A/N: I know it was an awful long wait but here's the final chapter. I hope it's not so far from the quality of the previous chapters, it wasn't an easy one. Sorry if I disappointed anyone. There's a pretty personal part toward the end, I hope it didn't turn out unbearably emotional.

And now that it's over, I would like to thank it first of all to my amazing beta, Evelyn Benton: the last chapters would've been disastrous without you! Thanks for your support and constructive, honest comments!

Also thanks to my biggest fan, Iseebutterfly: I'm sure you like/know this story more than I do:D

And thanks to all my readers who followed this story to the end. Your comments, even your story alerts mean a lot to me! Kudos.

Chapter 16: A tiger's stripes

Fragments of peaceful moments, colorful mosaics on a dull, grey day. Moments they shared, ordinary, banal moments. Waking together. Preparing for the day. Bustling in the kitchen. Always touching. Always watching the other. Lisa collected them, filed and put them away for their beauty, because they were precious, these pearls of everyday life with him – they rolled away in million directions and gleamed in her chest, ebony-clean, gem-exquisite. A garland of picture-perfect harmony. She sorted out the rough ones with great care and locked them up, the obscure and nicked ones, uncomfortably uneven ones, those intermissions with far too many far too awkward questions, because she wanted to cope with them only later. She needed a little lie, innocent self-deception, just this once.

Jackson settled in with natural ease. He didn't bring much, just a leather bag that he kept in her bedroom upstairs. An item that should have appeared so out-of-place, but somehow Lisa found no trouble in considering it the part of her apartment.

Her best sleep in the past months, even years, had always been by his side, so Lisa wasn't surprised that she woke up well after ten o'clock next morning. They had fallen asleep on the couch the night before, Lisa still in her work clothes, entangled with Jackson in a comfortable, leisurely intimate embrace. She thought back at times, nights and mornings in strange motel rooms and different cities, his other hugs, the touches they'd stolen from the other and concealed as something without significance. Their history of physical awareness. Was this any different now, something meaningful? She couldn't help wondering, and the mere possibility frightened and excited her at the same time, and she had to order her body to stay in place and not escape at first instinct. She definitely wasn't ready for anything more physical with him. The idea that he might expect something more from her at this point worried her.

But he knew her, her past, had to understand. If nothing, the thought that she could be honest to him about it was enough comfort.

Jackson had his fingers weaved through her locks. It felt almost natural now. She closed her eyes and relaxed. His presence wrapped around her whole being like a blanket, the rhythmical rise and fall of his chest beneath her head numbed her mind.

"You know, this was the first night you didn't try to knock me out with a right hook. Does this mean we reached a new level in our relationship?" he whispered, a hint of tease lacing his voice, but underneath Lisa could detect something else; something soft, almost dreamy.

She chuckled into the folds of his shirt, and raised her head, wishing to see the softness, the same sparkle of humor lighting his eyes that brightened the tone of his voice. He was watching her lazily, his eyes two pale slits under the ginger lashes.

The fact that he called whatever they were having our relationship lit up in her and smoldered like a beacon, drawing her close to its warmth. She stored it cautiously for further relish, and didn't comment on it, fearing his reply would crush this newest treasure in her. She wasn't even sure he was conscious of what he'd just said; he could easily react in an unpleasant way – Lisa knew him that much, knew his unpredictability.

Her words came slurring through the lingering haze of sleep as she remarked. "I've always been nice to guests, in case you've forgotten?"

His chest rumbled softly as he spoke, resonated through her whole being. "You usually sleep with them on the same couch?"

"Every single day." Lisa snaked her arms under his back, and squeezed him playfully. "So don't think you're special."

He smiled. "Nah, it'd be against my humble personality."

Despite that the heat was on, the apartment felt cold when Lisa left the confines of the couch. She briefly wondered if it had to do anything with the more and more natural sensation of physical contact with him. And also, if she'd grown dependent of it. It worried her a bit.

Not feeling prepared to face Keefe just yet, Lisa called in sick. It wasn't her first lie to him, but she had the feeling that now that Jackson was "alive" again, it wouldn't be the last time either. She got the rest of the week off – it was Keefe's Christmas present; the holidays were already in the weekend.

She watched Jackson from her place on the edge of the bathtub, and smiled around the toothbrush in her mouth. Jackson smirked at her around his, pacing up and down leisurely, and Lisa was afraid her heart would swell and burst open, because the feeling, the whole mundane scene with the underlying fact that a man, this man could be the part of her life, and that he might stay for another teeth-brushing, coffee-drinking morning, and another, made her stomach construct with a mixture of indefinable emotions from dread to pleasure. Jackson squinted at her, leant in and gave her a white-foamed, mint-flavored quick kiss. She chuckled, and wanted so much just to pull him in a hug and stand there forever.

He put on the coffee while she took a shower and changed. The kitchen was almost empty, the cupboards, drawers, the counter top. A box of teabags and a pack of coffee were all he could find. He wondered if the only thing she lived on these days was caffeine.

She arrived on cue, as if the smell of coffee lured her from upstairs, her steps light, dancing. It made him smile that she didn't choose to wear sweatpants like he knew she usually would. He stared, eyes glazing, as he committed into memory the airborne flow of her skirt around her knees as she descended the stairs. He had many of these image fragments of her stored in his mind. They kept him awake at nights as he flipped through them, relishing each, one by one, like watching a magic lantern posture images on the walls of his consciousness. It was his personal mental diorama he used as entertainment.

Lisa had to dig out her kitchen supplies from the bottom of the cardboard boxes to prepare something to eat. Pans, plates, cutlery. Jackson was wondering if she ever planned to unbox her stuff, or felt she'd have to be ready to run away any minute. If she actually wanted to do so. She was stuck in transit, on this in-between land, not on the road anymore but not yet completely arrived to a safe haven, and he knew he had a big part in it. In her homelessness. In his homelessness, too.

There were only two mugs in her cupboard. Jackson assumed the chipped LisAtlantic was for her personal use, so he pulled out the Starbucks Washington mug, clearly a new addition to her collection. He smirked. Oh, his Starbucks-girl. Caffé latte-girl. No sugar, no shitty syrup or crème, just the classical, traditional version. He was sure she still went for that. He'd seen her do that many times back in Miami. Every single Wednesday. She needed this little incentive in the middle of those long weeks at the Lux to make her go on.

He'd also heard her giving the same fake name, average, forgettable name (had she consciously chosen the No.1 popular one in the US?) to the guys behind the counter; a little too embarrassed in the end, when they started to recognize her and scribbled her supposed name on her paper cup. It was typical of her, being always impossibly cautious and reserved.

