Thanks for reading. I haven't written anything in a long time, and I think I have improved my writing skills a bit but I could be wrong. Hurtful reviews lead to better stories, so I don't care what you say just as long as you're not flat out rude.

Chapter 1: No Where

"She is in critical condition. We are going to have to keep her here for the next few days. Aside from multiple gun-shot wounds to the shoulder and abdomen, we have discovered a complication when we took the full-body scans that could be pre-existing. She is currently stationed in ICU," the doctor updated him as she had been doing for the past few hours.

Patrick Jane stood speechless- helpless and shivering in a small, cold white room decorated with a single painting and tan chairs placed accordingly in the same predictable fashion as any other hospital waiting room. Jane listened, but could only make out a few words from the status report. Gun-shot, ICU…complications... "Will she live doctor?" he asked in a low voice.

Dr. Hollow took off her thin reading glasses slowly and looked up at him in an almost practiced way. She had trained herself to give this kind of news and it wasn't the first time she had, "At this point there is a chance of survival, yes. But you must understand that there is also a chance of death…" she paused to examine his face. Although she hadn't known him, she (like most others) could tell he was a fairly composed individual most of the time. But here, the second time to hear bad news coming from a doctor about someone he cared…cares…about, he lost all meaning of effort to fake any emotion, "Sir? Are you alright?" her voice grew softer, almost motherly at the last question.

Jane sat down in the chair he had been before that sat on the right wall of the room, just as his couch had in the office. The office- it brought back so many memories of her. He pushed them away and closed his eyes in disbelief. He sat for a few seconds and reopened his eyes, "What room is she in?"

"I'm sorry Mr. Jane, but unless you are family you cannot visit her at this time," he stared at the shorter woman for a while, scaring her with his blood-shot eyes, "Or if you have a close relation to her."

"What room is she in?" He had clearly put the middle-aged doctor in a trance by now.

"Room 384," She answered blankly. Her eyes where drained of the sympathy she had for him just moments ago, and instead held clueless ness and doubt. He didn't stop to thank her, he simply placed his hand on her shoulder and she woke up dazed and stupefied.

Jane made his way to the elevators quickly, knowing that Cho had spotted him and was following him.

"What happened?" Cho asked. Despite Jane's efforts, he was unable to escape talking with the usually melancholy co-worker.

"I don't know," he admitted.

Xxo0oxX

24 hours earlier:

She sat quiet in the corner of the familiar room, hoping no one would see her tears through the shut blinds. She hadn't cried in a long time, especially at work. At work Lisbon was the "fearless leader". What kind of ridicule would Jane come up with if he spotted her cowering in the corner of her own office like a scared little girl? She couldn't help it. She grew cold as the air conditioning blew across her face that was wet with tears. She gently began to rock herself back and forth, just as her mother had once done to make her calm down. She remembered his words;

"I have you now, Teresa. I know your weakness. But then again, I guess you couldn't call it a weakness. More of a trait, really," he paused to laugh.

She couldn't believe how vulnerable she felt at that moment, "You can't intimidate me," she lied.

"That isn't my purpose here. I want you to know what it's like to be honest with yourself. I want you to quit lying to yourself. See I'm helping you." Lisbon refused to reply to this. He continued coolly, "For all these years you have just wanted someone to care. Isn't that right? You want to feel like you are worth something to someone else and not just there to supply an object of pleasure. Of course no one would ever want to be with you in that way. You are simply not good enough for that.

"No, you were made fun of as a child weren't you? I can relate to that. Most people can relate to that…but lying to yourself isn't helping. He doesn't care about you. No one at work cares about you. And who else is there besides your colleagues? No one…you have no one. I find it sad that even as an adult, the line of people that want to kill you is existent and the line of people that care never did. Your father hated you. Your brother got what they could from you and left as soon as possible. And your mother- your mother was the only shmuck in the world who gave a rat's ass. What an idiot…"

He paused; he turned and looked toward her face to see her eyes. He wanted the satisfaction of seeing her misery. She was on her knees in the center of the dimly lit concrete room holding back her tears with every fiber in her being, "Tell me, Teresa. How does it feel to be no where? To not be at home, or at work. How does it feel to not want to be alone, or not to be with a crowd of people either? How does it feel to want to just disappear?"

At the memory, she wrapped her arms around her stomach and pulled her knees to meet her body. She rested her forehead on her thighs and began to cry louder, uncaring whether or not people on the outside could hear.

A few minutes later a knock on her door resulted in the CBI consultant entering uninvited. She quickly wiped her eyes and stood up to avoid humiliation.

"What were you doing?" he asked puzzled.

She looked and the spot where she had been sitting, "I dropped something. What do you need?"

He noticed her red eyes and smeared make up despite her efforts to avoid looking at his face. He heard her voice crack and her sniffing continuously. She wiped her hands on her pants- why? They were wet with tears. That was obvious. Her slouched body position indicated discomfort and stiffness from staying in the unnatural position for too long. Her hands shook slightly when she pulled her hair in front of her face to cover it.

"What happened yesterday?" he asked to gather more information.

She paused, "None of you damn business," her reply was quiet. Not fierce like she usually was. When he reached out for her hand she drew it back and shot him an angry glare.

"Someone hurt you either early today or late yesterday, not only physically, but mentally. Brought back some trauma in your past that still affects your feelings-"

"Shut up and leave me alone if you just came in here to harass me," she cut him off.

He then wore his favorite smile and mistook her tone for their usual playful banter. An odd mistake on his part, he blamed it on the fact that he couldn't see her eyes. He leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek, something that happened often. But this was different. He held longer and didn't laugh afterward as usual. Lisbon took this as a comforting gesture, he had to care…

"Thank you," she said quietly.

Jane smiled again, still believing this to be a game and her last remark to be sarcastic, "Come on Lisbon, you know I wouldn't think of you in any special way. I was just messing around."

Lisbon looked up. Pain in her eyes, it was in that moment that Jane realized she wasn't playing along. Her tears fell down both sides of her face and fell hard on the ground below her. Each one sounding louder than the other, "Lisbon, I…"

"Don't worry about it…I…understand," she started choking on her words as they fell out of her mouth. She started to walk off but started walking slower until she got to the elevator. Listening to her cough made Jane feel guilty; everything inside him urged him to go and comfort her but his legs just wouldn't move.

The elevator door opened, but she stood coughing harder and falling to her knees with her hand on her throat. Jane ran to her, seeing the tears from even so far away. Once he got to his boss, he placed his hand on her back, "What's wrong?"

"I…can't breathe…"

His eyes widened. Becoming more and more sullen each second, believing that he was the source of the panic attack he looked around to see if anyone else was around, "Help! Rigsby, call 911! Lisbon is having a panic attack," without question, Rigsby dialed 911 and got an ambulance to their address still in shock from the mentalist's melt down.