Tell Her, a mentalist fanfic

Title: Tell Her

Summary: "She's not going to understand it….I don't want her to understand it." Future fic.

A/N: It's been some time since I last wrote some FF and that was for a completely different fandom (Stargate – Sam/Jack yo) and this is my first Mentalist fic ever. So please forgive any glaring errors, silly mistakes or just general awfulness. (I started this, re-thought it but was too far in to stop as I'd become slightly too attached.)

None of the Mentalist is mine. Just borrowing them for a bit.

She'd known as soon as the words had left her mouth that it probably wasn't going to end well; "go outside and play with your friends" would always turn into Hannah getting involved in rough games with the neighbourhood boys; she would win the game (she was a Lisbon after all) but would usually get hurt in the process; the welling tears remaining unshed until she came back into the safety of their home. Cue the front door closing with a slight bang and the sound of a sniffly, whimpering seven year old approaching the kitchen; Hannah approached with an exaggerated expression of sadness, her hair slightly messed up from the plaits she had so perfectly placed that morning.

"Hurt my finger." Tears started to stream down her round cheeks, her bottom lip wobbled.

Teresa knelt down from her position at the kitchen island, reading the local newspaper with a steaming coffee and held the proffered pink little finger in her grasp, moved it to her lips and kissed it. Her glance moved back to her daughter's face, seemingly placated and the tears drying. "See? All better now." She kissed her daughter's nose and stood up, leaning against the counter.

She nodded enthusiastically with a smile and held the injured digit to her chest. "You can go play with your brother if you like? He's upstairs making a mess in his room with his toy cars." Instead of bounding up the stairs to her little brother's room as she usually would, Hannah lingered, tugging on the hem of her mother's top and pressed her head against her stomach, giving her a tight low hug. Teresa knew what this was; her daughter was conflicted about something. So she waited.

"Mommmmm?" Here it came, Teresa thought with a smile tugging at her lips.

"Yes sweetie?" She asked as she stroked her daughter's hair. She paused momentarily, quickly taking a sip of coffee to help what had been a ridiculously late evening (their regular Wednesday date night at the cinema turned into, as usual, something far more energetic, shushing each other to keep quiet as they giggled and stumbled into bed, aware that their bedroom was far too close to their children's)

Hannah still sounded reluctant to talk, sighing very slightly. "Where's dad?"

The sky had darkened since Teresa had consoled a teary Hannah, stars in the navy sky twinkling their way into visibility. She heard his car pull up onto the driveway, attuned to the sound after many years. She stood at the counter top, chopping vegetables for dinner, her mind with him (as it had been throughout the day) rather than on the task. Eventually, after shedding his coat and shoes in the hall, he padded into the kitchen; she waited for the inevitable hug, already enjoying the proximity, just knowing that he was here with her, that she had missed since the morning. His arms wrapped her waist from behind and he nuzzled into her neck.

"Hey." She said with a barely audible sigh.

"Hey." He replied in kind, kissing her neck and holding her closer.

"You okay?" She was always hesitant in asking, nervous for the answer, knowing what it would be already.

"Yeah." His response was strained (not unexpectedly) He clutched her tighter again before she turned around in his embrace so she could face him. His eyes were dark, brooding, as they always were on these days. She surveyed his face, glancing over his features and she couldn't help but feel a warm glow in her stomach that he was hers. Still, after all these years and a house and a marriage and two children, she could not believe that this was her life. A flash of guilt washed over her too which was never far away when he returned on these evenings; she knew where he'd been and what he'd felt. He pressed his lips against hers briefly, "It was fine. I promise." He kissed her again, this time more like "him" – playful, passionate, hers– she sensed his urge to give her reassurance as he held her waist. "You okay?" His tone changed almost instantaneously, lighter and more like the man she had the 360 or so other days of the year. He swiped a piece of raw carrot from the chopping board and headed towards the Tea Cupboard, a designated area that had almost been his first priority when they had moved into their present home.

