Jimmy and Jessie had found a cliff top behind Kato's house which allowed them to survey the village and the bridge that led to the castle. So each morning and evening, they climbed the steep path leading there and tried to gauge the activity of Snitch Gravel's men and figure out a pattern.

They'd borrowed an old set of binoculars from Kato and a notebook in which they could jot out the comings and goings of countless henchmen. There wasn't much to put in there.

"As boring as ever," Jimmy said, passing the binoculars to Jessie.

He wasn't sure if he'd been that way before the experiments or the weird brain-tugging tea Kato kept giving him, but Jimmy's mind was spinning with impressive speed and categorizing information. Even know, he perfectly remembered what he'd seen and swiftly compared it with the rest of the information he had.

There had been a slight commotion the day before as the men seemed to struggle to find a proper space for a new car, but after that, they'd returned to their silent vigil, the number of guards constant. The castle was as imperturbable as ever. There was no shift in the silence or the lights coming from it at night.

Two snipers on the top floor, one man on the each balcony of the others, two before the door, two at the bottom of the steps, two at the end of the bridge. Not that many, but still impossible to take out stealthily. They needed weapons. Kato unfortunately seemed to have only sticks and swords which they weren't even training with yet.

For some reason, the swords intrigued Jimmy, just like the axe he'd gotten so used to. It was now customary. Train with Jessie, have some tea, return to chopping wood while Jessie went inside for some secret meditation training he wasn't ready for yet.

"You're right," Jessie said, lowering the binoculars. "I just wish we had more time to survey them, but training is also important." 

The wind blew her orange curls around her face, but they were too short to bother her now. He felt a pang of sadness, even if he was very aware it would grow back. He'd always loved her hair. It fitted her fiery, rebellious personality so well.

And just like that, his mind glossed over the technical aspects and he got a new type of pain in his chest. It was almost immediately accompanied by more pain, this time in his sides and back. His vision swam. He needed water.

"Jimmy?"

Jessie's voice was a distant echo, but it stared something within the darkness, within the pain. Why was it still there? Why, even with the void inside him gone, couldn't he be back to normal? But every time he thought he finally was, it slipped away from him. Emptiness, confusion, pain. Adrenaline, nervous, unbearable energy. He needed to run.

"I have to go," he mumbled, getting off his belly and into a sitting position. "I have to--"

Jessie grabbed his arm to stop him. "Where are you going?"

"I need to run, I need to..." His words faded because he had no idea what he needed. Just that he couldn't keep sitting there, doing nothing.

"We'll train in a minute and you'll be able to burn your energy then. Just don't go up into the mountains again."

The moment she said it, he didn't want to do it anymore, but the pain, the need, it was still there, just... Different. His body shook and his muscles tensed. Deep breaths. Come on. He shut his eyes and did his best to control himself. It shouldn't be this hard.

A warm hand touched his cheek, and even if he could no longer pick up on Jessie's words, he could hear her voice surrounding him. The energy inside him morphed into something else, a fire engulfing him, towering, all-consuming. A need he couldn't outrun or outclimb.

Her hand slipped from his cheek, down to his shoulder. She sounded worried. He didn't want her to be. He wanted her to be happy. He wanted this feeling in his chest to make sense.

Feelings... He still had feelings.

"We must eradicate them. Every last feeling!"

"Are you sure we can? Or better yet, are you sure it's safe?"

"It is possible. And there is no other way to do it. Not if we want him to do what he is created to do. Then, when we are sure, there will be others."

No feelings. No thinking. Faster. Stronger. Needles and blood. IVs.

His body was on fire, and for one moment, he wanted that back. The men in white put out the fire. They knew what to give him to make it go away.

Numbness. The black hole was salvation.

"Jimmy!"

Now there was nothing but pain.

"Where does it hurt?"

"Everywhere," he whispered.

Every inch of him was crying out for something. When she took his face in her hands, the focus shifted and it was her.

"I'm here," she whispered.

"Hold me." He had nothing without her. He was going under again.

Her arms wrapped around him, bringing him closer, pressing him against her. His mouth found hers and it tasted like heaven. Even if the pain was still there, it was twisting, morphing, fueling him to kiss her deeper, hold her tighter, touch her and have her make everything bad go away.

His fingers ran through her too-short curls, then on her shoulders, her back. She didn't pull away from his touch, her body coming closer, molding against his. Oh, how he needed that, how it made everything better, drew the darkness out of him, the emptiness.

She made everything better. And focusing on her was so easy. He could remember everything. Every inch of her skin, the taste of her, their jokes, her smile, their little squabbles. The love.

