Raquel was alone in the cell flicking through the pages of a glossy magazine, taking extreme care with the pages as he turned them, not wanting to smudge his freshly painted nails.

He looked at the pictures and articles with no real interest. He was merely attempting to occupy his mind with something other than how Jackson was doing at his committal hearing. He hoped with all his heart that it was going well. He wanted to see the boy get out of the prison as soon as possible. The longer Jackson remained, the more he seemed to change, becoming something alien and unknown to Raquel, hiding in the body and behind the face of one thought to be a friend. The events of that morning were a prime example.

Jackson had been so unnaturally cool. Yet, beneath the youth's bruised and assaulted skin, something hateful was seething through him, and almost bursting out of his pores with destructive intentions. But Jackson had so swiftly shifted dispositions in an attempt to hide that darkness within him. It was like placing a glove over a hand that was rotting and putrid -although it was kept from view, you knew it was still there.

Jackson had changed somehow, Raquel realised. The boy was no longer all that he seemed. Raquel supposed that no one could really blame the boy for that.

Raquel glanced up from his magazine, seeing Jackson standing, quietly at the opened doorway of their cell. Raquel's face showed the initial surprise he'd felt upon seeing him, not having heard Jackson's arrival. He immediately rose from the bunk and asked how the hearing had gone, but already sensing that it had not gone in favor of the youth.

Jackson shrugged disinterestedly, making his way across the cell to the bunks. Silently he crawled up to his own and sat with his back against the wall and his feet dangling over the edge.

Raquel was still waiting for him to say something, but could see that no information was going to be forthcoming, so once again he asked Jackson how the hearing had turned out.

Jackson pulled his legs up under his chin before responding. "I go to trial in a six weeks' time," he replied flatly.

Raquel signed, sharing his friend's disappointment. He'd hoped, no doubt as Jackson himself had, that the boy's father would have withdrawn the charges against his own son. Raquel wondered – not for the first time - what sort of human being Lloyd Crane was?

"I'm so sorry, Jacky darling, so very sorry," Raquel sighed, moving towards the bunk and leaning against it while reaching out to clasp one of his hands in a supportive gesture. But Jackson may as well have been Mount Everest; he was distant and cold.

"Forget it. I have," he stated blandly. He fell silent, staring straight ahead at the wall on the other side of the cell, seeing it but not seeing it, becoming lost in some black and desolate part of his own soul, somewhere where he could be alone and didn't have to think about anything, or face any of the problems or the pain that made up the life that he was leading outside of his little piece of secure oblivion.

"You know what?" he said. 'The bastard didn't even turn up."

Raquel just looked at him sorrowfully.

"One day, Raquel, that bastard is going to get his. One day… I don't know when, but he's going to suffer and pay for everything he's done. He's going to be sorry that I was ever born. But 'til then, I'm going to beat this place. I've got to, now that I have a reason to get out of here. And if that means putting up with Bubba, I can do that." Jackson swallowed on something hard.

As much as it revolted him, he knew that he really could do it, because he had changed and become far stronger than he'd ever been before.

"But when I do get out of this shithole place, Bubba will pay, too," he nodded, committed to himself.

"Jacky darling," Raquel said, his voice sounding a little strained, "I can't believe how -how bitter you sound, and how vengeful you're becoming. Bunny, don't let this place do that to you. Jacky, bunny, you've got too many good qualities to let this place suck the life out of you, leaving you just an empty, embittered shell. What has happened to that kind, shy, innocent young man that I met but a couple of weeks ago, hmm?"

Jackson's eyes narrowed and flashed with contempt as he stared down, from his bunk, at his friend.

"What do you think happened to him?" Jackson cried. "He faced the real world and real life and finally fucking grew up!"

"But at what expense, I wonder?" Raquel said, seemingly thinking to himself out loud.

Jackson's crystalline eyes shone with awesome desperation and ferocity. "At any cost," he replied quietly.

"Why? Why feel this way about your life ...about the whole world? Why, Jacky?"

Jackson looked at Raquel for a moment, and at last remembered whom it was that he was talking to. Raquel was his friend. He was someone that had done a great deal for him, who'd tried to protect him and guide him. Raquel was someone that he could trust, and had done so far, even if Jackson hadn't always followed Raquel's advice-

Jackson didn't want to lose that friendship and it was important to him that Raquel understand him - Jackson Crane, and why surviving to obtain revenge was so important to him. And maybe in the process of talking about it to someone else, Jackson would be able to see it all a little clearer, too.