"Hannah hurt herself again today," His head flicked towards her in response, wordless questions being asked, "Just an injured finger, don't worry." Teresa paused, "She seemed more upset about where you were." He stopped his preparation of tea and she heard him sigh. This was the second year running that his disappearance for the day had been questioned. "You need to talk to her."

He set down the spoon and the tea case and approached her at the kitchen island where she leant against the marble top. He moved to stand directly in front of her, gently lifting her to sit on top of the counter. "If you think you're going to distract me with that…" She muttered with a sly grin, "Then you've got another thing coming….."

"For once…." He smiled, a glimmer in his eye, a quick kiss to her lips as he moved to stand between her thighs, "That was not my intention." His expression became serious and like his daughter, his conflict was clear for her to see. It had been many years and several arguments before she could read Patrick Jane like an open book but now that she could, all she wanted was to remove any trace of pain that she saw in him, concealed or not. With that look on his face, it took some determination from her not to tell him to forget what she had just said and for their usual, contented evening to continue. "She's just a kid Teresa." Another sigh. "She's not going to understand….I don't want her to understand it."

"Neither do I. But I don't want her finding out when she's fifteen and curious and searches our names on the internet." He looked down at the tiled kitchen floor, acknowledging the terror that idea gave him – not having the chance to explain to her, not being able to tell her the truth rather than the media version of it. "Or worse still, some bratty kid tells her in the middle of school…." She didn't continue the various scenarios of Hannah's discovery, all of them too cruel and difficult to ponder. It was his story to tell, his family. But Hannah and Sam's as well.

He looked up into her eyes, his hands resting on her knees, hers lingering around his neck. She wrapped her ankles round the back of his thighs bringing him ever closer to her. "I don't know what to say." He admitted quietly; she could feel tension radiating from him in waves. "How can I weigh her down with this?"

"You're not weighing her down. You're being honest with her. Charlotte is part of her history too." He nodded somewhat reluctantly, "God knows, I'm not asking you to tell her the details, but she needs to understand that when you leave every so often for a day and that you might be not as playful, that you're not angry at her."

"She thinks that?" She felt his hands tense around her waist, his fingers, which had found their way underneath the hem of her vest, stopped their rhythmic stroking of her skin.

"She adores you, you know she does. And when you're quiet, she doesn't know why or that there's a reason for it." She paused, "She just thinks it's her fault." He stood in silence for a moment, a wave of guilt rushing through him; already failing his daughter, just like he failed his first; but this time, it was his urge to protect and not his own ego doing the failing. "Hey!" She said suddenly, her voice little more than a whisper as her hand touched his chin gently, pulling his face up to meet her. "Don't do this to yourself. Don't start falling down the rabbit hole, okay?" She smiled, her eyes sparkling and his whole soul lifted; the power she had over him was almost magical in it's proportions. "We're in this together. All four of us; you, me, Hannah and Sam." She kissed him, "Okay?"

"Okay."

The Janes ate dinner that night with the usual clamour; Hannah regaled them with how she'd beaten Will, a boy that Teresa was sure already had a crush on her daughter but demonstrated it by being as aloof as possible to her, at a game of cops and robbers. "I was the cop!" She grinned cheekily and high-fived her dad whilst Teresa helped Sam pile a ridiculous amount of potato on his fork. She grinned at her son, unable to believe his appetite before engaging in a somewhat one-sided conversation with him; three year olds, she was rapidly learning, seemed to be able to hold a conversation all by themselves in their own unique babble. Patrick watched as his wife mostly interjected with a "hmmm" or an enthusiastic "yes" and sometimes an "oh really?"; a smile plastered on his face as Hannah tapped him on the shoulder.

"Are you happy now?" She asked, sidling alongside him, looking up at him with a coy expression that she must have mastered from her mother.

Her words took him aback slightly, "I was happy earlier, silly monkey." He grinned at Hannah who replied in kind, her beaming features a profound mixture of his and his wife's. It never ceased to amaze him that Hannah and Sam were theirs; his children and hers. He looked over at Teresa, who at that very moment caught his eye and with a meaningful quirk of her eyebrows, clearly indicated what she thought he should be doing.

