Breakdown

Jackson sat cross-legged in the middle of his living room, eyes fastened on that last line of coke on the black glass coffee table. His hands were already jittering as he looked up through his bleary eyes towards his visitor. Like Ebenezer Scrooge, he'd opened the door to a visit from a ghostly specter.

"Janglin'," he said around a cigarette, trying like hell to light the wet paper. "Know you aren't really here, Bruce. There's no such thing as ghosts…"

"Neep-heid." McLeod grumbled the insult. "Aye, lookit ya. Feckin' all broken-like… conjures up a sortae vegetable-like image, no?"

"You're a hallucination." It seemed so logical in that moment. The lighter finally caught, and the flame licked at the paper, singeing his lips as the breeze from the open window pushed it in his face. "Shitfuck." The expletive accompanied a lungful of Turkish smoke.

"Light yer feckin' face on fire?" McLeod snickered, drawing a sour look from Jackson.

"Stuff it," Jackson growled around the Camel, his eyes flicking momentarily to the driving rain beyond the floor to ceiling windows of the loft."Bruce, I'm feeling nostalgic. Maybe we should call the old gang, plan a little get together."

"Don' think that's gonna fly, Jackie-boy. Chandler's gone clean... an' Pugs is dead."

"Just me and Ray left, huh?" His sigh was masked by the howling of the wind outside. A shadow passed across his features as he bent over that last line, dragging the powder into his sinuses. Leaning back against the couch, he let his eyes close, feeling the twinge in his back. He was getting too old for this business. "It's positively depressing. Life never imitates the movies anymore."

Silence fell between the old friends as Jackson reached for the charcoal pencil and the drawing tablet. McLeod laughed, sitting down heavily on the sofa and kicking up his muddy boots on the table. Jackson said nothing, because he was too strung out to care. He ignored a lot of things these days, dismissing it all as inconsequential. The phone on the table rang, and McLeod flinched as though he was going to reach for it, or flee.

"Don't bother," Jackson chuckled. He'd stopped checking who he was disregarding after the first time it had rung tonight; he was busy. He had better things to do. An endless parade of excuses that basically amounted to the fact that he couldn't be bothered to move past this funk. Ironically, it had all become totally subjective. He didn't want to talk to anyone. Didn't want to listen to Ryann's voice begging him to see her. He was content to sit here in brooding silence like the moody bastard he was.

His hand moved, the soft charcoal sliding across the paper. It started with a gently sloping curve, and quickly became an eye. The eyes were always the hardest, so he drew them first. It wasn't the first thing that started that way; it wouldn't be the last. He always went for the hardest task, the uphill struggle. Some sort of twisted need to punish himself with that drive. Sometimes he felt like doing nothing but meditation on its mysteries. Cracks in his psyche aside, he shaded the iris with whorls and striations, rendering a singular aspect of someone he'd once loved. Kitty's eyes.

On the couch, McLeod settled back, and pulled out a rolled joint from his inside pocket. "Cheer up," he said with a grin, "pissin' all over my feckin' parade. An' here I am, tryin' ta level with ya. 'S'all a sham, Jackie-boy." He laughed at the irony. He'd finally found the balls to come calling on Jackson, only for him to be so fucked up that he believed he was talking to a goddamn specter.

Jackson said nothing, trying to clear his mind of the useless pretensions that came with being a professional wrestler. Right now, in this moment, he was content to sit here and draw. He quit thinking about what was Brad or what was Jackson; fell into himself without the pretensions of either and he did what he wanted. An emergency removal of reality was required to save the patient's life- prescribed delusion. He was in the downtime, taking precautionary measures to keep his newly formed peace from exploding under the onslaught of his profession.

He finished her eyes, and moved on to the lips. Like Picasso, he selected another ideal for that feature, creating a mismatched masterpiece. Shirlea's lips. They'd never lied. Never done anything more than lavish him with praise like some hero worshipping groupie. Lightning flashed, and the lights dimmed, strobed, and then fell to dark. Perhaps that's what she had been reduced to in this moment. A glorified ego boost wrapped up in leather minis and stiletto heels.

Welcome to the city of misplaced angels.

"You're dead," Jackson said again, looking up at McLeod with more lucidity in those bloodshot eyes.

"Ach, well, on the other hand I could be wrong and mebbe ma heid zips up tha back." A wry chuckle passed his chapped lips beneath that scraggly facial hair. McLeod sparked up another joint and slipped it between his lips, dragging the smoke deep into his very much ALIVE lungs.

The sickly sweet smell of Mary Jane filtered across the space, tickling Jackson's sinuses. The phone rang, and his hand twitched, the pencil skipping across one eye. Light extinguished, he began to shade unkempt hair into the portrait. Light and dark, rendered so only by the pressure of his hand. If only everything was as easy as this. Ashes fell from the end of the cigarette still clamped between his lips, and a moment later he felt the heat, accompanied by the sick smell of the burning filter. Absent motions as he reached over and crushed it out in the overflowing ashtray.

With that hair hanging over one eye, the creation became real. It was Ryann, captured wistfully. Instantly upgraded, she was given a place in his world. He recoiled in something akin to horror, shaking his head. No. Retreat wasn't an option, since she was training with him. McLeod shifted to look down on the picture, his shadow falling across the paper. The girl was pretty, and he knew the chick was someone Jackson had had in and out of his life for years.

