Title: Over
Disclaimer: I do not own the mentalist... great... now I'm depressed...
Rating: T
Pairings: None, some Jisbon/Jello undertones
Warnings: couple of bad words, mention of violence
Spoilers: Hightower and her influence on RigsPelt... if you don't know what I mean and if you don't want to be spoiled don't read.
Summary: It's over. It is finally over.
AN: Have you ever waited for a certain moment and it just didn't happen? Well... this was inspired by "blood money" though there are no spoilers since it has nothing to do with it... see... during blood money I was waiting the whole time for Jane to finally realize that he had screwed up or that he was screwing up... and nothing happened... and Lisbon's fatalistic "I knew I was gonna get fired from the beginning" just really riled me up... so I'm getting back at them with an anti-climactic ending... to a long unsolved case.
AN1.b: You are feeling very relaxed, you are taking a deep breath, you are thinking of a place you feel safe at... you are leaving a review ;)
Over
It's finally over. And none of the things that we have all been worrying about happened. Jane's not dead and neither am I. Red John is dead, but I am not forced to lead Jane away from his body in cuffs (or a straightjacket for that matter). There was no chase. No blood-written hints on walls. No more smiley-faces. No accessories or copy-cats. No nothing really. It wasn't even us who found him. Wasn't us who caught him, who went through his house and found the gruesome trophies he had taken from his victims.
He's just a regular, white collar guy. He lives in a suburb. He lends his lawn-mower to his neighbor and walks the little poodle of the old lady down the street when she's not feeling well. His wife suffers from OCD, apparently she cleans the house meticulously three times a day. He works at a bank, gets people their money, cashes checks in... that sort of work. He doesn't look creepy, his voice on his voicemail sounds absolutely normal. He has no criminal record, never even got a parking ticket.
There's a hidden bunker in his shed. His Kingdom, his wife doesn't go there, apparently, and it is messy and dirty in there, when one compares it to the abnormal shiny-ness of the house. The neighbor with the lawn-mower who's going through the shed for the Missus finds it. In the bunker are locks of hair, pieces of torn cloth, little figurines, a couple of books, a pair of sunglasses. Things Red John took from the houses and apartments of his victims, things that are lined up on shelves. There are also newspaper clippings, anything about 'Red John' goes. Anything about Jane, too. And the team. The worst are the observation pictures. They all show the same person. Me.
Me shopping at the supermarket, me at a crime scene, me leaning against my car, me drinking coffee with Jane. Me. Me. Me. Me walking through my apartment in only a football jersey. Me sipping a glass of wine, sitting on the windowsill... wearing nothing but lingerie.
There is a letter. It's addressed to Jane. It's about how he'll never learn, how he shouldn't have gotten so close, how Red John will kill anything Jane loves. How my death is really Jane's fault. The profiler who looks at the cellar thinks that Red John wanted to wait for sure till I 'belonged' to Jane. I ask the guy what that's supposed to mean. He assumes that he wanted to wait till Jane slept with me. Apparently that kind of primitive, obsessive way of thinking would be one of Red John's closely guarded secrets. Such a nice man on the ouside... such a monster within.
Jane isn't allowed onto the grounds. Hightower made sure of that... there will be no foul-ups, even if there will be no trial. She thinks Jane might steal evidence, attack someone, do something... wrong. He vanishes into the night. I see him standing against my car, I drove us here. He looks over and waves then he turns around and walks away. I'm sure he's going to talk to the neighbor with the lawn-mower, or the old lady with the poodle, or someone else who knew this psychopath that lived so inconspicuously in this nice little suburban neighborhood. Except that a couple of hours later I find that he didn't. No one has seen him. The officers talking in the street remember watching him walk away, around the corner. They assumed he'd be fine. The emergency lights on the hoods of their cars are driving me insane. Their piercing brightness is stabbing my eyes, irritating and distracting me while I'm trying to figure out where Jane is.
I rush towards his house, the place he exists in. He doesn't live there. I keep seeing horrible scenes in my head. I try to shave time off the drive by becoming as lead-footed as Jane on his worst day. I try to focus on something else. Anything else. My head isn't a good place to be right now.
Broken ceramic pots and silver paint chips, I walk to the edge of the cliff, deep down below me the wreck of Jane's car is surrounded by blood red algae. I can't believe the Monster died painlessly in a car accident. Jane hanging on a red rope from the banister on his staircase. Clipped by a drunk driver, the beast died instantly. Jane's lifeless body, under the grotesque grimace on the wall of what once was his bedroom, blood trickling from the hole in his temple, part of his head blown off on the other side. The bastard didn't even know what hit him.
My mother bled to death in her car... all alone with no one there to help her, to talk to her, to comfort her. When I was a child people told me that she didn't know what was happening, that she didn't feel any pain. When I grew up I read the medical files, the police reports. My mother was conscious for several long minutes, up to half an hour, one doctor wrote. She left a message written in her own blood. There's a reason why I never objected to having Jane on my team, why I took him on even though I knew it would end in disaster, most likely with me getting fired. I have my own demons. My own messages in blood red. Tell Terry I love her. Tell the boys I'll always watch over them. Tell Mark to be strong for the kids.
I finally reach the house. Jane's car is parked close to the front door. The entranceway is empty, there is nothing on the stairs. The door to the room at the end of the hall is open. The wall I see is colored in a perfect, pristine white, the room is completely empty. The smell of fresh paint lingers in the air. The smiley has vanished. Almost like the menace that has finally perished. I can barely breathe. He's gone. They're both gone. I don't think they're going to come back. This is the place that Jane exists in, exists for. Used to... now it's abandoned. Finally left behind.
I collapse then and there. He's gone. I'll never see him again. I am so sure of that. I can feel it in my heart. No, in the pieces of what was a heart before someone put it into a blender. I don't know how long I lie on the hardwood floor, gasping for air like a fish on dry land, drowning in tears.
