Disclaimer: There would be some more Jisbon ship-teasing in The Mentalist if it were mine.

A/N: Drabblish thing. And there are teeny-tiny slight implied spoilers for the subplot of recent episodes and a major event at the of end S3.

And a Maple Bough Breaks

Someday soon, he'll crash.

Teresa knows this, and knows that there's little she can do to stop it - well, short of physically strapping him down and putting him on 24-hour surveillance. Sometimes, this doesn't sound like such a ridiculous idea. It is Jane, after all: Patrick Jane, Walking PR Disaster. She can picture it: whenever there was a case they would just plop him in a wheelchair, and Rigsby could push him around crime scenes all day and take him to talk to suspects. Lower him down if he needs to sniff a body, or something. And if he started acting like an ass they could gag him. Portable crime-solving machine, multiple easy-to-use settings: Silent, Loud, Irritating as All Hell.

She wouldn't have to worry that he was off breaking into maximum security prisons or getting kidnapped or killing impostor Red Johns. She wouldn't have to spend countless hours coming up with ways to get him out of the next round of trouble. He would always be there, right there in the chair. Safe.

But, she supposes, then he wouldn't be Jane - because who is Patrick Jane if not the most unpredictable, slippery, sly person she knows. And if he couldn't go where he wanted when he wanted and irritate who he wanted, he wouldn't be nearly as effective. He would be a lot more grating on the nerves, though.

But dammit if he wouldn't just be safe. Sometimes, when she thinks she's going to be overwhelmed with the sheer frustration of trying to manage him and keep all their jobs in-tact, she realizes that that is all she wants for him. Safety. Stability. A chance to finally move on. And in some abstract way she wants to be the one to provide it, because otherwise she won't really believe it's there.

. . . This is the train of thought she boards at the end of a long workday. It's arrival means it's time for a coffee break - and since he seems to be drinking tea in the break room more than anything else, this inevitably leads to another Jane encounter. Which, for all the irony, is almost always exactly what she needs.

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