He could hear her panting, but she didn't give up, clutching his hair between her fingers and kissing him fiercely.

It wasn't enough. It wasn't even close to enough. He needed more to unload the energy inside him, so much more.

"Jimmy! Jessie!"

The voice barely registered, but it made her jump and pull away from her.

"Shit," she whispered. "Kato." And she fumbled with the shirt of her gi then removed herself from his lap.

He opened his eyes, but the light gave him an instant migraine. He shouldn't have stopped kissing her.

"Come on. We've been lingering here for a while and it got late." There was a playfulness in her voice that made it clear she hadn't picked up that everything was still wrong.

He cracked an eyelid just to see the look on her face. Her cheeks were flushed and there was a glint in her green eyes as she tugged at his hand. Her lips were a little swollen and pulled up into a mischievous smile. He needed to kiss them so badly.

Jessie. His Jessie.

The world came crashing down again.

"Jimmy?" Now she sounded worried.

He waved his hand and pushed himself to his feet even if he still couldn't open his eyes and everything seemed to spin around him. Why was this still happening? It had been days of no drugs, days of drinking that disgusting tea that was supposed to help.

It does help. It helped with the memories, with the void.

He moved. He could barely feel Jessie's grip on him, but he was aware they were moving. His feet found the narrow stones that helped them climb to the outlook post. He did his best to match her pacing and avoid tumbling down.

"Kato, he's not well." Her voice was desperate and it seemed to be coming from far away.

The old man mumbled something he could no longer understand. His knees hit the ground and he was once again on fire.

"Jessie," he whispered.

He needed her. She could make this go away. If only that stubborn old asshole could leave them alone for one fucking moment. He huffed to himself because it was sort of literal. The amusement only lasted half a second before he groaned in pain. Something bitter filled his mouth and he spit it out. It continued to pour down his throat until he felt like he was drowning in it.

Just make it stop. I can't live like this. Not if it wasn't getting any better, not if he would continue being unreliable. What was the point of him then?

Are you giving up?

Jimmy's eyes snapped open. Kato's voice rang inside his head, but there was nothing but darkness. In a moment, the pain was gone, the memory of it pulsating through his body, like the ghost of agony.

"What the hell?"

"Maybe I was wrong. I thought you were not ready, that this would only confuse you further." Kato's voice seemed to be coming from everywhere and nowhere at all.

Jimmy turned on the spot, suddenly aware that he couldn't feel if he was sitting or standing. More like floating. Kato came into view, standing with his arms behind his back.

"Um, what's happening?"

"You may need this," Kato said. "To gain control."

Jimmy had no idea what he needed right then, but whatever Kato had done, it had numbed his pain and plunged him into a place where he at least seemed to have control.

"So, what now?"

"Now we start your training." Kato sat cross-legged in front of him.

Okay, that was indeed needed. After days of sparring with Jessie and chopping wood, this was an improvement. No matter what the old man said, he wasn't fond of waiting around while his family was captured.

"Try to let your mind form images around you."

Jimmy frowned. "Are we really talking, or are you inside my head?"

"We are speaking."

"Then why can't I see?"

"Your eyes are closed. There is no use opening them for this exercise."

He believed it, so he gave up and focused on following the instructions he was given. Having no idea what to focus on, he let his mind wonder. Kato disappeared and the darkness morphed into a sunlit room. He recognized it as the bedroom of his apartment. He hadn't been there is ages.

"Do you see anything?" Kato asked.

"Yes."

"Is it a happy place?"

"Yes."

And it was no longer empty. Jessie appeared in the picture, with her back to him, naked. Her curly hair cover half of her back and she glanced over her shoulder, an enticing smile on her face. Yep, this was happiness.

A knot formed in Jimmy's chest. "Can you see what I'm seeing?" It seemed unlikely, but he wasn't taking the chance.

"Of course not. What are you seeing?" Kato sounded suspicious now, remind Jimmy of Jerry.

"Just my happy place," he answered, focusing on Jessie again.

Every curve, the way her skin shone in the sunlight, how it made her hair look like flames. The scar on her left hip.

The image morphed. Jessie against the table, blood flowing between her fingers. The hospital in Paris. Drugs. So many drugs. The vastness of space. He'd done something wrong. What had he done? The nothingness pressed on him from all sides, smothering him.

It all faded into a stormy night and he was on the top of a cliff, surrounded by mayhem. The wind blew the large drops of rain in his face, and bodies scurried around him, trying to hurt him, hurt everyone. Escape. Kyle was down, Kay seemed dead, and Jessie had just been knocked over and almost thrown off the cliff.