When I get up the sun is just rising beyond the horizon. I walk down to the beach. I'm going to watch the endless empty space in front of me, the colors chasing each other over the skies, just one more time. Then I will get into my car. And I will drive it of the cliff. There is no emotion behind that decision. It's just that. A decision. A choice. I did my duty, I fulfilled my task. It's time to move on.
He sits on the sand. His body is shivering in the morning cold. The wind is running through his blond curls. His suit is rumpled and he looks like he's been crying. He's watching the sunrise. He doesn't turn toward me, but he pats the place next to him in silent invitation. I walk over and let myself fall into the sand. I don't take his hand and he doesn't hug me. There are no words of comfort. Somehow we both know that there is nothing to be said. I dig through my pockets, scared for a moment that I might have lost it sometime during this long night. But I find it and I hold it out to him. He blinks. Finally he takes the small evidence bag into his own hands. Inside a wedding band sparkles red in the cold sunlight. Next to it sits a pink barrette.
He takes a long, deep breath. "I never realized her ring had been taken." He utters a long string of swearwords.
I lie back in the sand and allow my body to rest and my hands to shiver with exhaustion.
Hours later we are joined by Rigbsy, Van Pelt and Cho. They carry cold pizza, warm alcohol and a familiar feeling of normalcy. Jane keeps coughing. I think he has pneumonia. Van Pelt keeps making optimistic remarks. Not about what happened but about life in general. Rigsby keeps agreeing against his own will, he hasn't gotten over the break up, yet, he doesn't want to be reminded about the fact that life goes on. Cho says about five or six sentences, none of them are of great value to the situation, somehow they calm me more than Van Pelts platitudes and Rigsby's predictability. Nobody talks about moving on. The ghosts are still with us. When we finally leave the beach and arrive back at the house Jane takes a 'for sale' sign out of his car and puts it where it can easily be seen. Then he gets into his car and drives away into the coming night. The second one since the death of Red John.
He doesn't appear at work for two weeks. His cell is turned off, he's not in his apartment in Sacramento. This time I am so sure that he's gone forever I allow myself to sleep in his mostly unused bed. He finds me there when he gets released from the hospital where he went to get his pneumonia taken care of. Late afternoon on my Saturday off. He walks into the room and sees me. He doesn't look surprised. He comes over and sits down on the side of the bed.
"I still have nightmares."
I nod wordlessly. Nothing to say to that. I'm not surprised either. The death of the perpetrator rarely ever helps the recovery of the victims.
"I'm not leaving."
I'm surprised about that. I don't need to say it, he reads it in my eyes. He smiles at me and offers me a cup of tea. I get up to have a shower. When I enter the living room he's sitting on the couch, two steaming cups sit on the side table. He hands me a piece of folded paper... origami... whatever... it looks like a bird but it's not one of his famous paper-cranes. It looks like a parrot.
"They're monogamous."
I look up. "Really." A statement not a question.
He shrugs, throwing me one of his 'Jane-looks'. It's the slightly 'insecure' one he uses when he wants me to believe he isn't an arrogant jerk while he's being an arrogant jerk and while he knows that I know that he is being an arrogant jerk. Sometimes I wonder why he uses that one at all. Gets him nowhere. Most of the time it just pisses me off.
"I'm not leaving, Lisbon."
"That's what you said earlier."
"You don't believe me." There is something in his eyes. It could almost be hurt.
"Why would I? I don't trust you, remember?"
He frowns, then he grins his most dazzling smile. "You will!"
"Won't."
"Will."
"Won't."
...
When I enter the office on Monday morning the first thing I hear is "Will." from the couch.
"Organized Crime, take a left by the elevator."
"What?" He sits up staring at me like I just did something extremely interesting.
"Will Johnson, the new agent with OCU? You were asking me where you could find him, right?" I can't keep the smirk of my face, even though I know that he's just letting it look like I have the upper hand.
"Lisbon, Lisbon, Lisbon... your memory seems to be impaired. Did you get hit over the head within the last 12 hours?"
"I don't think so, I can't remember." I put on my most vacuous expression, before I turn away and walk to my office. Behind me Jane jumps off the couch.
"Maybe it would be a good idea if I hypnotized you, try to find out if you'll remember, it might help you to... bridge the gap."
He's annoying me. It's normal. It's what I am used to. It's how things are meant to be. I sit down behind my desk and grab the memos that someone put into my in-tray. First one is from Hightower, something about missing evidence from Red John's lair. Screw her. In the bullpen Van Pelt is removing her coat. I can hear Rigsby's voice from the kitchen, talking to someone. A moment later Cho comes round the corner, he walks briskly towards my office and sticks his head through the door.
"We've got a case, boss, business man was found dead in his office. Local Police can't decide whether it was suicide or murder."
I grab my badge and my gun and take a deep breath.
"Are you sure you don't want me to hypnotize you before we go?"
Jane is annoying me. Rigsby who just entered the bullpen is munching on a doughnut while mooning over Van Pelt. Van Pelt is all business, checking for some information on the new case that Cho told the Locals to send to her account. Cho is grabbing his book from his desk. Everything is back to normal. Life is good.
The end
AN2: *sigh* write a fic about someone who never does what's expected and look what it does... it gets totally out of hands! This one was supposed to be much shorter, no suicidal tendencies where to be discussed and lisbons past wasn't supposed to be in here either... who cares it is what it is ;)
PS. I have no idea what lisbon's dad's name is, so I made one up. Also I don't remember any particulars about the accident that her mom died in... if you have more accurate info tell me... and don't forget to review! Reviews make me :D (I'm new to the fandom so... is it creepy if i put a smiley face under a mentalist fic ;)