Disclaimer: Believe me, if I could pay off my student loans by writing fanfic, it'd be done by now.

Spoilers: 7x10, Nothing Gold Can Stay

A/N: Oh, curses. I really wanted to get this finished before 7x11 aired, but alas, the inconvenience of having to work for a living is interfering with my fic ambitions. So giving you the first half now in hopes that I won't lose heart when tomorrow's episode completely undoes all my hopes and suppositions. Please forgive any typos, posting in a bit of a rush so I can go back to writing right away.

Also, as a side note, I've decided lovesick!Jane is my favorite thing to write ever.

xxxx

Jane drove for three days.

He drove aimlessly, without purpose. He'd told Lisbon he was going someplace nice, but the truth was there was really no place he particularly wanted to go. His flight was driven by the need to get away from this crippling fear, the bitter taste of adrenaline on the back of his tongue every time he had to watch her rush headlong into danger.

He felt a rush of anger at the thought. How could she not understand how difficult this was for him? That it was impossible for him to risk her. That every time she put herself in the path of danger, she was carrying his raw, exposed heart with her. She had to understand that her death would destroy him, utterly and irrevocably. She had to.

He'd really thought she'd come with him. She'd seemed reluctant when he'd started talking about traveling around the world, but he'd thought he'd sown the seeds. Thought that when he suggested they leave for real, she'd be ready.

Perhaps he just hadn't given her long enough. He'd always known it would take time for those seeds to germinate. That's why he'd started so early. He thought he'd have time. Then Vega had died and it was as though he'd been cruelly woken from a heavenly dream. He'd been fooling himself. He didn't have time. Every second Lisbon stayed in this job with her guns and her not one hundred percent bullet proof vests was a threat to everything he held precious.

He'd surprised himself by how hurt he'd been when he realized she wasn't going to come with him after all. That in the end, she'd chosen the job over him. He remembered her telling him she loved him, but she loved her job, too. You can't be jealous of that. At the time, he'd dismissed her words without a second thought. The idea was preposterous. It wasn't about that.

He thought about her eyes sparkling at him as they danced under the colored lights and clutched the wheel tighter.

He pulled over on a dirt track off an abandoned back road and parked the Airstream under a tree. His eyes were gritty with exhaustion. He hadn't been sleeping, not really. He'd tried, the first night, but instead he'd lain awake, staring at the ceiling and thinking about Lisbon's terrible singing. About her warm body next to his at night, relaxed and comfortable against him. About how he could think of few things sweeter than the laughter in her voice as she'd curled up next to him and sung him her off-key version of 'Livin' on a Prayer.'

After that, he drove through the night. When he got so tired he couldn't see straight, he'd pull over and catch a few hours of sleep, usually in the middle of the afternoon, when the sun was hot and high. He ignored the fact that he kept waking with his hand stretched out towards the other side of the narrow bed, reaching for her.

He didn't feel like sleeping now, despite his exhaustion. He didn't want to dream of her. Waking, she plagued his thoughts, but at least no dangerous illusions haunted him when his eyes were open, however shadowed and bleary they got.

He got out of the Airstream and stretched. His spine cracked, his lower back protesting the long hours hunched over the wheel in one position. He realized he was vaguely hungry and went back into the Airstream. He grabbed a plastic wrapped sandwich he'd bought at a service station a couple hundred miles back. It had seen better days. He sat down under the tree. He unwrapped it and took a bite without really tasting it. (Which was just as well, really. He registered vaguely that even Rigsby would have turned up his nose at such fare). He ate the rest of it anyway. The sandwich dulled his hunger without really assuaging it. He crumpled the plastic wrap into a ball and put it in his jacket pocket, wiping his hands on his trousers. He pulled his knees up towards his chest and rested his forearms on his knees, letting his hands dangle listlessly between them. Then he just sat, staring into space.

His mind's eye clicked through a slideshow of a thousand moments he'd shared with Lisbon over the past thirteen years. The moment they'd met, her eyes kind but wary. The feeling of her hand on his shoulder after Hannigan had punched him, the first time anyone had touched him in a long time. The flash of anger in her eyes when she felt he'd crossed a line. The first time he'd seen her in a leather jacket and it had dawned on him in a more than abstract way that she was actually quite a beautiful woman. Her calm efficiency directing her team in the field. How cute she was when he managed to fluster her, and how often he'd gone out of his way to do just that once he'd realized that fact.

