A/N: Egads, so much school work! I've barely been able to do anything with Bejerot in the last few days because I've had projects and tests! Only one more test tomorrow and then no tests until... erm... Tuesday.

Dammit.

---

Fuelled by his self-motivation and the plain wish to get away from college for a bit, Jackson was able to arrange all of his extra summer and regular semester credits to graduate a year earlier than he was originally slated to and thus found that he had much more time to plan his largest assignment yet: the bloodless coup d'état that was to take place in October. As a bonus for his early graduation, the organisation hired an interior decorator to cater to Jackson's Spartan tastes in the design of his condo. Whenever Jackson would come home at the end of the day, there would be something new, but nothing beyond his very restrictive colour palate of white, mahogany and silver.

The first part of the summer was spent finishing his pilot's license down in Miami and then Jackson moved up to Martha's Vineyard. In late July, he and Ian orchestrated the downing of John F. Kennedy, Jr's plane into the Atlantic. Almost immediately after, Ian took a train from Boston to New York City to stay in an organisation-held apartment in Midtown and Jackson had the vacation home all to himself. For the first couple of weeks, he mostly stayed around the house planning the Pakistani coup d'état until the media coverage of the death of Kennedy became so constant that he was attacked with the heady feeling that he'd caused it and the reaction to death that Lyna had planted so firmly in him took over.

Thankfully, with it being summer vacation in a high-class place like Martha's Vineyard, there were plenty of parties for the wealthy college-aged man, so he simply watched around that Friday night and mixed in with a group heading down to the beach. He was able to create an alias from the top of his head and spent the evening pouring liquor down the throat of a New York City socialite who had ironically been in the Vineyard for the Kennedy wedding. They spent the entire evening at the beach until Jackson sleekly asked her if she'd like to come back to his place.

She threw an arm over his shoulder and they staggered back to the house. She was falling-down drunk and he practically sober, so whenever something random happened like a cat running across the street, she'd crack up laughing and he'd just chuckle uncomfortably. They got back to his house and he pulled out his keys, pushing them to the handle only to have the door swing lightly open. Tensing up, he pushed it open the rest of the way and nearly dropped the woman when the lights in the stairwell flipped on and a pregnant redhead stared at Jackson from under one of the lights.

'Who is that?' asked the woman, glaring at Jackson.

'I'm Jackson's sister,' Melissa replied coldly, not taking her eyes off of Jackson.

'You said you had the place to yourself,' said the woman, her face begging for an explanation. 'And who is Jackson?'

'I thought I did,' he said to her, squeezing her side, but the woman wasn't folding, especially because he ignored the last part of her question. Without a word, she shoved clumsily away from him and left loudly, slamming the door behind her.

'Sorry to interrupt your ass-grabbing.'

'What the fuck do you want, cock-blocker?' he asked, getting right up in her face. 'Your assignment is over, go home to your family.'

'Quit being a little bitch, Jacks,' she said, not giving in to his scare tactics. 'It's all just business, you know that.'

'I trusted you.'

'And I trust you,' replied Melissa. 'Things have more than one layer. You should know that by now.'

'All of you fucking women and your emotional shit.'

'Our emotional shit?' she said loudly. 'Jesus Christ, Jackson, you'd have to pay extra to take your emotional baggage on the plane.'

'Every single one of you is a fucking backstabbing bitch. I thought that you were different, but that's apparently not the case.'

'Oh, so now that you know I was sent specifically to be your friend, we suddenly can't be friends anymore?' she hissed. 'You're impossible! How did you not know it before hand, huh? Me being in all the same classes as you, going with you everywhere, doesn't that seem like an assistant more than a best friend? For the love of God, Sharena even told you that Poulain sent me to Leelanau!'

Jackson gaped at her.

'Jacks,' she said, her voice suddenly soft as she reached out and put her hands on the sides of his face. 'Jacks, I still love you, okay? Two people who are forced together can still form a deeper bond than was seemingly meant for them.'

He was stoic for a moment before reaching up and putting his arms around her, awkwardly adjusting to her pregnant stomach. It wasn't a very meaningful hug, but it was still better than she'd expected. For a second, she thought he might be considering breaking her neck, but he let go and just stared at her with a sad little smile.

'Already pregnant aga—' he said, trailing off and scrutinising a place on her face where she'd rubbed against his hair.

The scrutinising grew more intense and he reached up to brush her cheek with one of his thumbs. She hissed a little as he pressed harder and then looked down at his makeup-covered finger. Before she could stop him, he'd pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and started rubbing the makeup from around her eye. His eyes narrowed as he looked at the bruised skin.

'Did someone do this to you?'

'We're finished here,' she said very quietly but with finality.