He turned his gaze back towards his girl, his Hannah, and ruffled her hair. "Fancy playing princess dolls?"

Hannah had scampered up the stairs almost straight away, her plaits bouncing over her shoulder. She led the way to her room, decked out in pink and purple fairy decorations which apparently had individual names (though the names changed like the wind – Hannah could be incredibly fickle sometimes) There were a smattering of his son's toys littering the floor and a baseball glove, old and battered, lay on the bed spread. "Is this how you hurt your finger?" He picked it up and eyed it with suspicion. He had never enjoyed sports but Hannah, ever her mother's daughter, was obsessed not only with princesses but also far too adversarial games.

"Maybe. Hurt it a few times." She said with another cheeky grin, the tears of the afternoon long forgotten. She dragged out a veritable treasure chest of princesses, dolls and fairy-type creature toys, most of which he could half remember purchasing in some overly bright toy store, Sam in his arms tugging at his jacket and Teresa piling more and more toys into the basket, finding it impossible to resist the urge to spoil her children. Hannah dove to her knees and looked up at him, "Which one do you want to be?" He slowly lowered to the floor, his knees had started to feel their age and he rested his back against the leg of the bed. He picked up a purple haired princess (or was it supposed to be an otherworldly sprite of some kind, he couldn't quite tell) and turned it over in his hands.

"Mom told me you were sad earlier. And not just about your finger." He felt sick. Actually, truly sick.

Hannah stopped and looked at him, "I thought you were mad at me." Trust her to get straight to the point, no messing. "You usually say goodbye to us and then we go to the window and you look round and wave back." She paused, "But you didn't. Sam didn't mind, he's little… but I did. You looked sad and you just went." She rubbed her eye, tiredness beginning to creep in, "No looking back. Thought I'd done something to make you sad."

"I'm sorry. You would never make me sad. " He sighed, beckoning her closer. She snaked towards him, doll in hand and snuggled into his side; he felt her small body relax and he took a deep breath. "I have to tell you some things and this is because you're a big girl now and I trust you."

"Okay." Her little hand started playing with the doll's hair. He watched her hands, remembering when she had been born and seeing those little hands for the first time, clutching at his fingers, the sheer immensity of the gift that he had been given had overwhelmed him.

"A long time ago, before I met mom….." He began, "I was married to another lady." He watched as her hand stopped stroking the hair of her doll, "And we had a little girl. Her name was Charlotte.

There was a long silence. He could feel her confusion, her little brain working over the words she had just heard. He started to think that Teresa was wrong, that this was too much. "Oh." Her little hand moved to his, so small against his own and she squeezed. "Where are they?"

He swallowed, a suffocating knot forming in his throat. "We were very happy," He began, holding her hand and stroking the soft skin, "But there was a man, a bad man, who took them away from me."

"Where did he take them?" She looked up at him, her eyes inquisitive. They were just like her mother's and they had the same power over him.

He swallowed again, the pain ever increasing as he tried to speak, to try and explain. "He hurt them. And they aren't here any more."

"Oh." She sniffed and clutched his hand, "Are they in heaven? Like Poppy?"

He raised a small smile; his daughter was taking after her mother, who took their children to mass and Sunday School ("I went and I turned out okay, didn't I?") with her belief in the Almighty. They'd had a funeral for Poppy, a much loved grey hamster, along with a burial and flowers. Despite his feelings towards theism, his daughter seemed to believe fervently in The Man Upstairs and took much consolation from her beloved Cookie being in the clouds with him. "Yeah…" He paused, ignoring his own disbelief in life after death as he looked at her hopeful face, "Yeah, they are." He waited another moment before continuing, gathering his thoughts, "I was very sad. Very sad. But I met mom. And slowly, I became less sad. And after a long time, I realised that I was less sad was because I loved her and she made me happy." Her hand squeezed his in reassurance and he wondered when exactly his little girl became so grownup. "And then, we got married. And a while after that, we had you and Sam."