In that moment, everything he'd thought he'd known made no sense. There was no hope, nothing left in the world. She would die and she would never know. His lies, the pretense, his feelings... How true everything was, how he'd been lying to himself, not her. Never to her.

Out of fear and despair, he'd cracked.  He'd dropped his defenses and focused on blocking everyone trying to reach her. He could only do so much alone.

Fists and knives charged at him from the darkness, and no amount of blocking could fix it. There had been so much pain, maybe more than he'd ever felt in his life as his body shattered. And it the darkness that followed, all he could hear was Jessie crying.

It lasted until something new, hot and unyielding entered his veins. In that moment, he was reborn. Without even knowing it, his life had changed forever.

This felt similar. Just like the serum had entered his body, gradually taking over him, now it was time to take over the serum. Return the favor and come out even stronger.

A third life, a second rebirth, happening in a tiny wooden house in the Japanese mountains. But as he became aware of what needed to be done, a crippling pain took over his being and he was tossed from the darkness and back into consciousness.

Jimmy blinked and the wooden ceiling of Kato's house came into view.

"What happened?" he asked, even if he wasn't sure there was anyone around who could answer.

"You know that better than anyone."

Kato sat on the floor, a little way from him. They were in the dojo inside his house, a long and narrow place off the kitchen which was mostly empty. There was a low bench propped against the opposite wall, three mats in a corner and weapons on the wall above the bench. Jimmy found himself staring at swords and daggers again, getting a jolt in his gut.

As his mind struggled to adjust to reality, he focused on the katanas rather than their owner. Their sharpness drew him, much like the axe had when he'd decided to throw it at Kato. They held some sort of answer he couldn't figure out yet.

"Can we train with those?" He nodded towards the wall.

Kato raised his thick eyebrows. "You would use swords against people armed with guns?"

"There is a possibility that they wouldn't want to kill me."

Which would make swords extraordinarily useful. He wasn't sure if Snitch Gravel's eye-for-an-eye policy still applied, but it seemed foolish not to try. It wasn't like he and Jessie had a plethora of guns and ammo at their disposal anyway.

The thought of her startled him and mad flashes of what he'd seen inside his trance overwhelmed him. He looked around and noticed Jessie was actually in the room with them, sitting in a lotus position, her eyes closed, her eyelids twitching.

"What's she doing?"

"Training," Kato answered simply.

"Why do you consider her ready and not me?"

The man raised his eyebrows again as if Jimmy was a complete moron he was forced to tolerate. "I think you know the answer. Your mind is..." He seemed to be chewing on his tongue as he pondered. He mumbled a few words in Japanese, then sighed. "Chaos."

Jimmy couldn't have put it better himself. "It's always chaos. We can't afford to wait for it to no longer be chaos." That could take ages. Suppression worked wonders and he didn't see a reason to not continue using it.

"But can you master that living inside you when you cannot master yourself?"

The question hurt because it highlighted the truth. He was a liability. He was dangerous. He was useless.

"I have to," he whispered, more to himself.

It had been too long, and they hadn't made any progress. If he hadn't had the conviction that he'd know if something happened to Jerry, he would question whether his brothers were still alive.

They are. They have to be.

"I just need to try harder," he said.

Kato nodded, though he looked a little skeptical. A moan from Jessie drew Jimmy's attention to her. She hadn't moved, but her hands were shaking.

"What's happening?" he asked.

"Leave her," was all the answer Kato provided.

Jimmy tensed as he watched her forehead scrunching in what looked like pain. Her lips trembled, then her chin, and she looked on the verge of tears. What was she seeing?

"Leave her!" Kato said again.

She whimpered and tears fell down the sides of her face, but she straightened in her stance, pushing her chest forward. Then the breath escaped her lungs in a pain-filled woosh and she sobbed.

Jimmy ignored the protests of the old man and scurried over to her. The moment the next sob escaped her lips, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her against him. She gasped and a second later, her hands found his hair and she began panting.

"What happened?" he whispered into her hair as she kept sobbing into his shoulder. "Sunshine, what's wrong?"

She shook her head, sniffing loudly. "I can't... I've beaten it. I can beat it again." Her gaze darkened. "He has no power over me."

"Whatever it is, you cannot outrun it anymore," Kato said, walking to them. "It must be faced and destroyed."

Jessie raised her tear-filled eyes to him. Jimmy only held her tighter, willing her body to relax, hoping to drive the fear and pain away.

"I know," she whispered. "But it's easier said than done."

"This does not help."

His words had Jimmy turning to Kato to see him waving his hand from him to her.

