Author's note: Written for the Paint It Red October 2012 Monthly Challenge - prompt: Surrender.
No idea as to where this dark plot bunny came from, so don't even ask...
Surrender
Passers-by didn't even notice the girl curled up into a ball in a dark corner of the alley, nor her stifled sobs as her whole body trembled with cold as well as with anger and fear.
She wasn't going back this time. That brute of a stepfather wouldn't lay his dirty paws on her anymore.
Yet she had nowhere to go now, no friends she could turn to. She was utterly and completely alone in this world; all her belongings consisted of the clothes she was wearing and fifty bucks she'd stolen from her mother's purse.
When a man in a duffel coat stopped beside her and held out his hand, she felt compelled to follow him – though she couldn't say why.
He took her into his apartment, fed her and offered her his bed. As she lay beneath warm covers she wondered what he was going to ask her in return.
Perhaps she just didn't care.
The following day he brought her new clothes. A gorgeous red dress with matching stilettoes.
She took a long shower, combed her hair with great care and then put those things on. Who was that smart young woman staring back from the mirror?
When her rescuer gave her a suggestive smirk and dropped a kiss on her bare shoulder, she closed her eyes and simply surrendered.
xxx
She had come a long way when her master finally sent her as a bait to lure in his longtime foe.
Patrick Jane was the ghost of a man, battered and broken – and she couldn't help wondering how he managed to go on.
Then he told her Red John had murdered his family, and for the very first time her loyalty to the man who'd protected her for all those years wavered slightly. She'd always turned a blind eye on his so-called mission, but she could hardly believe that even John had the right to take the life of an innocent child.
Jane kept on telling her about his beautiful wife and his most beloved daughter. How he'd found them on that fateful night, as Red John's signature loomed on the wall.
She began to understand his drive for revenge. Little by little he was managing to turn her to his side – like a twisted version of Obi-Wan Kenobi.
When he offered her a new life together, all she could do was just surrender.
xxx
Turned out that both of her lovers had been using her all the time.
Jane discarded her as soon as he got Red John – exactly as John would've probably done had he been the one to get a hold on Jane first.
For all his talk about grief and guilt, he'd been surprisingly quick to fall into Teresa Lisbon's arms. The same woman her late master used to fantasize about.
So she put the results of her pregnancy test in a white envelope and addressed it to Jane. Then she lay down on the bed and emptied her bottle of sleeping pills.
This one would be her last surrender.