"Listen ta me, Jackie-boy." McLeod tried again. "Yeh love tha lass, ya need ta let her go."

"God." Jackson appealed to a higher power in that one word, not finding any adequate words to follow up. Cursory prayers like a fair-weather believer. He'd stopped indulging that faith around the same time he'd discovered the mythos surrounding Santa Claus and The Easter Bunny. Innocence stripped. Either there was no God, or he was a twisted sadist. Trade one want for another, and deny himself any modicum of pleasure. Why not? Even busting heads and checking egos had lost its thrill. Masturbation was surely next. "Just leave me alone, ok? You died a fuckin' year ago. Just move on."

He sighed, getting a chuckle from McLeod. "Yeh love all the feckin' crazy-shyte."

"Need a drink," he mumbled, setting down the pencil. His hands were black, smudged with charcoal.

"So go get one," McLeod chimed in from the couch, pinching off his roach and putting it in an old Altoids tin in his pocket. "Get meh some while yer at 'er."

Jackson set aside the pad, and pushed to his feet, distracted again by the rain. It reminded him of something else, some nearly nostalgic memory. "I think too much," Jackson groused, opening the cupboard that served as his liquor cabinet. "Glenlivet or Cuervo," he called back to McLeod. "Pick your poison."

"Surprise meh," McLeod replied in the strained voice that spelled out just what he was doing. Holding in another lungful of the good blend. Pineapple Express had nothing on this shit.

Jackson slammed down a glass half full of Scotch on the table, and returned to his seat with the bottle. He noted with disinterest that his fingertips were numb. Again. Fucking nerve damage. He tilted back the cut glass bottle, regarding the scruffy Scot through the bevels. He looked solid enough. Fire burned down his throat; the exhale was sharp, a punctuation to his bitter words. "Alright," he mumbled, "suppose I believe you. Why the fuck are you here now, if not to judge me?"

"Giving serious thought ta getting the feck outta this mess," McLeod confessed, breathing out another cloud of fragrant smoke before knocking back the liquor.

Jackson said nothing, but the weed smoke drifted across with each breath, reminding him that he wasn't alone.

"Running like a chicken with a yellow stripe on my spine, like I'm ten years old in that dark closet, huh? Fuck." McLeod didn't ask what he was referring to. He knew better than to interrupt when Jackson was building up one of these moods. It was easier to mellow out with MJ, and ride the waves. He waited.

Jackson drank.

For a while that was it. Rain fell outside, undaunted. The room filled with mingled smoke. The bottle seemed to empty itself.

"Fuuuuuuck," the expletive came in the middle of a sigh, more a guttural groan. "I don't want to do this. You're not here." He repeated the words childishly, shaking his head. "Fuckin' go away."

"Bite that feckin' bullet, Jackie-boy. I need yeh."

Jackson shook his head, lapsing into silence again. The sound of the key in the lock was buried under the rumble of thunder. "Never again. You're still dead to me, Bruce."

McLeod tilted his glass, and winked as Shirlea Frost strolled across the room in the gear she wore to strip. Tiny Daisy Dukes and a pink gingham print blouse- her hair was in pig-tails; she looked like a delicious dish. She smirked at McLeod and then frowned as knelt in front of Jackson. She pressed her tiny, cool hands against his cheeks, and felt the burning of his skin. She saw the twitches in his eyelids. He was high as a kite. "Jax," her voice brooked no nonsense. "You feelin' ok?"

"Sure babe," he murmured, "just havin' a nice chat with McLeod."

"Jax… there's nobody here but you."

"The fuck you talking about?" He could see McLeod mugging from the couch, making kissy faces and gagging theatrically. "He's been here all night, sitting right there, smoking that primo bud."

Her eyes fell to the drawing, which was nothing more than a jumble of scribbles and smudges. "Oh, babe." Her voice quavered, and she faked a smile through the tears that filled her eyes. "I think you better get some rest..."

His eyes were glassy, staring past her to the barren room. The glass of Glenlivet on the table was empty. The room reeked of unwashed body, and stale Turkish smoke. "Brad," she whispered, touching his skin. He was like ice now, clammy. His eyes slid towards her, settling on her face. Lucidity came and went in that thousand mile stare, breaking her heart.

"Shirlea?" His hand closed over hers, and she could feel it shaking. She expected him to say more, but he didn't. Instead he looked down at the pad of paper, seeing chaos captured there. His hand dropped from hers, and reached for the pencil as he flipped to another sheet. The other drew the pad into his lap, and he returned to the careful drawing, not noticing as Shirlea wadded the drawing of Ryann behind her back.

Silence claimed the room, and swallowed the sound of her theatrical sobbing as she withdrew, leaning against McLeod as he sprawled at the other end of the couch, looking just as troubled as his girl did. Would it work? They'd know soon enough.

Jackson drew. The rain stopped. He thought. His hands grew numb again, wrists throbbing. Eventually he slept. They watched it all in a prison of invisibility. Jackson ignored them both.

A long time later the phone rang, and she reached for it. "You'd better come, Aleks," she said without preamble, her voice breaking with emotion. "There's something terribly wrong with him. He… he thinks Bruce is still alive."

McLeod moved to his feet and slipped out the door without looking back. The wheels were in motion to ruin and discredit the man the Russians trusted the most. Some things were best left private, after all, especially mental breakdowns. "Please come," he heard Shirlea say as he paused on the threshold, her voice quavering. "Aleks, I don't know what to do."