"Tell me the truth."

"Truth. Darth Vader? Luke's father."

Teresa was still sleeping soundly curled up against his side. He disentangled himself from her embrace, placing a soft kiss on top of her head as a sort of afterthought.

What he was about to do was inherently wrong. It would probably be the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back when it came to her trusting him, in spite of her better judgment. He didn't deserve her trust and he didn't deserve her love. His heart was set on revenge; he couldn't change that fact even if he wanted to.

As he was about to slip out of her bedroom, he paused on the threshold. He took the time to commit the moment to his memory palace, just in case this was the last time he would get to see her in his waking life. Chances were that he would either end up spending the rest of his days in jail, or he wouldn't live to see another day. He didn't care; his own life mattered little to him after the loss of his precious family. In fact, his only regret was the pain he would be causing Lisbon as a consequence.

With one deep breath, he steeled himself to face whatever was going to happen, and then he stepped out into the night.

xxx

He couldn't believe his own eyes when he was finally stood just a few feet away from his nemesis. It had taken him so long to reach his goal, and now that he finally had, he felt something akin to disappointment wash over him. Red John was nothing like he had imagined him to be in all those years; the serial killer looked like any average person in the street. In a way, his looks were even less striking than Timothy Carter's had been.

The words he heard him utter did nothing to quell the sense of unreality that was creeping over him.

"Now, now, Patrick; let's not do anything hasty."

"It's you."

"It is me, Patrick; you've finally found me."

The man chuckled softly, and something stirred inside his memory palace. This wasn't the first time they met; in fact he'd crossed paths with him more than once. It took him a few moments to retrieve the information safely stored in his brain, and he couldn't help vocalizing his thoughts.

"You lived near my family's home in Malibu."

They'd crossed paths plenty of times indeed; he was the same nondescript guy that lived in a condo a short walk away from their house. Both he and Angela had greeted him on occasion as he strolled by on sunny days. Why Red John had been living so close to his soon-to-be victims far before he'd made the mistake to go and talk about him on TV was completely beyond Patrick Jane.

Then another dim recollection stirred inside him; something that he couldn't quite place, no matter how hard he tried.

"I've seen you somewhere else."

His enemy only grinned. "I've been in lots of places, my boy."

The appellation should have angered him, and yet he found himself staring back in awe as a sense of recognition hit him at long last.

"You were there, when my mom died."

He'd been barely three at the time of the tragedy, and his subconscious had tried to protect him by pushing the memory to a dark corner of his mind. There it had remained up until this moment, hidden in a closet inside a locked room whose key had been buried somewhere else.

His mother's eyes were closed as if she'd been sleeping; a little boy couldn't really tell the difference. The blood had scared him though; there was so much everywhere. Although he hadn't been able to understand the significance of the blood back then, it still had made him want to cry for no clear reason.

Then the stranger had told him it was only a game they were playing, asked him if he wanted to play too. A wave of nausea rushed over him as he finally remembered one even more gruesome detail: the feeling of his mother's blood on his fingers as the stranger made him draw a smiling face on the wall.

"When I killed her, yes," Red John pointed out with more than a hint of satisfaction to his tone.

Jane had never realized before that Angela and Charlotte weren't all the beloved ones he'd lost to the same deranged man. His hand raised the gun almost of its own accord, as he felt something shattering inside him and the pain echoed through every fiber of his being.

He didn't fire at once though; there were still questions that needed to be answered before he did.

"Why?"

"Why not?" countered his opponent, but he wasn't impressed in the slightest. Then Red John spoke again. "Because she kept you from me."

This wasn't what he was expecting, and he barely had the wits to let out a trembling "What?"

"For a perceptive man, you sure are stupid," the other man shot back smirking.

"I don't understand."

For the first time in years he felt really afraid, afraid of what Red John was going to say next. He wasn't anywhere near ready for whatever revelation was coming from the serial killer next, but he had to know all the same. That was how he was; how he'd always been, and would probably be until his dying day.

"I loved your mother dearly, Patrick; almost as much as I loved you, son."

A strange sense of déjà vu crept over him at those words, he thought of a man in black armor reaching out a hand of friendship to his long-lost son moments after maiming him for life. And even though the young man had cried out in pain and anger and denial, he couldn't fail to acknowledge the truth behind his father's words.

No. His father would always be Alex Jane, no matter how much of a tyrant he'd been to him.

Tears blurred his vision as he pulled the trigger; then he did it again, and again.

"Patrick," Red John shouted as he crumbled to the ground. "I'm so sorry."

The world came to a stop, and everything else faded away. Patrick Jane couldn't quite make sense of his own actions as he kneeled beside the dying man and clutched onto his hand while he exhaled his last breath.

Once again he thought of a young hero witnessing his father's death, even though the circumstances had been quite different there. It was too late for repentance now, and any chance of redemption had always been utterly out of question for the both of them.

Darkness clouded his heart at last; he felt cold and empty, his mind suddenly devoid of any thought.

xxx

He was still holding his father's hand when no one other than Teresa Lisbon broke into the abandoned warehouse, wielding her gun at him.

Her voice quavered a little as she declared him under arrest. He felt her warm fingers brush against his skin for the briefest of moments as she handcuffed him at last.