With tears teasing the edges of her eyes, she reached up to hold the sides of his face again before leaning in and kissing him lightly on his cheek. She slipped past him and out the front door. Even after her outline disappeared from the frosted glass in the front door, he stood, his hand on the banister, watching after her.

---

'You're not doing a very good job on your end.'

Robert was silent as he looked across the table at Matthius Poulain. The light from the man's desk reflected off of the highly shined wood and glared in Robert's eyes, but he didn't let Poulain know it was bothering him. The tall, black-haired woman to his left uncrossed and recrossed her legs to the other side as she gave him a cold look before looking past him at the stern-looking dark-haired man to Robert's right. Poulain leaned back in his desk chair and it creaked as he held a hand to his mouth and looked at Robert through thick glasses.

'Miss Melinyshyn has been keeping him busy and preoccupied,' Poulain said, tapping the fingers of his other hand on the armrest. 'Dr Greene has kept him well medicated and even held the boy long enough for you to change locations and manipulate stories. This is a very easy assignment, Robert.'

He sat up a little straighter. 'I didn't take into consideration her powers of manipulation.'

Poulain laughed. 'She's the daughter of two of our operatives. Did you not think she'd know a few tricks about escaping from kidnappers? She was taken hostage four times before the age of twelve and escaped every time.'

Robert gritted his teeth together. 'I thought that in her condition, she would not be able to pull her normal tricks.'

'You do not use the same technique twice on the same victim,' hissed Lyna, snapping her hand up in the air to emphasise her point. 'If you do that, they adapt. Do not get her pregnant again, break her kneecaps!'

Poulain put a hand up to silence her. 'What went wrong?'

'I took her with me on assignment in Boston because I thought it would be better to have her close to me rather than leaving her with someone else,' Robert replied. 'I locked her in the room, but I didn't take too many precautions because she'd never tried to escape before.'

'You should have assigned someone more seasoned to this project,' Lyna said harshly, leaning forward to glare at Poulain. He gave her a cold look in return and she immediately began moping, crossing her arms across her chest.

'She was gone when I came back a half-hour later. I asked at the front desk and they said she hadn't been through the lobby,' Robert said hastily. 'But when I called the New York City office to see what operatives were in the region, they said that Jackson was one of the ones within a hundred mile radius. They gave me his location and I drove down to Martha's Vineyard, but by the time I found her, she'd already spoken with him.'

'What did she tell him?' Greene asked, leaning forward.

'She says that all she did was forgive him for disappearing and that he has no idea of what's going on.'

'We can't risk this happening again,' Poulain replied with a dangerous tone. 'We've put a lot of time and money into the boy; he's a true asset of the organisation. If he falls in love with some girl, he'll have a weakness. He cannot have any palpable weakness that can be used against him.'

'What do we do, sir?' asked Robert in a slightly shaky voice.

'We all have our tasks. Lyna keeps him sexually occupied, Phil keeps him mentally occupied, I keep him fiscally sound,' said Poulain, pulling the chair up to his desk and fishing through a drawer. 'He's a very bright boy, you know. All the pieces are there, but they're not interacting correctly in his head, and that's what makes him indispensable. We could have absorbed any normal, bright child of his generation, but we chose him because he has difficulty differentiating between right and wrong, light and dark, and so on. He's the perfect alexithymic—very rare.'

Robert tensed as Poulain stopped looking through the drawer.

'People like you are a dime a dozen,' said the old man, giving him a very cold look. 'Jackson has a good amount of leeway with me because of his potential. No one will touch him, no one will hurt him. He's like a son to me, but you don't have that same position. You've given him a little twinkle of hope that just drags him down.'

Lifting his hand, Poulain levelled his handgun to the centre of Robert's forehead and immediately shot. The man slumped backwards as the old man calmly dropped the gun back into his desk and pressed a button to call his secretary. A moment later, two men dressed in black came in and took the body from between Lyna and Greene, but neither of them watched, both rather intently looking at Poulain.

'Greene, you will go back to Miami immediately. I want you to be ready for Jackson's next appointment. Encourage him to speak rather than leading him on,' said Poulain, and Greene stood and followed the men out. 'Lyna, my dear, I want you to go to Kazakhstan. Jackson is orchestrating the coup in Pakistan and should be in Kyrgyzstan within the next couple of days. Once you get news of the coup, call him. I want you to rid his mind of anything regarding Melissa Bayley.'

'But who will take case of Melissa, monsieur?'

'I'll be handling her personally.'

Lyna nodded and then followed the trail of blood to the door. With one last look back at Poulain, she left, closing the door behind her with a click.

---

'I've just seen the news,' purred Lyna's voice over the satellite connection. 'An impressive coup d'état.'

'Honestly, I didn't think you'd like it much,' Jackson said back, running his finger along the edge of his wine glass. 'Not a single person was killed.'