A quiet overtook them as she contemplated her father's words; he knew it would be many years until she understood the history of her parents, of her father's lost family, of the pain and trauma that had been caused to so many people over so many years. And yet, she would learn that he made it out. He made it here; here to this girl's bedroom with pink curtains and Disney posters, to this house with his beautiful son whose eyes twinkled with mischievousness and he made it here, to his Lisbon, who patiently and quietly waited for him over a decade, who said "I do" at the altar and changed everything, irrevocably, forever.

"I'm sorry." She said quietly. She moved to hug him, her little arms clamped around his waist and he rubbed her back, consoling her and himself. She remained practically clamped to him for several minutes, both sitting in silence – he was half pondering whether she'd fallen asleep – when she stirred, finally letting go of him, her little arms pushed herself up onto her knees, coming face to face with him. Her face had an expression of seriousness, her little mouth pursed. "Can I see them?" His eyebrows knitted in confusion, which she clearly sense as she continued, "I mean, do they have stones? Where you put flowers? Like Poppy?"

He hadn't quite expected to say yes. To take her there, where he'd finally done what he had promised himself he would, felt like an anathema; her innocence (his little family, his redemption) put against what he had done for Angela and Charlotte, was the ultimate in disparity. Teresa used to come with him before Hannah was born, standing by his side – he would always just about hear her little prayer, her fingers would always reach for the cross around her neck, her other hand firmly holding his (her hand was warm and safe and home, tethering him to reality and to a new life that he never felt he quite deserved) The last time she had come with him, her stomach was large (holding his child, his little girl) but her tears were larger; they had run down her face silently, no words coming from herm unwilling to take any of his attention away from the headstones of his first wife and daughter.

"You'll be okay." Teresa stood at the door of their house, leaning against the frame, watching him intently. Sam was perched on her hip, playing with a lock of her hair, looking between his mother and father, then burying his face in her neck, clearly still sleepy after clambering into their bed at 5am. Patrick stood opposite her, looking down at his feet on their wooden porch. His gaze drifted upwards and he couldn't help but smile; the previously Special Agent Teresa Lisbon, all seriousness and by-the-book-don't-play-games-with-me-Jane, with a baggy hockey jersey on, her tumbling dark hair pinned up into a top knot, their son in her arms, a sleepy expression on her face and looking like the most beautiful woman he had seen. "What?" She asked and he suddenly became aware that a small smile, lips curving upwards and demeanour easing, had unconsciously appeared on his face.

"Nothing." He smiled again, leaning forward and kissing her. "We'll pick up some groceries on the way back." She nodded and Sam took that moment to swing round to hug him goodbye, clambering into his dad's arms. "You and mom going to have some fun play time?"

"Uh huh." Sam nodded enthusiastically, "We're going to make cookies!" Sam leaned back in his father's arms, "Biggggg ones!"

Teresa watched with quiet amusement on her face as Patrick and Sam, still ensconced in his father's embrace with Sam's little legs wrapped around Patrick's torso, talked conspiratorially about how they were going to eat as many cookies as possible, seemingly in the shortest time possible. Leaving the two men in her life chattering away, she turned round in the doorway and watched Hannah sit on the stairs, lace up her trainers, a Disney bag firmly attached to her back. She didn't know how to feel about Hannah being confronted with the reality of Patrick's past; she had dealt with the information startlingly well for a child whose only experience of death, thankfully, had been the much missed Poppy. Hannah had seemed more contemplative since her and Patrick's "talk"; one morning, Teresa had found her sitting in the grass, making an intricate daisy chain and declared that she was "just thinking." She'd been as buoyant and chatty and mischievous as ever, but she had caught her daughter, on more than one occasion, gazing at an unaware Patrick with an intense expression on her little face, reflective and quiet.

"You okay Han?" Teresa shook herself out of her own thoughts as her daughter approached with a big nod. Hannah's hair was as dark as her own and Teresa had spent part of the morning plaiting her hair as neatly as she could at Hannah's fervent request ("I want to look nice." She had said in a hushed voice, "It's important") Hannah smoothed out her shirt, Teresa knew it was her favourite as it was usually saved for church, and hugged her mother's waist, pressing her cheek against Teresa's stomach.