He lifted the mug. "They still call you Mary here in Washington, too?"

Lisa looked at him, a bit awkwardly but not because she had to face again how much he knew about her: the way he usually mentioned it, like it was natural and normal that he'd obtained all these details by following her, always managed to throw her off a bit. And the fact that he'd known her for longer than she'd known him. She wasn't sure she could ever get used to it – the idea made her head spin a bit because it suggested she assumed they had a future together. You're crazy. And she really thought she was in a way. It wouldn't work. Shouldn't work.

But when she replied, there was a smile around her lips, a bit proud, a bit secretive smile. "No. It's Lisa."

She didn't see his expression, she was too caught up in hiding hers. Plain things, simple accomplishments left him much more in awe than world-shaking gestures and big words.

When she put the pan on the stove, Lisa caught the little evil glint in his eyes, and stole the question from his lips. "No, not scrambled eggs. I had enough of them for a lifetime."

This time she looked at him because it was just as much his moment as hers, and she wanted him to understand it. All those occasions, his untamed, lecturing words, the concave mirror he held in her face to show her what she'd been doing to herself was much worse, a greater tragedy than anything that had happened to her resulted in her wishing to change it. Ever since then, Lisa couldn't study her life in any other way than through that distorted image in his mirror, and she didn't like it, the magnified barriers she'd built around herself. The things outside the barriers she'd relinquished. It's not that it was the first time she grew conscious of their existence; it was the first time they annoyed her with lying in her way. It was a long road ahead, but at least it was a leap, and Lisa wanted him to see her flight.

Jackson was pretty sure he had something almost solemn in his gaze as he studied her, the determined lines of her shoulders, the unwavering realization he'd fought so hard to put in her eyes, to make her see, to make her understand. He wanted to think it was a bit his doing. Something unselfish, pure. In his outright honesty, he realized it might be the closest he'd ever get to redemption. And that made him question what exactly he was doing there, in the middle of her kitchen, standing there in socks, in coffee-steam and radio chart-leisure; if actually what he wanted, creepy or sick or absolute clichéd, was this purity. Her purity. To steal some of it, to bath in it and make himself believe he could still be ransomed.

And most importantly, if this was the only reason why he pursued this – pursued something utterly illogical and false. Something destined to not work. If it wasn't, all in all, selfishness again to save himself. Or selfishness to satisfy something he wasn't even conscious of, driven by something he felt for her. He cringed at the thought, at what it implied, the chains, the exchange of trust, the undesired questions of social life that always waited for answers.

He wasn't really able to figure out why he suddenly felt he had to be saved, to begin with. It had never been part of his thoughts, his ego that was absolutely convinced there was nothing to change about his life. At least, up till that fateful summer. He wasn't comfortable with any of this.

And still, he stayed.

And still, she let him stay.

For a short time, for that day, they lived a secluded life, shut away from the real world like plastic figures in a snow globe. It was a mayfly day. Destined to be born, live and die in the course of a few hours.

: :

Neither of them showed inclination to leave the confines of the apartment and go to a restaurant, so they ate frozen dinners Lisa dug out of her fridge. It was turning dark when they finished. The snow outside was littering the streets with white papier-mâché cutlets.

The old phrase, however cliché, was true: every good thing comes to an end eventually.

Jackson could have bet it would come much sooner. It had been gathering and gathering behind her furtive glances, in the pause between two conversations, in the hesitation of movements when she thought he wasn't watching. Questions striving to be answered, guesses she couldn't suppress. He could see them unfold, one after the other. He was even amazed she could hold it back for so long. After all, Lisa was Lisa, with her endless questions and never shrinking curiosity.

It was their elephant in the room.

Lisa placed the last clean plate on the rack beside the sink, wiped her hands in the kitchen clothes, and said: "You know that eventually we have to talk about it."

When Jackson didn't answer, she turned toward him. Her gaze was soft but firm on his face, with that no nonsense touch to it he recognized from the times he'd tried to make her accept his bullshit replies and she'd always lash out, prompting an answer from him that he'd never planned to give. This was how they operated together.

"Tell me how you escaped."

He had the empty, diplomatic smile on his lips that she hated so much. Just as much as he hated her customer service-smile. Jackson leant against the kitchen counter, crossed his arms before his chest, and claimed:

"I'm not sure I want to talk about business with you right now, Leese."

"Why is it business? It's a simple question." Her stance mimicked his. She tilted her head and gave him the same piercing glance he used to. "Is there anything you can talk about with me? Because usually it doesn't seem so."

You built it for yourself, he told himself bitterly. He always preferred truth above half-truth and white lies, but his words felt heavy on his tongue now. Walking along a road he'd strived and planned so much to pave had never seemed so unpleasant. To her accusation, he announced evenly, fully aware that he was going to shatter the delicate house of cards they'd constructed. "I ordered them to kidnap you."

Her arms dropped. He didn't know but her heart did, too.

"What?" she whispered. "Why?"

The silence could have been challenging any other time, but Lisa sensed it was rather uncertain. His eyes flicked from her face to the scenery beyond the window, and back at her. He didn't really wish to witness it, the return of distrust and disappointment in her eyes at his words. So he didn't say anything. She was smart, though, she knew him that much, and said them for him.

"Tell me, Jackson. Did it go wrong in the end or it was just a sham? Was everything in the warehouse nothing more than just a preplanned show from beginning to end? Which one?"

"I think you already know the answer," Jackson said quietly. He couldn't be sure what was coming, the rate it was going to affect her, the magnitude of its destruction, but he already understood that the worst thing he could do to her was coming here. And not only to her, to himself, too. He should have simply stayed dead.

Brusquely, Lisa demanded. "Why?"

"So you would think I was dead. You would, everyone would."

Lisa turned away and stared out the kitchen window at the mess of whirling, dancing snowflakes on the other side of the glass. Inward, at the mess in her mind. She felt betrayed. The agony of that day at the warehouse, and those afterwards came back with full force. She'd cried her heart out for nothing. Momentarily, she was completely stupefied. She heard him stir behind her, his feet shuffle against the tile as he changed stance, but he didn't approach her, and suddenly she doubted he would ever understand how much his words hurt her. For him, it was just another plot, but for her, it was another occasion when life spat in her face.

