Title: Dreaming in Red
Rating: T
Disclaimer: Will I ever own The Mentalist? I don't think so.
Summary: One shot. "You can't open your eyes a little bit, Grace. You got to open them all the way if you want to see the truth of things."
This is iloveplotbunnies attempt to get me back into writing. I blame her. However, I figured I should also give you guys something different. So, have fun with this!
Grace Van Pelt clicked out of the Internet browser that had been open on her computer. She had been staring at it all day and her eyes were starting to strain from all of the squinting she had been doing. She swore that she could feel the bags forming under her eyes. This strain had been caused by the current case she and the team had been working on and, unfortunately, it had them all on edge.
She noticed, however, that she and Jane seemed to be the only two left in the office. Boss had left, about an hour ago, for a work event with the heads of the department. Rigsby had told her earlier that day that he and Cho were leaving to go and grab a few beers. He had offered her an invitation, but she denied him. She had wanted to go, but she had felt the need to get a head start on some of her piled up paperwork, which she had been skillfully avoiding all week.
She had always felt that she sacrificed most of those outings in order to prove to Lisbon that she could be useful in other areas of the job.
Jane got to go out into the field. She thought as she pushed aside her long, red hair from out of her face. He didn't even have a gun, let alone any training.
She was a CBI agent and the consultant got more field time than she did. She turned to glare at the, now sleeping, consultant. She shook her head and walked into the kitchenette.
When she returned, with an apple in her hand, she noticed Jane had decided to grace her with his, now conscious, presence. He sat upright on his couch; trying to, once again, get a feel for his surroundings. There were occasions where she would be sitting in her uncomfortable desk chair and wonder what the consultant thought or dreamt about when he laid there. Was he thinking of the current case? Or was his mind all over the place? She could only imagine, as she sat there now, what he could have been thinking or dreaming about just five minutes ago. Jane's mind, to her, had always been a strange place and she wondered if it got even worse when he was sleeping.
Her body jumped as she heard him greet her. "Hello Grace!" She just grunted in his general direction.
He spoke again. "What is it, Grace? Overworked?"
How could she possibly be overworked? She thought. The Boss never even gave her the chance to become overworked, especially when she also played favorites to the, supposedly, "not psychic" consultant.
"I'm fine, Jane." She lied. "Thanks for the concern?"
She said this with question in her tone. He then responded to her. "Well Grace," he started, "ever since what happened with O'Laughlin, I've been concerned about you."
This answer shocked her. From all of the time she had spent with Patrick Jane he only seemed to have one thing on his mind – Red John. If he wasn't thinking about Red John, he was finding new ways to irritate Boss and continually pry into the personal lives of her and the team.
"Jane." She sighed with frustration. She hated when people brought up O'Laughlin. She had been trying to let go and move on. Unfortunately, people just kept deciding to bring it up. "That was months ago, almost a year. I'm fine."
"Grace," he soothed. "You don't just get over killing someone, especially not someone you once loved. That is, unless you're a sociopath, which, in all of the time I've spent with you, I can assure you, you're not."
"What a relief!" She gave with heavy sarcasm. "Thank you for reassuring me, Jane that I am not a sociopath. I knew there was a reason we kept you around - to point out things that people already knew about themselves."
She was too tired to go ten rounds with Patrick Jane. They have already had their share of some pretty heavy debates in the past. They had differences in belief systems. She felt that even when someone was gone she could talk to him or her. Jane, however, did not feel such things. He told her that O'Laughlin hadn't really appeared to her when she had been lost in the woods months back. She knew that he hadn't really appeared, logically, it had just felt so real to her at the time, like a dream that she wished she had woken up from sooner.
O'Laughlin himself had almost been like a dream. He had been too good to be true; the hallucination that she had had of him had told her, "You can't open your eyes a little bit, Grace. You got to open them all the way if you want to see the truth of things."
She still had no idea what he had meant then, she was still unsure of what he meant now. The statement had been so vague that it had held no meaning. However she had been repeating that to herself over and over again – constantly. Hoping that maybe, just maybe, if she took the advice it would help her out. Or maybe even help catch Red John.
She pushed back the memories of that night, but before she could get up to go home Jane stopped her with his words. "I know you think about him, Grace. I see it in your eyes, in your face, in your body language even. You still care about him."
She gave him a scowl. She was in no mood to discuss this with him.
He continued to speak. "I know how it feels Grace – to lose someone. Someone you love or once loved."
"Why are you telling me this?" she questioned him. The last time she and Jane had had a conversation about O'Laughlin, Jane had said, "You could try and forget it or you could learn to live with it."
In all honesty, she had been trying to forget it, but unfortunately people liked to bring up her past. Even though they knew that she had absolutely no desire to ever talk about it.
He sighed and gave her an all-knowing smile. "I'm telling you this because even despite our last conversation about him – I'm always around, Grace. If you ever need to talk to someone about it."
She tilted her head at him. She gave him a half-smile and grabbed her purse. Before she headed out of the bullpen she turned her body around.
"Thank you, Jane."