A/N: Okay, so this will be a multi chapter story, each chapter a different scene, each scene taking place in Lisbon's office. This first one is kinda angsty and introspective, but they won't all be! I see this as taking place right around where we are in season 4, but these won't be episode tags. Anyways, I hope you enjoy!
"After me comes the flood."
The attic air was cold. The oppressive kind of cold that seizes the lungs and burns it's way down. The darkness swirled around him in a spiral of ice and flashing lights from the street. Spinning, rolling, black waves crashed in his mind, dragging him under and splashing images onto the backs of his eyelids; young girls dancing, tigers burning, camera lenses glinting from every direction, bleeding smiles that drip, coating him in red… he couldn't be here any more. This dark, cold attic, surrounded with images past and present, superimposed over each other to create a morbid tableau of what his future held.
He pushed off the chair, turned his back on the window, on the lonely makeshift bed—fled the open and dusty air of his attic hideaway—tonight it offered him the wrong kind of solitude. His leather couch would be better, he could lie there and repress this flood of emotion; he could set the worn cushions as a barricade against the sweeping tide of evil he was continuously surrounded by these days. The bullpen would be safe.
The journey down the stairs, through the dark and deserted halls was a blur—strange for a man who always saw everything with clarity. He made his unseeing way past desks, abandoned in these late evening hours, only the emergency lights illuminating his path. Flopping onto his back on the familiar material he attempted to blink the haze of darkness from his eyes, but the bullpen was full of shadows. Creeping over desks, and through doorways, and around corners. Reaching tendrils to wrap around his limbs, pulling him apart at the seams. The room was empty and gaping, it spun around him, spun him with it, fast, dizzy, sick, too much. The darkness was everywhere, the bullpen was just as oppressive as the attic, and so empty, a vast ocean of black. He was drowning in the ruins of his life, in his falsehoods, in his anger and pain and regret, in his failure. Somewhere in the dim recesses of his coherent mind, he recognized that he was probably having a panic attack and hated the control it robbed from him—control over his own body, his own breath.
He rolled off the couch, hands and knees hitting the floor with a muffled thud, fingers curling into claws against the hardwood; he struggled to control his jagged breath. He could feel the sweat dotting his forehead. It was so dark, all around him, inside of him, too dark. It wasn't right here either, this wasn't safe—he couldn't breathe here. He needed to move, needed to breathe, crawled forward a few inches, struggled to his feet. His legs shook beneath him, a tenuous support for all the weight on his shoulders. Hands outstretched before him, he stumbled like a blind man towards the elusive glow of a light hidden behind closed blinds. And maybe he was blind. Blinded by the encroaching darkness that shadowed his actions, the blackness he invited into his soul with every lie and every trick, over and over. The course of vengeance he followed was dragging him down into the very oblivion he struggled to extinguish.
In his desperation to defeat the darkness, he was becoming it.
His fingers touched glass and metal and he pulled on the handle, stumbled through the doorway, forced himself to take a breath, and then another. The soft glow of lamplight that now bathed him was slowly burning away the cloud of gloom shrouding his vision. Strange that out in the open he felt trapped, robbed of air. But here, in this small room, enclosed by these glass walls, he could breathe.
He blinked to clear away the last of the shadows, swiped a hand against the clammy wetness on his face, and looked around. He was alone; she'd gone home for the night. That was good. She hadn't witnessed him in his weak and panicked state, hadn't seen the way he needed her in order to breathe. Just the mere suggestion of her presence battled away the pain, her lingering essence banished his demons, her light dispelling his dark.
He didn't always need her like this, so desperately, but tonight was a bad one. One of the nights where he lost the firm grip on his emotions and got swept away in the tide of madness that was forever lapping at his heels. He couldn't pinpoint the exact moment she'd become his salvation, but become it she had. And tonight, her office—with the low hum of the computer, the single lamp on the corner of her desk, the faint scent of her in the air—tonight, this was his haven. No taunting voices, no smiles bled into walls, no madness could touch him here. Not here, not in her office.
He wrapped his arms around himself, holding together the broken pieces of his soul, and curled himself onto her couch. Thoughts of her were his life vest, keeping him afloat in the murky waters of his oblivion. He pressed his face into her cushions, no longer cold, and let the peace of resting in a space that was hers steal over him. The world spun to a stop, garish images fading from his mind, and he could breathe.