"It was Plan B. I had it because I didn't trust the FBI, and I was right. When Carter got arrested, even though we'd agreed I would go under witness protection, they wanted to take me in. The official explanation was that I'd be in custody till the investigation was over and they were sure Carter was the right guy." He snorted. "They took me for an idiot. Such investigation would never be over, there would always be something they come up with just to keep me there. Besides, to be honest, I didn't have the intention to enter their stupid program and have the FBI sniffing around me all the time. So I ordered your kidnapping. This way I had a reason to get away, stating that I was the only one who could rescue you."

Jackson shifted his weight to his other leg. It unnerved him that Lisa was showing her back to him as she propped herself up against the kitchen sink. The streetlights lit up her hair, tuning up the red of her tresses, making her look like a moor pixie with her head on fire. He knew that inside she was already ablaze. Her voice, though, was low and measured, and he frowned at her with sudden unease as she spoke.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"No offence, Leese, but we know you're not the best actress. I needed you and the FBI to think I died."

A moment of silence ensued. Silence of disbelief, of bitterness. Almost as if talking to herself, Lisa asked quietly, with a barely perceptible hissing edge to her words. "Do you have any idea what I had to go through?"

"I specifically told them not to harm you."

She whirled around and glared at him. A short laughter escaped her lips, snapping sharply like the crack of a whip. The empty walls echoed it coldly. Her eyes flared up as blood rushed in her face. Jackson watched her with the curiosity of an alien.

"I'm not talking about that, you insensitive jerk!" she retorted. Her hand flew to her hair, raking it with barely suppressed frustration. She seemed to be restraining herself from an ugly lash-out, from revealing too much. "On the way to the airport, our last call, through the flight, the following days. Weeks. And then, just a few days ago when you were officially declared dead. You have no idea, Jackson."

Suddenly, Lisa wouldn't be able to tell who she was angrier with: herself or him. She shouldn't have been so surprised that he didn't manage to see beyond the direct, physical consequences of his acts. He was contradictory again; times when he could dissect her along the line of a foible, but other times, times like this, when there was nothing but a row of emotions to assort, he was blind.

Jackson studied her with mild puzzlement. There was so much poorly concealed pain in her voice that he stirred awkwardly again, though the feeling flooding his guts was burning hot and set his chest on fire, and he was selfish enough to relish in it: she'd been mourning him, he knew it for sure now.

"Lisa," face softening, he stepped closer to her, and though her whole posture, the crossed arms and furrowed brows shouted about her rage, he snaked his fingers in her hair, bent down and planted an affectionate kiss on her forehead. "I'm sorry. I had no idea."

Sulkily, she mumbled. "Of course you didn't. You have no heart."

Lisa slipped out of his arms, feeling her temper waver at his gentleness. For some reason, because it felt fair at that point, she held onto her anger, if nothing else, than out of tribute to the past misery she reckoned she had the right to. Suddenly, she remembered the sweater that she still kept under her bed, the sweater with his blood embroidered into its fibers. She'd cherished it like it was a relic. It felt ridiculously stupid now. How could she be such a moron to think he sacrificed his life for her?

"Were you really shot? Or was that fake blood?"

"No, actually, that asshole really shot me. I think he decided I deserved it."

Lisa perked an eyebrow. She couldn't help but feel a malevolent contentment spread within her but it was immediately tampered down as she recalled that moment in the warehouse, the fear, the shock, his palpable pain. Those were real and raw. Even its memory was too powerful.

"To be honest, at that point I seriously thought they had changed their minds and wanted to kill me."

Lisa frowned, and Jackson knew she would put two and two together without his further help. She was smart, only- ludicrously- unwilling to presume he could possibly go that far.

"Why were they willing to help you in the first place? You cooperated with Keefe on some level. Doesn't it qualify as betrayal in their eyes? That you are not trustworthy?"

"Not entirely." He hesitated. "Keefe got his man, true. But maybe not the right man."

Lisa was struck with shock. For a moment, she appeared to be completely speechless. He could literally see the whole picture fall apart and be put together again in her head to form something gruesome, something that disappointed her. Suddenly he hated that picture, though it was the truth. Though it was his doing.

Her voice was low and barely above a stunned whisper. It was an inner battle: wanting to ask and not to ask. "You say Carter is not the customer?"

"No. He's just a scapegoat."

"Oh my God…" Her hand flew to her mouth as she breathed, looking at him with the full knowledge of what he'd done.

"Don't worry, Leese, it won't be too difficult to dig up dirt on him. He has enough shit on his hands to deserve a little investigation. And sooner or later they will find out he had nothing to do with the Keefe case. But by then, they cannot retaliate against me since I'm dead."

The yellow highlight over her skin shifted to the patch of her neck above the shirt as her whole body jerked.

"How well planned," she drawled with sarcasm dripping from her words. Her eyes closed, and she half-hid behind her hands. Just stop talking, please, stop talking. With every word uttered, he was spiraling away from her, and in the chaos, Lisa couldn't tell if it was for the better or worse, but it hurt nonetheless.

"You have to know I'd achieved a respectably high rank at the company by the time we met. I had a good chance to be promoted when Henry would retire." Even to his own ears, his words seemed to pick up an apologetic tone he didn't really intend to use.

"Oh, believe me, I understand. You're playing with people's lives like they were billiard balls you can toss around anytime. Like they had no value, except for the profit you make out of them. If they can serve you, that's fine. If there's no use of them for you, then they're worthless."

"The thing is, this is how most people think."

"People like you."

"People in high positions. Legit positions. Politicians, businessmen. Those who rule this world."

She rolled her eyes. He rolled his. She picked up the role of the naïve girl again, probably because this is how she wanted to believe in the world around her, probably to annoy him. He shook his head.

"Anyhow, you cannot really think we'd betray a client. Our reputation would be shot to hell if the rumor says we handed over a customer in exchange of an agent of ours. Who'd feel safe enough and hire us if we were willing to rat them out anytime? The clients, their namelessness are our first priority."

"I feel sick."

"It's pure business," Jackson stated coldly. "This is how things work everywhere. We please customers. Isn't this what you were doing at the hotel?"

Lisa didn't even feel inclined to answer his challenge. Her stomach turned upside down from the way he used first person plural when he talked about the company. He was still the part of it, the very man she'd fought on the Red Eye and back at her father's house. She dipped her head back and rested it against the over-the-counter cupboard. From behind half-opened lids, through the distance his ice-cold, stone-hard practicality put between them, she blurted. "There was a body. A horribly disfigured dead man under a ton of hardened concrete. Who's he?"

Her heart skipped a beat because he apparently found difficulty in meeting her gaze.

"I don't know."