He'd loved her far longer than he'd given himself credit for, he realized. He'd always known she was attractive, of course. For a long time he'd managed to delude himself that the pull he felt towards her was just that—simple attraction, nothing more. He'd grown uncomfortably aware that perhaps it was slightly more than that when he shot Hardy to save her, but after all, he wasn't a completely heartless bastard. He was hardly going to allow someone he cared for to be shot in cold blood right in front of him, not if there was anything he could do to stop it. He persuaded himself that what he felt for her all those years was friendship. He'd never had a friend like her before, so he didn't have any kind of benchmark for comparison. She was such an extraordinarily good friend.

His months in Vegas had forced him to face the truth. He missed her so much it was like a physical ache. He loved her. When he'd gone back to see her, it had practically spilled out of him. But then the truth of what it meant for him to love her had struck him and he'd panicked. Under no circumstances could Red John find out. So he'd pushed her away. He'd blown hot and cold with her, ruthlessly ignoring the hurt and confusion in her eyes every time he did something calculated to demonstrate to anyone who was watching he was absolutely not in love with her.

Then there had been the lost two years without her in that beautiful, lonely place. He'd been quite maudlin about her there. He wrote her dozens of what he knew were love letters, though he was careful to frame them in a way designed to prevent her from labeling them with the same name. He thought of the giddy relief of seeing her again—seriously, how had she grown even more beautiful in the last two years than the image he'd carried around in his memory—followed by the paralyzing uncertainty of how to find his footing with her after everything he'd done to her. He'd been tentatively preparing to reach out to her, to ask her if she would consider being with him in a more than professional and friendly capacity when he'd suddenly found himself experiencing the torture of watching her with Pike. He'd never forget the cold dread in his stomach when he'd finally understood that she was going to leave him to be with someone else.

But then everything had changed. He'd scaled a fence and finally told her how he'd felt, and miraculously, she'd stayed.

The past few months, he'd felt like he was living something out of someone else's life. He'd been so determined not to take her for granted, to not let a day go by without making her understand how treasured she was. For a while, it seemed to be working. He watched her eyes light up when he slipped an origami swan in her pocket, her small smile when he brought her mints for her pillow.

Then Vega had been shot and reality had come crashing down around his ears. It wasn't real, this dream world he'd been living in the past several months. Lisbon wasn't safe. As long as she was in this job, she wasn't safe. If only he could spirit her away to a place without guns or murderers. Someplace safe. Someplace nice.

But she hadn't come with him. He shut his eyes, as though that could protect him from the image of her standing in that cemetery, alone and desolate. Was that really going to be the last time he'd ever see her? Eyes shining with tears, looking broken-hearted? Jane had done a lot of terrible things in his life, but the idea that his last sight of her included that hurt expression on her face was rapidly climbing the ranks in the master list of his regrets.

All the other times he'd left her, at least part of him had always held onto some hope of seeing her again. Vegas. Venezuela. He'd always intended to come back from Vegas, and even when he'd left for Venezuela, deep down, he'd secretly believed he would see her again someday. The only time he'd really feared he'd never see her again was when he'd left her on that cliff in Malibu. But then, he'd thought there was a very good chance he was going to his death, so if he was right, well, at least he wouldn't have to live with it long.

All the times he'd left her. He winced inwardly, well aware of what a bastard that made him sound like. It wasn't that one time, or both times. They'd progressed firmly and definitively to all. He didn't sound like a bastard, he was one.

He thought again of her face crumpling in the cemetery and felt a stab of guilt like a knife to the gut. He hated himself for hurting her. But he'd hated himself a long time. He was used to it. Another decade or two of self-loathing wouldn't kill him.

Xxx

He fell asleep under the tree. He woke up sprawled on the ground, his head awkwardly pillowed on a tree root. A particularly knobbly root dug into the small of his back.

He sat up, disoriented. Dimly, it occurred to him that he had no earthly idea where he was. Also, he was starving, and he was pretty sure he didn't have any food left.

It was that golden time of day just before sunset. He must have slept about five hours. He got up and went inside the Airstream in search of supplies.

He re-emerged a few minutes later with a map and a small package of Oreos he'd bought for Lisbon a while back. He pulled out his little camp table and spread the map out on top of it. Something fell out of the folds of the map and fluttered to the ground. He bent to pick it up. It was the photograph he'd taken from her parents' house, the one with young Teresa with a dog cradled inside a white coat about three sizes too big for her. His chest ached. This was the only photograph he had of her. Why hadn't he taken any photographs of her after they'd gotten together? Why had he never pilfered any snapshots from fundraisers or team dinners in all their years at the CBI?

Because he'd had the real thing. It hadn't occurred to him that he'd need a reminder because he'd always known she would be there, her strong, sure presence the one constant in his life.

He traced his fingertips over the photograph. If he'd stayed, would they have eventually settled down, started a family? Had a daughter that looked like this? Her face all eyes and freckles, surrounded by a cloud of dark hair? His throat was suddenly thick with desperation to know this ghost-child, this freckled teenager he would never meet now due to a situation entirely of his own making.

