Red Headlights
Not mine. Song by 5 for fighting
It was Monday. Most people hate Mondays. I do. But then again I have a life. Friends, family things to do. Teresa Lisbon does not. If you asked her who she was she would reply with her title and not her name. She's just as good at her job as everyone else. She closes cases. She puts the bad guys in jail, sometimes, she makes mistakes. People die. She goes home alone. Again. She is a killer. She has a gun. When the bad guys threaten the people she cares about she kills them. She saves some lives, ends others. Her favorite color is green. She has stopped thinking of them as people. They are filed instead of buried. The victims and the killers together. She is not the best detective in the world. She is not the worst. She makes mistakes she is human, she is broken. She loves Mondays.
It was Monday. One Monday 10 years ago there was a rainstorm. On another Monday Patrick Jane came home to find his family dead. Nothing bad ever happens on Tuesday. Patrick Jane is not really a detective. He solves cases but he doesn't really care. There is only one killer he wants to find. He is not perfect either. He makes mistakes all the time. He doesn't know how to ride a bike. When he was ten he had a dog. He has a picture of it somewhere. His mother is in the picture too. The dogs name was William. He doesn't remember his mothers name. Patrick Jane doesn't know this yet. I wonder if he will be disappointed when he finds out that his family's killer isn't perfect. Mistakes and flaws make a person human. If the man Patrick Jane wants to kill is human it will make things a lot harder. Because, you see Red John is saved his life. He owes him one. Patrick Jane is a liar. He is a con man. He is selfish and arrogant. He can be a idiot. He is not a killer. He hates Mondays.
It was Monday. Teresa Lisbon was in her office. Patrick Jane was on his couch. She was waiting for a phone call. He was waiting for absolution. He would be waiting a long time. The phone rang. She picked it up she told the person on the other end that she would be right there. She walked out of the building. Her team followed well, most of her team did. someone was missing. I bet you can guess who. Jane was on his couch. Asleep. Lisbon shook him awake.
"Jane, Jane!"
"Who died?" he asks.
Now you can imagine that this becomes significantly less funny when some one actually has died. But she knows how to deal with Jane. She has had practice. So she rolls her eyes and walks away. She doesn't say a word. And he follows, like he always has. Her charming, irritating, broken, blond, shadow.
Lisbon thinks once in a while, that maybe, if things had been just a little bit different that she might have met Jane in a very different way. That maybe if Jane's family was still alive, if Lisbon had gotten married, that maybe they might have met taking their children to the park, that Lisbon and the woman whose name Jane has never mentioned might have been the kind of friends that met up after work to drink coffee and gossip about the neighbours. That their children might have been best friends, that Jane might have joked that he saw Lisbon more than he saw his wife. Maybe Jane and her husband could have golfed and barbequed together. But Lisbon knows that Jane doesn't golf.
Jane is a little bit in love with Lisbon. Not enough to tell her, not even enough to make a difference. But enough to be willing to lay down his life for her in a second. But not enough.
Patrick Jane is humming. Chances are when's said and done we'll be the lucky ones, who make it all the way, though you say I could be your answer….
"Eyes on the road!"
His blue eyes flicker over to Lisbon then back to the road. He is driving 20 miles over the speed limit.
"Slow down!" She tells him.
He goes just a little bit faster.
"You have to get over your irrational fear of fast cars."
"And I am not afraid of fast cars, I'm afraid of being in fast cars with you."
Then a pair of bright headlights sweeps across the front window, throwing their faces into sharp relive. And Lisbon's face is the last thing he sees before everything goes black.
… Nothing lasts forever, no matter how it feels today…
Lisbon has lived in California all her life. So it stands to reason that she is sitting in the same waiting room that she was when the doctors told her that her mother was dead. The same waiting room when she was told that they couldn't save her father. The same waiting room where she realized that she would be alone for the rest of her life. People she loves seem to have a funny way of dying on her.
Don't worry about Jane. He will be fine, a few cuts, some bruises and one hell of a headache. He came back to work three days later. He solved cases, he flirted with Lisbon. She never let him drive the van again though.
When she was six Lisbon's parents took her to France. Her mother gave her a pen. The year after, she lost the pen, and her mother. She remembers this because that is the last happy memory she has of her parents. Together. Lisbon hated her father. Not because he was mean or abusive, which he wasn't. Not even because he was a drunk, which he was. She hated him because he loved her mother to death and for that she would never forgive him.
Now I know that you don't want to hear about Lisbon's childhood, not really. You want to hear about what happens to Lisbon and Jane. But I'm afraid that I can't tell you. You see, I have told you my part of the story. The part that one way or another, I know happened. But now, now it's up to Jane and Lisbon to finish the story. It belongs to them now. Maybe, Jane will kill Red John. Maybe he will go to jail. Maybe he won't. Maybe Lisbon will cover for him. Maybe they will get married and have a little girl named Kaitlynn. Maybe Jane will get hit by a bus, or drown, or get shot, and Lisbon will be no closer to Red John. Maybe Lisbon will get tired of California and move to London. Maybe there she will marry a man who looks nothing like Jane. Maybe she will have a little boy called Patrick. Maybe he will spill tea on the only picture she has of Jane. And maybe like that picture her memories of him will blur with time until she cannot quite remember the color of his eyes. But I cannot tell you, because I do not know.