"You don't know. In your dictionary it means you don't care. That it doesn't matter." She slipped down along the counter into a crouching position on the floor. Her chest felt too tight. If she could, she would have cried right now, however pathetic it was. "He died just because you needed a dead body to make everyone think it was you? This is the case, Jackson?"

"I won't deny it," he stated flatly. He had never been that comfortable with the idea to mutilate someone just to conceal the physical differences between them – the other differences were taken care of: he'd changed his own hospital records, results of blood tests, fingerprints, even in the FBI database. In hindsight, he was grateful for his shot leg so he'd had a good excuse to stay clear when the execution happened. Out loud, he said: "He was a dead man anyway. There was an order out there for him. Two birds with one stone."

"You make me sick when you're like this." Lisa glared at him incredulously as he was standing there, in the middle of her kitchen, talking about people and their lives like they were model soldiers on a sand table. She fancied herself as one of them, and it hurt. I don't want to know this man, she thought desperately, but it sounded like a lie; or a half-serious wish. "Am I in danger from your precious company?"

"I already told you. No, you're safe."

"Mrs. Higgins next door said she'd seen some suspicious men lurking around my door…"

"Yeah, she met me yesterday. Last week, it was Luca. You remember him?"

She did. The Italian henchman with the face of the dictionary definition of a criminal, as Mrs. Higgins described the stranger. They met back in Illinois in the house of Jackson's friend, Michele ages ago.

"You had him following me?" she asked accusatorily, suppressing a shiver that she, just like last time, hadn't realized someone was monitoring her.

"No, not really." He cleared his throat, before adding: "I just wanted to get your new address. Wanted to know if you were okay."

"And? Am I?" she jeered bitingly.

After a short pause, after scrutinizing her with a soft yet sharp glance, Jackson gave a small shake with his head. "I wouldn't be here if you were."

Lisa had nothing to say to this. Whatever way he got his information from Luca about her, it was enough for him to know, to sense, even from hundreds of miles, how she felt. It should have scared her, but it didn't.

"So what are you gonna do now?"

His jaws flexed. In the ensuing silence, Jackson was debating with himself. There were several ways to go: the easy, the hard, the true and the dishonest. Flatly, curtly, he replied: "I guess what I'm the best at doing."

Lisa pressed her lips together so vehemently that her teeth screeched. She sensed he was going to keep things from her again, and she blatantly remarked, with the clear intention to hurt: "Like closed casket funerals?"

All he offered was a humorless laughter.

With an emotionless, official tone, she asked him point-blank. "Why are you here after all, Jackson?"

"According to the plan, I should have disappeared and laid low for a while."

As expected, he didn't give a straight answer. Lisa glared at him. "And?"

After a moment of awkward silence, he inquired. "What do you think?"

Just as coolly, Lisa stated, "I have no idea so you have to tell me."

Jackson soundly exhaled. She was matching him in stubbornness, all right. "You can't deny we got closer to each other during that month. Dammit, Lisa. You know very well that I want you."

The back of her head connected with the wooden cupboard as Lisa leant against it with an exasperated sigh. It was probably a confession she'd been waiting for, but it came now in the most unromantic moment possible, and she would have laughed bitterly if the whole inside out scene didn't suffocate her so much. It was incredible how her life was constructed from grotesque pieces of absurdities.

"And you well know how I hate what you do," she bit out. "Likewise you know that my boss is the man you just admitted you'd fooled. Really, Jackson, what do expect from me? To fall in your arms and be pliant?"

He smirked. "Sounds like a good enough plan to me."

Her hands landed on the tile with a loud snap as she leant forward angrily, and cursed. How could he not see what his acts evoked in her? That she couldn't take it lightly?

"You asshole. How could I look him in the eye knowing that you're alive and that he arrested the wrong man? You think I'd wake up in the morning, assist him, then come back into your bed? That's ridiculous. That's insane." Her back gave a hollow bang as she reclined against the counter with a furious huff. "I can't believe you did it again. You ruined my life, my job just like before."

"This is just a job, Lisa, don't be a drama queen," he chided her calmly, with a hint of cynical incredulity.

"Oh, really?" Lisa sneered. "If it's just a job, why don't you give up yours?"

"Recently, I have the same plan on my mind."

"Oh, of course."

Jackson sighed. The conversation was going in a very wrong direction. He sat down on the floor, opposite her, fighting back his temper. He pulled up his knees, and above his entwined fingers, gazed over at her. There was a small smile in the corner of his lips, a gentle yet mocking smirk that was way too alluring on his face for Lisa's liking at the moment. His voice rumbled softly as he spoke.

"Your surprise is intriguing. Quite ironic, if you think about it. Tell me something, Lisa. I fooled you or you fooled yourself?"

She locked her gaze with his. He was right again. He'd always been the same man, and she should have been aware of that. It wasn't his fault that along the line, it had become only secondary behind her feelings for him. She placed her chin on her forearms and scrutinized him with the blinking, reviving affection circulating in her veins. She didn't want it to lead her now, lead her somewhere she, later, might regret.

But he was still the same man. The same she'd fallen in love with.

The same who killed for money.

She'd thought she reconciled with this fact, but it wasn't that easy. Lisa knew, even if she could accept it, accept him the way he was, it'd always bother her. A splinter in her fingertip that would slowly fester.

She watched him against the background of the bluish rectangle the window projected on the wall, watched the heavy shadows settled in the creases and hollows of his face. The animated, vigilant genius in his eyes as the streetlights touched them sharply.

"So you won't be called Jackson Rippner anymore? It must be a strange feeling," she remarked drily, feeling a pang of sorry that his fake death could have meant a clean slate, new name, new identity. It should have come with a new life. It was a shame he didn't see it.

"It's just a name. I've used many aliases over the past years. It only adds another one to the list."

"But still. You don't feel a pang of… loss? Isn't this how you refer to yourself in your head?"

"I don't refer to myself in any way. That'd be mental," he smirked, amused. She was the emotional woman again, the one who could be sentimental about a chopped mug just because it reminded her of a fond memory.

With the same clinical tone he usually used, Lisa stated. "Thing is, you are mental, Jackson… And don't play with me now, you know how I meant it. If you were woken up in the night and asked about your name, what would that be?"

"A raid?" he quipped. Seeing her frown, Jackson shrugged. "Depends on the job I'm working on at the moment."

"Ah, you are horrible!"

Lisa shook her head. It was just typical, always the professional, always the non-human about every other aspect of his own life. No attachments. Even if his own name was in question.

Jackson looked at her with the ghost of an amused smile, and remarked. "Lisa, Jackson Rippner is an alias."