"I love you." Hannah whispered, her voice . "Don't go anywhere."

She felt tears prick at her eyes and she did her best to stop them from falling. "Not going anywhere kid." Patrick eyed them both from his position on the porch, now further away from the door with Sam in his arms, both of them giggling about something.

"You okay?" He asked softly and she could just about hear his words.

"Yep." Hannah answered for them both and she grinned at her dad, walking towards him and tugging at Sam's foot which was positioned at her eye level. "Come on Sam, you go with mom."

After the exchange of children, Hannah buckled herself in the car, clutching her brightly coloured backpack and Patrick looked round to ensure that she was safely strapped in; she knew the routine off by heart and never failed to fasten it correctly, but he never failed in making sure. "Done."

"Music?"

"Frozen!"

He grinned.

The grounds were empty; he guessed that most people had alternative arrangements for such a beautiful Saturday morning than visiting such a maudlin, though attractively maintained, cemetery. They walked hand in hand and he guided her past the stone memories of others – he glanced down intermittently at her, judging her reactions warily. She continued walking, occasionally squeezing his hand or leaning her head against his arm as they walked. Knowing Hannah, this was probably for his sake more than her own – he was starting to realise that he had a remarkably strong daughter, stronger than he could have ever anticipated – though, he should have known, being that she was the daughter of his Lisbon.

Before he realised it, they stood facing two stones that still, so many years later, had the power to fell him. They were well maintained with new flowers, courtesy of his regular arrangement delivery, as always, and a nausea rose in him, a sense that had never lessened no matter how many years passed or how many times he returned.

They stood in silence, a peaceful quiet had sunk over them, hand in hand. "You okay?" He broke the silence first, ready to leave whenever Hannah was ready.

"Uh huh." She confirmed, her voice was low and sad. She broke from his hand and took off her backpack whilst looking up at him. "Can I do something?"

"Sure." He said, puzzled before watching her open her Disney bag, unzipping it carefully on the grass. To his immense surprise, she took out a bunch of flowers, the origins of which he recognised as being their own garden, tied together with what seemed to be purple ribbon.

She picked up the bag in one hand and the flowers in the other and knelt down between the two headstones, turning first to Angela's with the flowers in her hand. "Hi." She said quietly, so quietly that he barely caught her words. "I brought these. I hope you like them. They're from our garden." Tears welled in his eyes as he watched his daughter act with such tenderness – how he could he have doubted her ability to understand this? "Dad says all women like flowers." She giggled slightly, "He gets them for my mom when he's done something silly." She paused, "I hope you know dad's happy. I know he still loves you and misses you." Another pause. "I hope you're happy too. God will look after you. I've asked him." She touched Angela's headstone, almost reverently before she moved to kneel closer to Charlotte, resting the bag on her thighs. "And I brought you this." She pulled out Kimberley, Hannah's favourite doll with rainbow coloured hair. "I don't need it any more. So I want you to have it." She rested the doll against the side of the stone, propped up at the corner. "I have lots. This one is for you." She touched the headstone, ran her fingers over Charlotte's name before she patted Kimberley on the head. "Bye Kimmy. Look after Charlotte for me. She's special."

Hannah re-joined her father to stand at look at the graves; she saw the tears in his eyes, the same sad look as he had worn the other day. "It's okay dad." She hugged him, slipping her small hand inside his. "They're okay." She started to move back towards the direction in which they had arrived and they began their walk towards where they had left the car. "I asked mom if it was okay for me to pray for them. I wasn't sure if you had to pray for people that were still here." Her voice seemed lighter, a weight having been lifted from her small shoulders.

"And what did she say?" He asked, wiping his eyes with his free hand as they walked, promising himself that he would cherish every word from his children, every moment spent with his wife. Every second of it.

"She said I could. Mom said she had been praying for them every night for years, praying that they would be happy." Hannah smiled as her father contemplated her words. After everything, Teresa still continue to astound him in ways he would never be able to guess. "I really love mom."

"Me too." He replied. "Me too."