"What are you talking about?" His tone came out a lot rougher than intended.

"This overdependence. Not wise. Not healthy."

Rage bubbled up inside Jimmy and he turned on his knees, facing Kato head-on. "It's not overdependence. It's called comfort, you cold-hearted bastard."

"Jimmy," Jessie whispered

He didn't listen. He'd had it with this. Frustration mounted inside him, throwing self-restraint out the window.

"Stop getting between us! What the hell is your problem? And don't feed me that energy bullshit--"

"Hotstuff!"

It was the strangest thing to hear the pet name used in anger, and it snapped him out of it. When he turned to Jessie, the tears and insecurity were gone. There was only fire in her eyes.

"Look at me!" she demanded, even if he was already looking. "What do you see?"

"I see you," he replied, a little unsettled about the question.

"Look deeper."

Now she was starting to sound like Kato and it was getting very confusing. His lack of answer only made her frown. She put her hands on his cheeks. His skin burned where she touched him.

"I see the light behind your eyes," she said. "I know there's something wrong, because you've never looked at me like this."

A sliver of fear snuck down his spine. "Like what?"

"Like I'm your property."

The words spun around him, swallowing the room, and he felt the crazy need to laugh. Something primal stirred inside him, a sense of strange pride as his status was finally recognized. He owned her, which meant she owed him and nothing was going to stand in his way, least of all a pathetic old man.

"Yes, that's it. You are above this. Above everything. And no one will stand in your way. Don't ever forget that. Whatever you want, whatever you need, you are justified to take it. You are the superior race, the superior man."

"Jimmy!"

Something collided with his face with impressive force and he blinked hard. Jessie's face came back into full view, her eyebrows drawn together.

"What did I do?" He put his hand over his cheek. It throbbed from her slap.

"You started laughing like a maniac." She didn't sound angry. Exhausted and scared more like, even if her expression was still stoic.

His stomach twisted and every muscle in his body tensed. The words he'd heard didn't go away. They had been repeated to him obsessively as they pumped him with drugs.

"What did they do to me?" he whispered.

"More than we thought, apparently."

He raised his eyes to look at her again. "I'm so sorry, Jessie. I'm--"

"Don't. We need to see these things, become aware of them so we can beat them." She looked to Kato. "You need to let him start training like me, too. We don't have all the time we would have liked."

Kato didn't seem convinced, though as he turned his gaze to Jimmy, it was a lot more interested. "I see." His tone didn't imply that he saw anything.

"I mean it," she said, frustration sneaking into her voice. "And for me, as well. We need to move faster. I need to master this thing inside me and we need to--"

"Hurry up?" Kato raised his eyebrows. "What you need is to learn how to control the time you have."

Jessie faltered. Jimmy felt the unnatural anger trying to take over again, but he pushed him down, right next to that absurd feeling that he was better than everyone else. That Jessie belonged to him. That he could beat everything.

"No one is a match for you. And whoever tries bust be destroyed."

Nice try, assholes. He could tell this was part of their 'make Kyle a target' program. But he needed to bury that in his old self, and for that, he needed something else.

"Control time," he said, his voice even.

"Yes." Kato turned away from them, walked to his weapon-adorned wall and pulled down one of the katanas. "What you must understand is that time, just like everything around you, is a matter of perception."

"Not true. Time is objective measurement which applies equally to all," Jessie said.

"But not the way you use it." Kato pointed the katana forward. "Not how you choose to stretch it and bend it to your will, making sure you have all of it that you need."

Despite the skepticism inside him, a part of Jimmy could resonate with what Kato said. He'd once been a starry eyed pupil listening to his first master as he explained the basics of complex mind and body training. He'd known this, had even used it to handle everything in his life when he had no choice but to juggle work and school. But once things slowed down and he no longer needed to do a million things everyday, those teachings became distant memories.

"Okay, we can do that," he said, just as Jessie started to protest.

"We can?" she asked, turning to him.

"Yes, we can. And we should. Make the best use of the little time we have." He turned to Kato next. "Let's get to it."

The old man grinned. "Good. Now go chop wood."

All the determination inside Jimmy sipped away. "What? Haven't I done enough of that?"

"It has purpose," Kato said with a shrug, then tossed the katana to Jessie. "All in due time."

🏯🏯🏯

Jimmy is not having a good time. The damage done to him is much deeper than anyone thought (even me. Damn, I like making things harder for myself). But oh, they are trying to do something. And maybe it will work.

So, thoughts? What's happening? What will happen? And is Kato helping? I guess we shall see soon.

All thoughts are greatly appreciated! Don't forget to vote for support!