The silence surprised him; it was full of accusation and disappointment.

Her eyes wide under a deep frown, aghast, Lisa whispered. "It's not your real name?"

He had the nerve to chuckle. "It was specifically created for the Keefe job."

Through the sharp stab of hurt she didn't even try to analyze, Lisa snapped. "You're seriously fucked up in the head for coming up with a name like that."

"No more than you for not realizing it was fake."

Lisa rubbed her forehead. It felt like she didn't know this man before her, didn't know anything about him, and suddenly she realized it was more or less the case. She didn't even know his name. It'd been a long time she felt so vulnerable, so ridiculously an open book in front of someone, and through the hurt she felt at the moment, she realized, the last who looked through her defenses like that, from behind his own, was actually him.

He sensed her mood change but obviously didn't understand it, as his tone was soft but with a hint of impatience. "It's just a name. Why does it matter? It's still me."

"What's your real name then?"

Jackson didn't reply, only his brows lifted.

"Doesn't it disturb you?" Lisa exclaimed exasperatedly. "That I call you a name that's not yours?"

"It is mine, Lisa. Just like the dozen others."

"But it's fake!"

Jackson was watching her intently, with the expression and understanding of a marble head sculpt, stone-like, unmoved. "Actually, I am Jackson."

"But you said…" she mumbled, suddenly feeling deadly tired in the focus of his maze-like riddles. "You kept your first name? Why?"

"Remember your father's wallet? Joe Reisert, JR. I already had the J covered, so why changing it? And-" he stopped abruptly, a bit uncharacteristically lamely.

"And?" Lisa persuaded. He offered her an almost shy smile.

"I wanted you to call me on my real name. The one I refer to myself in my head," he added with a crooked smirk. "I had this idiotic impression that it was almost as if we were on friendly terms."

His face was soft, the edges of his mouth smooth. For a moment, she could see through his defenses, but she knew he and his masks were like a Matryoshka doll: when she removed the outer one, she had to find out there was yet another behind it, and so on again. Lisa knew the whole thing was just plain wrong and degenerate, but she couldn't help liking it. In his twisted way, it was as good as a love confession, a bit sick and very much abnormal, and she felt her heart respond to it.

"Whatever your new name would be, may I call you Jackson?"

He laughed softly. "Whatever you wanna call me. I might just keep the first name again. What d'you say?"

She laughed, too. It was so absurd, and yet, so normal in his, in their world.

Jackson squinted at her snidely. "I'll stay with Thornton."

Lisa snorted, thinking back at his alias back in Miami, before all this had started. Cowboys, movies and John Wayne in a moon-grey Bentley speeding down on the Florida motorways. It felt like a century ago now. "Cole Thornton, the law-abiding citizen? How fitting."

The tension seemed to ease a little between them. Silence reigned the kitchen. It was increasingly hard to see clearly in the meager light. The sun set early, and the streetlamps couldn't properly illuminate her forth story apartment.

Lisa was lazily watching the light play with the color of his eyes. Ever-changing color. She was musing; glacier blue, cerulean, summer sky blue, flower petal blue, electric, laser sharp blue. She smiled at herself. As if by finding a proper name for that color, that particular tone, a name that would do him justice, she had a notion it would grant her the chance to unravel his gaze, and with that, unravel Jackson himself. You name it, you tame it.

If it were so easy! It was nothing but a desperate wish to get closer to him. Most probably, it was just as versatile as Jackson was, and she had to find a name for each emotion-induced color. The ninety-nine names of God. And she would never know what the hundredth was.

"How old are you?" she asked suddenly. Something so small, so basic, and she didn't even know the answer.

Jackson laughed. "What do you think?"

Lisa frowned, suddenly losing patience. Was he really skirting the topic again? "Right now? A six-year old?"

"Why is it important?"

"Why is it a secret? Are you older than me at all?"

"Of course, I am," he smirked.

"When is your birthday?"

"Lisa," he groaned. "What's this interrogation for?"

"Interrogation?" she snapped with an incredulous laugh. "Asking when you were born counts as interrogation? You have something seriously wrong with your head."

"I really can't see why it's important. You wanna buy me a pair of socks? Or a shirt with a matching tie?"

Lisa glared at him. His sarcasm was so thick, she turned away as if he had physically hit her. A dark feeling sank in her heart, and it whispered to her that she wanted something that didn't exist.

Jackson, sensing he had hurt her, sighed tensely. "May 25th. And I'm two years older than you. Two and a half, to be precise. Happy now?"

Lisa glanced at him for long, observing his face, assessing the emotions that formed the expression he was wearing.

"No, because you obviously don't understand."

She sounded so sad that the comment, that would normally trigger a snide or angry retort from him, left the words stuck halfway in his throat.

"For some reason you seem to think I'm asking you all these questions with some twisted purpose. I'm not spying on you, Jackson, I'm not collecting information that could be used against you later. It's a normal thing, that's what… people do."

She almost said it: couples. Almost. They were a far cry from that. They wouldn't ever be, she realized with a bursting heart. Not this way.

For once, he was quiet now. The shadows had deepened, only his eyes glinted almost eerily in the yellow hue hitting his face through the window.

"You know all those things about me. And I don't ask these questions just because it's fair that I get to know just as much about you. I ask them because I want to know you. The tiny details like this are just the part of it. Every human relationship requires a certain level of trust and confidence."

Her throat tightened. It felt like standing there naked. No guards, no lies, nothing. Just her heart, bare, laid out before him.

He was still silent, uncomfortable, and she knew, whatever would happen, this man had inflicted an irrevocable, irremediable hurt within her simply by existing, simply by being who he was. It shook her to the core, the fright, the fear that it would stay there forever.

"Oh, of course," she jeered with a mocking sneer, covering the raw flesh of her heart. "I forgot you're not cut out for this. Why exactly are you here then?"

Jackson stood up.

She stood with him, too.

His face was unreadable in the low light but she believed it would have been so anyway.

"Okay, I guess it's better if I leave now. There's no point in staying."

"Right, then go, I agree. Go before it turns out you have a past, a name, a family like other, normal people. Go before something personal slips from your mouth in exchange of all the things you know about me. God forbid that you'd open up a little and confide in me."

He brushed past her as he strode toward the stairs leading to the first floor. She scurried after him, staring at his back.

"What if I happen to talk about your miraculous resurrection to someone?" she called after him coldly, though with a gnawing ache in her chest.

He came to a sudden halt. With his back turned, he stated with a low voice that would have normally set the alarms in her head, "I trust you're not that foolish."