He put the photograph down and forced his attention to the map. He thought he must be in Utah by now, or perhaps Arizona. Maybe even Nevada. If that were the case, he'd need to change his course. If he kept going west, he'd end up in California. He really didn't think he could handle California right now. He would have to head north. Not towards Washington. He'd probably have to skip Oregon and Idaho, too. Too close to Washington. Montana. He thought he could safely go to Montana without it reminding him of her constantly. Maybe he could keep going, head into Canada. He'd heard Waterton was nice. He'd thought about trying to persuade Lisbon to go there with him next summer, when it got too hot for any reasonable person to want to be in Texas. Waterton was a beautiful place, with an old-fashioned lodge that he thought might strike a happy balance between rustic and comfortably cozy.

Oh, hell. Maybe he should just move to Alaska and have done with it. Lisbon hated the cold—she'd never want to go to Alaska.

He applied his considerable powers of concentration to focusing on the map. Before he could make any decisions about his destination, first he had to figure out where the hell he was. He studied the map and tried to remember if he'd passed any significant landmarks recently that could give him some clue as to his current location.

He thought he'd passed a sign for a place called Stinnet not too long before he'd pulled onto the back road that had led him to this spot under the tree. He seemed to recall seeing another sign for some kind of recreation area, as well. He scoured the map for a town called Stinnet in Arizona or Utah, but had no luck. He was about to turn his attention to Nevada when the combination of letters he was searching for caught his attention out of the corner of his eye. He bent close to the map, disbelieving.

He was still in Texas.

He straightened, frowning. How the hell could he still be in Texas? He'd been driving for three days. It was a big state, but it wasn't that big. He continued to study the map, mystified. He traced his finger over the route he'd been following. If he'd been going in a straight line, he would have hit this destination towards the end of the first day of driving. What's more, he'd apparently backtracked since passing Stinnet. According to the map, he was maybe two miles away from Lake Meredith Recreation Area, which was a little ways south of Stinnet. Logically, it made no sense for him to have turned back this way. If he'd continued on past Stinnet without turning off the road and stopping, he'd be well past the border by now.

That was the problem, he realized. He'd been backtracking all along. He thought about what he'd told Abbott and Cho about that horrible young woman who had stolen that car and nearly allowed Lisbon to be killed right in front of him. Consciously, the girl had followed a path designed to mislead his pursuers, but subconsciously, she'd been drawn towards the place she felt safest. Her desire to return to the only home she knew had betrayed her.

He'd been doing the exact same thing. He could see it in the path he'd chosen. Consciously, he'd driven in the direction his brain told him was "away." Away from the fear, away from the possibility of his soul being crushed in front of his own eyes. But whenever he got tired, let the exhaustion overtake him and let his guard down, he'd unconsciously started turning back towards the only home he knew. His heart had betrayed him and he'd gravitated back towards her.

The words of the peanut farm commune leader he'd met last year suddenly came into his head, unbidden. Can't stay on the road forever, Patrick. Eventually, you gotta let it take you someplace. Jane sighed. Apparently, she was his someplace. For him, all roads led back to her.

This was a big problem. How was he supposed to leave the fear behind if he kept sabotaging himself without realizing it?

He considered the problem, absently reaching for the packet of Oreos. He opened it and took a bite of the cookie. It was crumbly and a little stale. He finished the first one and reached for another.

He could ditch the Airstream, he supposed. Buy a plane ticket somewhere. He could hardly change his mind and reverse course halfway across the Pacific.

The thought held little appeal. Besides, he thought gloomily, he wouldn't put it past himself to con the pilot into redirecting the course of the flight if he got cold feet after all. He'd already had enough trouble with the TSA for one year.

He ate a third Oreo, then a fourth.

Lisbon loved Oreos. This was a packet of six. If she'd been here, he'd have been lucky to get two for himself. He ate a fifth Oreo, thinking miserably that he'd have happily ceded the whole package to her if he could had one more look at her, one where she was happy and smiling instead of hurt and sad. He had a brief image of Lisbon and the ghost-child, chowing down on a larger package of Oreos, laughing together and refusing to give him a single one.

He set down the package of Oreos with one cookie remaining. The crumbs were sticky and dry in his throat. He could have had that, he thought. He could have given her a life, a family. He could have gotten to meet that beautiful ghost-child, see her roll her eyes at him just like her mother whenever he did something she deemed ridiculous. He looked at the picture of Lisbon again. He could have at least gotten her a dog. Lisbon should have a dog. She loved dogs.

He folded up the map. It was possible, he reflected, that he'd made a colossal mistake.