'It takes more planning to spill no blood.'

'Indeed it does, and it adds to the legitimacy of the new regime,' he said, then paused. 'You don't actually care about this, do you?'

'Not particularly, no.'

He let out a heavy sigh, secretly longing for someone who would just listen to him go on about the logistics of planning the coup, but deciding to settle for the more carnal desires. 'Where are you?'

There was a smile in her voice. 'Almaty, Kazakhstan.'

'Biskek, Kyrgyzstan.'

'Ysyk-Köl, two hours,' she said softly into the phone before hanging up.

After running his hand through his hair, Jackson took a long drag at his cigarette before dropping some paper Som onto the table and leaving the cafe.

---

It was dark in the doctor's office, just the way Jackson preferred. He was reclined on a chaise lounge on one side of the room directly across from the curtains feeling quite trite as Dr Greene looked at him in the dim light of the desk lamp. They'd been in there for almost two hours and nothing much but greetings had been exchanged between the two. Something told Jackson that Greene wasn't holding on to his professionalism because of the notes that already covered the first page of his notebook, but to be honest, he wasn't quite sure what the rules were governing the exchange of mental health information within the organisation itself. The occupation thrived on half-truths and deception, so the psychiatrists hired by the society most likely relied on first-hand accounts from partners and overseers to keep up with their patients—it was harder to hide something from people you dealt with daily than it was to hide something from a once-monthly therapist.

Jackson made a mental note at that point to stop talking to his secretary unless it was absolutely needed.

'Are you just going to waste our time, doctor?' Jackson finally asked, breaking the deafening silence.

'I want you to talk this time,' Greene replied. 'What do you want to talk about?'

'Are you married?'

Greene seemed slightly taken aback, but answered quickly. 'Recently divorced.'

'What was her name?'

'Not that it matters, but Lizzy.'

'Lizzy,' Jackson repeated, looking up at the ceiling. 'Civilian?'

'No, she works in the organisation,' Greene said. 'Why do you ask?'

Jackson crossed his ankles and put his hands on his abdomen. 'Every single woman that I've come across in this organisation has been the most deceitful, lying being to cross this earth.'

'Lizzy is no different. That deceit makes them very manipulative. It comes with the nature of our business.'

The twenty-three-year-old looked over at his doctor with a raised eyebrow. 'You're really not helping.'

Silence fell over the room once more and Jackson shifted to look at a painting on the wall rather than looking at Greene's face. Greene scratched down a few notes, though he wasn't sure what Jackson was getting at, and then looked back at his patient.

'Do you want to leave, Jackson?'

'Not really,' replied the younger man.

'If this continues to bother you, we may need to try different medications to help temper your emotions and help you focus on your work.'

'I focus on my work.'

'Yes, but you could focus better without the added burden of seeking a mate.'

Greene jumped a bit when Jackson laughed loudly, holding his stomach. 'Seeking a mate? What the hell is this, Phil?'

There was a sudden, fleeting feeling of discomfort as the first named informality entered their conversation. Dr Greene cleared his throat. 'It is a natural urge at this time of your life to seek out a means to continue your genes onto the next generation.'

'If it's any solace to you, I have no intention of ever participating in the creation of more Rippners,' Jackson replied, giving a half-serious look to the doctor. 'I think there are plenty already and would be more than glad to end the line right here.'

'All right,' Greene replied, seemingly admitting defeat. 'How have your medications been working out?'

'I'm not finished,' Jackson said, raising his eyebrows and looking over at the man. 'Why did you marry Lizzy?'

'Jackson, I fail to see how this applies to your case.'

'Humour me.'

Greene sighed loudly. 'We were recruited from the same medical school at the same time. We worked in the same general area and saw a lot of each other, so we just decided to get married. It was more a marriage of convenience than anything else.'

'Do you think that two people who are forced together by outside forces can come to have a deeper relationship than was meant for them?'

'You mean do I believe in fate,' Greene said, pointing at Jackson with the end of the pen in his hands.

'If I wanted to ask you about fate, I would have mentioned it specifically,' Jackson said with an edge of anger in his voice.

'There will never be anything more meaningful than carnal relations between you and Vasylyna Melinyshyn.'

'Good, because if I had to live with her, I'd probably have to kill her.'

'For the love of God, Jackson, what the hell are you wanting to ask me? You're just dancing around whatever the hell it is you're having a problem with. Just say what's bothering you and we can take care of it!'

There was a long period of silence during which Jackson didn't look at Greene, and then he stood up. 'I'm ready to leave now.'

The aggravated doctor watched as Jackson left the room, closing the door softly behind him. It wasn't until Jackson left that Dr Greene realised he'd given the exact reaction that the manipulative younger man was aiming for.