Lisa, with a challenging tone, chanced. "Because, what then? You'd kill me?"

The grave silence following her mocking words stunned her. Jackson turned around to look at her, his eyes obscured behind his hair and heavy, relentless eyelids. He descended the two steps he'd climbed. He stepped closer, and with that, Lisa took a step backwards. Backed against the doorframe, she looked up at him like she saw him for the first time for who he really was. He halted two steps away from her.

Suddenly, Lisa couldn't decide what to expect, he had the unpredictability of the man she couldn't grow fond of.

She flinched when he moved so close to her that their toes touched, and Lisa hated him for it, for how he managed to throw her around from one extremity to the other when she started to fancy that she finally figured his ways out.

Her eyes fell on his fists, the white knuckled balls of unyielding bone and freckled skin, sensing the ready to burst energy rippling under the surface. She lifted her head, just slightly frightened. Her forehead brushed his chin, so did the tip of her nose when she turned to meet his gaze. She wasn't sure if she could defend herself now – if there really was a chance she had to.

"You're not afraid of me, are you?" Jackson inquired slowly, not without a hint of menace.

He stared at her with a strange expression somewhere halfway from incredulity to grief. Her heart wanted to break out of her chest. Lisa didn't say a word, just eyed him cautiously. Her lips apart, frozen into expectant bewilderment. Was he really capable of hurting her? To her sorrow, she honestly didn't know the answer, and it wasn't right this way; there was no confidence between them. Nobody was able to build something on a ground like this.

He broke the tension with a jerky move. In that moment, he looked like a pierced balloon, with his arms fallen by his side as if suddenly all strength had left them. He swiped his palm across his forehead with a desperate sigh, making the tresses jumble at his temple. He'd risked a hell of a lot of things, fragile, delicate things to come here. Why couldn't she see it? Why wasn't it enough for her?

"Then I really have nothing to do here."

Lisa glared. Somehow, he looked more than comfortable with this statement. With the knee-jerk reflex of retrieving to well-known territory. He couldn't even see how pathetic, how cowardly it was, and Lisa wanted to hit him for it, for not thinking she was worth the risk.

"So this is it?"

He was all masked again, cool, unreadable. A flicker of his fingers, careless, easy, as he said: "This is it."

Something filled her, something wild and bitter. "I almost forgot how good you've always been in leaving things behind. Guess it'll take no time for you to get over this little mishap."

"I haven't forgotten how good you've always been in carrying painful things with you. Just a friendly advice: there's no point in carrying this one."

He whirled around, hurried upstairs, and soon returned with his bag. Lisa was still stuck to the doorframe, frozen into a wiry-muscled stance.

There, at the bottom of the stairs, they stared at each other. They were waiting for a word, a single sentence, with heart beating fast, but it had to be said by the other.

Stay.

I'll stay.

A moment of pause, a chance given, and another: a string of moments of silence. Moments of lack of words.

They couldn't. Pride, stubbornness, resignation, they formed an almost physical barrier.

Neither of them spoke. Jackson turned, and walked out the door, and with the resounding click of the lock, something died in her.

She didn't know, but something did so in him, too.

: :

There had been a few things in her twenty-seven-year lifespan Lisa had regretted, but in the following days, letting Jackson walk out of her life seemed to bloat into one of the greatest. She wanted to go back to work in the remaining three days before her flight back to Miami on Saturday, the good old diversion was pulling her mind, but the weak morning light found her fallen into million pieces. She just couldn't do it, couldn't go back to her previous life. It was irreversible. The mere thought of the dullness of her days made her feel empty, the shallow relations she maintained with the people around her, the boring activities she engaged in within the walls of her apartment weren't enough anymore. The safe escape from reality, from the past, the challenges wasn't a haven anymore, and she felt exposed and worn-out. She felt hollow like a chocolate figure that could be crushed with the gentlest touch.

I want to feel like I did before, she thought. Before you.

But the wish touched the surface of her mind only for a moment before a strong wave of bittersweet regret of her own words swept it away. It was light as a leaf, and dry too, could not set root in her heart when she still cherished the feeling so carefully, despite the pain it caused.

He'd managed to bind her to him beyond anything he represented, anything that had been said and done between them, and that alone was a miracle. He destroyed her but most probably only because she let him. Without her, he couldn't have done it.

It was another loose thread of her life, and she feared that all those opportunities cut in half would ensnarl forever into a great mess of things she never cared to fight hard for.

It will pass.

She told it to herself. It will pass; maybe I will just fade a bit each day, dissolve around the edges – sometimes she really believed it was possible.

It hurt. It hurt so much as if she was bleeding inside. Instead of the lack of something substantial, the lack of him, it was a continuous swell in her chest that grew so enormous that it squeezed against her heart. It was painful, and incredible how much more insistent and unbearable it was than any physical pain she'd ever experienced. It made her feel like she would never be fine again, never be whole again. She was lying in her bed, crumpling the pillow under her head, and tried to fight the onrush of thought of him. That he was alive, he was out there somewhere and she'd never see him again. It was something she couldn't process. She watched the eerie lights running around on her walls as cars passed by outside, shadows growing and shrinking and growing again like the tension in her mind, and Lisa hugged her blanket to her chest so vehemently as if she was trying to stop and fight back the ever growing pain, trying to replace with fluff and cotton what it destroyed in its growth. Because something was destroyed, she knew it – there was no way that she could get out of such pain completely unharmed and intact.

I will never meet you.

I will never forget you.

She couldn't decide which frightened her more. With the first, she might have been able to cope with. What she was really afraid of was the latter. The possibility that it stayed with her forever, the swell, the wreck it left behind. And still, her heart grabbed after each and every detail of her possibly escaping memories, striving to preserve them, she clung onto them, onto the intangible small things, his voice, the mischievous glint in his eyes when he smiled. The crooked tooth in the front; the feel of his stubble when he didn't have time to shave. The hardness of his bones when she pressed her forehead to his cheek. The few grey hairs that she wasn't even sure he knew of, just right behind his left ear. The deep, harmonious sound when he laughed, a bit boyishly but definitely contagiously. The years he could deny when he did so, with the vigorous wrinkles on his cheeks. His scent. She missed it the most, and it was escaping her so easily: the first thing she subconsciously tried to find around her, in other people, among her own memories. Sometimes she just closed her eyes and tried to remember them, the fading details in the never fading storm of yearning, she forced her mind to retrieve the same feel so much that the effort stung her eye. She wanted to think it was the effort.

During the nights, the curtained-off days, she was musing. She knew it was a chance they wasted. They could have beaten the odds, should have tried to build something on those shaky grounds.

