his face.

'Rippner.'

'Jackson, it's Robert.'

'Robert,' he said, turning away from the window with his hand in his hair. 'Where are you?'

'We've been reassigned,' Robert replied.

Something about the finality of the statement made Jackson reconsider delving for more information on the issue. 'How's Melissa?'

'She's doing fine, already back to work.'

'She didn't even tell me she was expecting.'

There was a very long period of silence. 'They told us not to tell you.'

'Why?' Jackson asked, making his way to the kitchen of the place and opening the empty refrigerator.

'Because they already knew they were transferring us,' Melissa's husband said. 'They knew back when they asked you to come to Berlin for the summer.'

'But why have you move?'

He heard Robert shift uncomfortably before answering. 'Because Melissa's assignment was over.'