And hurt one another a way only people with great insight into each other could.

She knew that too.

She wanted it with him, no matter how rocky it might be, how unorthodox and abnormal. She had to accept that there were things that didn't fit in conventions and expectations; maybe it was her heart that didn't fit, after all. However banal it was, what she needed, or even deserved, wasn't necessarily what she wanted.

Why she could be so clever only in hindsight engraved her misery.

In the morning of Christmas Eve, Lisa packed her things and took a cab to the airport. It turned out, due to the heavy snowfall and the busy pre-holiday rush, her flight was delayed.

She was sitting there for an extra hour before check-in, watching people hurry by with their oversized luggage, watching them kiss welcome each other or say farewell. Never before had this hurt so much. She thought of him, thought how he would mock her now for being sentimental, and Lisa knew he was in her shaky smile now, in the twinkle of her eyes that she would deny that it had anything to do with unshed tears. She couldn't cry for him anymore; his imprint was too deep within her now.

At the gate, the crowd waiting for boarding was growing impatient by the minute. Lisa watched them with detachment; watched the holiday lights brim the shop windows along the corridors. It felt distant now, black and white, without depth or meaning. She was an outsider, lacking every feeling she would usually have fueling her, and it got worse at the thought that she had to go and celebrate it with her family. With these unspeakable emotions in her heart. It seemed to be a play now, a front she had to keep up, the old I'm fine's again that she'd grown to hate so much. He made her hate them, hate the lies, the pretense. How ironic that he was the one who'd shoved her into another row of false acts now.

An instinct started to emerge in her and grow, an urge to run, to flee, so strong that it felt it was stretching the skin on her legs like an enormous swell. Almost like a panic attack, but she knew it was, in a way, worse: a conviction that she was doing a mistake by being here. The full knowledge that she was not able to lead a life similar to the pre-Red Eye, and definitely to the pre-kidnapping period was almost unbearable and it pulled the rug of balance and security out from under her feet.

Lisa pushed herself away from the pillar she was leaning to, and searched for a bathroom to steal a few minutes of quality time with herself. She was lucky: only an old lady was in there, already about to leave.

She propped against the sink, and glared in the mirror. "Pull yourself together, Lisa."

She wanted to shake off the unreasonable feeling that boarding her plane would necessarily mean that she closed a period of her life – that something would be lost forever and irrevocably with it. That leaving Washington now wouldn't draw an irreversible ending to her story. To their story.

If they had a story.

She tried to reason. It's not that there was anything she could do about it. There was no way to contact him, he had no known address, hell, she didn't even know his real name. He was like a ghost. Officially, he didn't exist anymore, only she was not able to move on without thinking of him.

"You didn't lose anything now," she thought. "Because you never really had anything, to begin with."

Lisa washed her hands, letting the cold water bubble against her skin. She tried to find peace of mind in it, coolness and clear-sight. She pushed the soap dispenser, and rubbed her hands. A bitter laugh started to gather in her chest at the twisted, ironic déjà vu feeling: at the memory of a small airplane restroom when she tried to gain control over her life almost in the same way. Both because of the same man. If someone back then had told her that one day she might be heartbroken because of him, she would have definitely not believed that. Her life had spiraled out of control ever since.

It was time to put it back in a safe rut.

: :

The line was moving annoyingly slowly, Jackson wondered if it was moving at all. He stared at the whirling snow beyond the glass panels, trying to shut out the unbearable Christmas hits coming from a stereo nearby. The kid before him chose that moment to start a tantrum. Unfortunately his parents employed the tactic of not paying attention to him, but it didn't really help.

I need a coffee, Jackson thought. He left the line, knowing all too well that he needed more than a coffee as he looked at the Starbucks store front with a pang of yearning. Lisa. The thing is, the picture was crystal clear: he should've simply walked out of here, got in a cab and driven to her apartment.

He had no idea what he was still doing in Washington. Not that it made any difference where he spent the eventless, low season period of the holidays that tired him to no end. After he left Lisa, the thought of how it would have been to spend Christmas with her crossed his mind more times than he liked, and it didn't improve his low mood. He was slowly becoming a pathetic softy.

Michele invited him to spend some days with them in Springfield, but he was still reluctant to accept it – of course, Giovanna had already given him an extended call on the subject; she could be extremely persuading in that Italian way that was both charming and annoying simultaneously.

But he knew something, and it killed whatever pro that invitation had: it could be only a poor replacement of something he would never have.

: :

Three teenage girls barged into the restroom in the frenzy of makeup adjustment and too loud holiday plans, so Lisa chose to flee. Her plane wasn't boarding yet – the pre-reported one hour delay seemed to swell into a good ninety minutes wait. She felt better, calmer but a bit downhearted as she strolled down the corridor between golden-red-ribboned gift packs and Christmas-flavored doughnuts behind the shop displays.

And then, her focus sharpened; the balance of the world tipped, the horizon, too, as if she was drunk. Because under the green-black-white siren logo and in corporate caffeine steam, he was sitting there.

She sensed the shapes, lines, objects lose their edge as she stared, incredulously, at his profile, at the set of cheekbones accentuated by the shifting lights as he tilted his head. Although he wore glasses, there was no way she could not recognize him by a mere movement of his hands. Lisa was standing there, in the middle of the airport, and couldn't believe he wasn't only the mere projection of her heart.

He was sipping from his paper cup when he caught her gaze.

She straightened; he stood up, halted in the middle of the smooth move. The airport, the world around them halted a bit, too; everything faded, quieted and shrank like the tin soldier in the flames. Amidst the rush hour of the airport, only they looked permanent as they stood motionless. And the twisted, pulsing bond between them: it was permanent, too. A cogwheel that had jumped out of its place sometime during the previous days without them realizing it, jolted back now as they stood there, dumbfounded by the improbability of it all. From the look on his face, she realized, for once, this was something he didn't orchestrate.

What were the odds? It was nothing if not fate. A second chance to play it in another way, in the right way this time.

And Lisa was standing there with her crumpled reasoning stuck to her skin in the previous days like mud, adhesive and alien, reasoning she had just come to in the restroom a few minutes before on how she should move on without him, and Jackson was standing there with his own.

He was waiting for her as she walked up to him with the unconcealed surprise on his face that Lisa loved so much because it told her there were things he couldn't control.

Jackson smiled, gestured toward the stool beside his. "Saved you a seat."

Lisa couldn't suppress a twisted little laughter that aroused from the happiness in her chest, and sat. They were sick; they fit so well.

From the corner of her eyes, she sensed him following her movements with the usual precision of an analyst. This was the first time she thought, maybe with the attention of a painter. She glanced up, let him know she caught him staring, but she stared, too.

Casually, like only he could in such situations, Jackson asked: "And what will we have?"

"Lattes. You still owe me one."

If he was incredulous, he didn't show. "Oh, right!" he nodded lightly, but when he wanted to stand to fetch her drink, Lisa caught his arm.

"Stay." She didn't have too much time, and the last thing she wanted to spend it with was waiting for him while he stood in the line.

Lisa watched him as Jackson sank back on his stool, cataloged the tiny details of his camouflage like they were her own new purchase. Jackson was wearing a tie and even a waistcoat; a sharp, pristine look, if slightly nondescript. Close up, she saw that he had simple glass in the rectangular frame as his eyes weren't distorted behind them. To a stranger, she could determine, he looked innocent, maybe a bit boring too, like a just graduated, somewhat tightass instructor at Psychology class who the students might think they could relate with, just because he was close to their age. For her, he appeared the kind who could make students jump out the window because he failed them at the final exam plainly out of pure cruelty. The smile was the only thing on his face that told her otherwise. It was genuine, a bit awed – she couldn't really blame him for it.

Her eyes sparkled. "This new look… What's next? You pull a sack over your head?"

Jackson winked at her. "No way, I'm too handsome to that."

Lisa laughed. He was so annoyingly, alluringly cocksure.

"Miami?" he asked lightly. There were no pleasantries, no courtesy talk about how she was, how surprising that they met, and Lisa liked it this way. They'd never been famous for social manner when they were together, and it made her contented: the lack of pretense.

She smiled. "Yes, on a delayed flight. Again. Going home for Christmas. You?"

A pause. The usual one he was always giving her, the one she hated so much. This time, though, he elaborated. "Chicago. For now. Maybe I end up in Springfield."

"Say hi to Giovanna for me."

There was a strange glint in his eyes, something Lisa had never seen before, it made his features soften. She didn't know that this was the first time he felt they'd known each other for a very long time – not he knew her like every time before; no: it was something mutual now. And unexpectedly, Jackson liked the feeling.

He looked to the side for a moment, a slight hesitation on his lips. Lisa watched him, the almost imperceptible movements of his eyes, the fair freckles around his nose. He looked pale in the brown dress shirt he was wearing under the dark coat. She longed to hug him, to kiss the edge of his jawline just below his ears.

Jackson gazed toward his gate, the shrinking line, searching for something to say. Never before had he dealt with such problem. He looked back at her, roaming her face. She seemed haggard, tired. Do I also look this bad? he mused. So shattered?

He was sure he did.

Her gaze had a dreamy, soft edge to it. "Isn't this just symbolic? An airport…"

"I'd call it ironic."

"That too. But see, there're so many ways out. Where do we go from here?"

He had a mischievous glint in the depth of his eyes. "Probably the best way is where we came. Just go back to your apartment, shut the door behind us and forget about the world."

Lisa stole a sip from his cup, swallowed the already cold coffee together with a sense of regret. "I can't. I have to take this plane."

"I know. It's okay."

"Greg's coming with his wife, too, and…"

Gently, he emphasized. "Lisa, I said it's fine."

Lisa looked down, with unseeing eyes, she followed the grouts between the tiles under her stool. Was there a remark that didn't sell her out too much? But it didn't matter anymore. It made her be the weaker this time, and in a certain aspect, also the stronger. She slipped her fingers around his wrist, just below the shirt sleeve, brushing the skin like she knew she had the right to; like she was aware of the effect it had on him. She placed her fingertips softly on his veins, lightly, intimately – as if to chain him with delicate bone and flesh and skin handcuffs.

Jackson pulled her to him, or it was Lisa who moved first – it didn't really matter. He buried his face in the familiar auburn waves, the familiar scent, and smiled a smile that he knew only she could draw on his face.

She pressed her nose to his neck, just above his collar as she whispered, "I come back on Wednesday."

His lips glided across her cheek, and touched hers so softly like it was only accidental. All thoughts escaped through an invisible valve in her head as if a vacuum suck them out. The sensation was just as overwhelming as for the first time. Lisa clung onto him and returned the kiss crushingly, with the yearning she'd thought just a day ago that she had to bury forever. His stubble was scratching her skin, his teeth, as he grazed her lips, left sweetly aching lines behind but she moved closer nonetheless. It was always like that with him: pleasure and pain, hot and cold, good and bad. Always the extremes. And she knew she was matching his with her own.

She mumbled against his lips, "I'm not planning anything on New Year's Eve."

Jackson drew back slightly and stared at her. His unusual gaze was unwavering on her. Lisa could spot a shadow pass across his face, darken his eyes, deepen the line between his brows.

Faint indecision twitched around his lips. Was it symbolic, too, he wondered. New Year, new start. New life. Clean life? He wasn't too comfortable with the possibility that she meant it exactly this way. He wasn't one to accept conditions, ultimatums from anyone, not even Lisa. He knew what he wanted, even if those weren't anything reconcilable. Or anything fair to her.

So he went with the words closest to the truth.

"Lisa, I can't be what you want me to be…" his gaze swam somewhere behind her, and nowhere in particular. He couldn't see the expression on her face, the unconcealed feeling of loss. Lisa pressed her lips together. She couldn't go through this again, not after giving up, then meeting him again. Why were they to run into each other now, if it was meant to be over anyhow? Could life be really so ironic? His fingers touching her elbow brought her back from her unfolding misery. He had a small smile on his mouth. "But you know, I can try something in-between."

She bit her lip as strange, twisted relief spread over her. The last sober voice of reason made her to be cautious. Could she really? Where would it lead them? Could she bare her heart and risk it'd be crushed again?

"This is the best I can offer."

His voice was grave, hard, but all Lisa could hear was the hidden plea behind it, and her heart started to beat lively.

She smiled. It was good enough. Good enough for now.

The End

A/N: So that was it. For the last time, I'd really appreciate if you told me how it is. After spending so much time on the ending, I really cannot tell if it sucks or not. Tell me even if it's horrible. I know some/most of you might be disappointed that I didn't throw them in an M-rated scene, sorry, the time frame just didn't let me without making Lisa OOC;)

Maybe in a sequel, haha. I was planning one, but seeing the difficulties I had in the end with writing this, I'm not so sure anymore. Leave me a comment if you'd be interested, though, in the twisted relationship these two could build.

For now, bye and thanks everyone!