A/N: So I think this will be a 3-shot, I've always wanted to find a show to write the oft used, slightly clichéd Christmas Carol plot. I will try to be as cliché free as possible, and I'm sure there will be spoilers from Devil's Cherry, considering the plot, and all episodes following. I'm also taking liberties with Lisbon's mom's name since we don't know it. But c'mon, they really need to try this plot! I can see a Christmas plot in the making…lyrics, "Swallowed In the Sea" by Coldplay
Unchained
You put me on a line
And hung me out to dry
And darling that's when I
Decided to go see you
You cut me down to size
And opened up my eyes
Made me realize
What I could not see
He'd promised her he'd never touch the vile tea again. Not after she came to bid him goodnight in the attic, after his first ordeal with the Belladonna, and found him once again passed out on the hard floor. He'd not had a seizure, but his pulse was thready and he'd blacked out.
No ghost had come to him that night, as if to curse him for trying.
She'd scolded him profusely, when he'd woken a half hour later, glaring, straight backed, in a chair across from his cot where she'd managed to hoist him. There was something she hid as her veiled threats seeped through her worried words. It hid behind her now opaque emerald eyes—and it was the night he realized he'd met both his match and his enemy. He could no longer read her. Hot or cold. Six months had barricaded him from her.
And that hurt. Because he knew she'd found a way to lie.
Not that she had. Not that she would.
Not that she wouldn't.
He was careful after that, observed her harder, looked at her longer, before the team would knit their brows in confusion as to why he studied her so intently. He made it his purpose to look lost in thought. He didn't always succeed.
The team assumed something was going on with the pair. Patrick Jane assumed she was somehow misleading him. After his encounter with Lorelei, she'd become less and less open, hiding behind that emerald shield. He would do anything for the information that source could have supplied. And it was the "anything" part that had Teresa Lisbon keeping herself away from him, though she was not exactly succeeding either.
She cared too much. He cared for a different purpose.
Their latest case had been a tipping point.
She knew it would happen, sooner or later. Another Red John murder, an intentional one meant, purposefully, to entice and enrage Jane. Because the woman he'd chosen to kill was the siren herself. It was different; a different kind of care had been taken with the body of Lorelei Martins.
She' been found in a bed, in a lovely, expensive hotel, laid and left with care, blood painted lips and fingernails, but the cuts were well placed, as if he'd taken pity on his charge. Her hair was dyed darker, and her brown eyes were open, staring aimless upwards. Well, they had been brown, Jane remembered. She wore green contacts over top of her natural color in death.
Jane had felt sick for a multitude of reasons, staring at his one night stand in Vegas. It was the cruelest kind of calling card. He was too close to Teresa Lisbon. Too close, he knew, and it would get her killed.
Lisbon had balked at the sight of the horrid doppelganger. The team kept their gazes bouncing back from each other to the body to their boss, knowing exactly what came next. Lisbon, on a platter.
She feigned calm and resistance, and bravado that she would neither go into protective custody, nor flee her home.
Regardless, she slept with a loaded gun under her pillow. If she slept at all.
Jane pulled, quite sufficiently, away from her after that. There were no pizzas, no jokes; she dared not enter the attic. He used Cho as a sounding board, rode with Rigsby to the scenes [given how sleep deprived he'd been with Ben lately, he really had no clue as to what was happening around him], and used poor Grace as his personal messenger for the communication of his 'whodunit' moments.
They'd become strangers. And that's what he knew needed to happen. She couldn't be a target if they weren't even friends.
He'd promised her he wouldn't use the tea. But tonight…he needed it like the hallucinogenic drug it was.
This time, he'd gone to the Malibu house. He brewed it carefully, measured, and drank.
This time he got his wish. As before him stood Angela, in all her beaming glory.
XOX
"Patrick, why are you so insistent on speaking to me? With such extremes as these? Your life is at stake here, my love."
Her scolding was a lighter version of Lisbon's. He couldn't help but smile, embracing his beautiful wife.
"I had too Ange. I got too see Charlotte, it's only fair," he whispered. She did not smile. Her lips remained downturned.
"I wish you would move past this Patrick!"
He frowned now. "Why? I promised you till death, Angela, and I'm not about to undo that promise!"
"I know. You were the most wonderful husband a girl could dream of. But we have parted in death, Patrick, and you can no longer have me."
"Why can't I just….be with you?"
She laughed, a sound of bells and chimes that reminded him of the past. He closed his eyes, remembering.
"Patrick, there are things you need to see, things you need to do before you die. Important, life-saving, life-altering things. You won't understand unless I show you, will you?" she said, sadly.
"How important could I truly be, Angela?" he asked, stroking her long, blonde locks affectionately.
When he blinked, he realized the Malibu house was gone. In fact, he couldn't even recognize where he was until he saw the coffin. For a moment, he thought he was at their funeral again, but the church was unfamiliar.
He held Angela's hand, as she guided him up the aisle, stopping a few rows behind and sitting. "Where are we, Ange?"
"Not where, dear, but when." She replied, hushing him as the priest stood before the closed coffin.
He took in the surroundings, trying to place the 'when' his wife spoke of. It had to have been decades prior, looking at the clothes the grieving people wore. He'd missed what the priest was saying, but watched as a row of four stood, suddenly. Four dark-haired children. Three boys, ushered by a girl in a black dress too large for her thin form. The girl guided them forward like baby chicks, before turning back to pull on the slumped, catatonic form of a man in the row that he had not seen initially. The man refused to budge. The girl angrily turned, and he caught the eye roll and angry tears that fell from her wide green eyes.
"Teresa?" Patrick whispered in wonder.
"This is her mother's funeral."
"Why would you show me this?" he demanded faintly.
Angela stroked his hand. "To show you that you're not the only one who has experienced loss, been crippled by it. You know she blames herself every day. Her mother had only gone out to get a new pair of shoes for her. She'd complained that her Mary-Jane's were too childish for her new school year. Her mother wanted to surprise her. I believe you know the rest."
"Drunk driver," he nodded. He blinked again and the scene faded once more. This time they were in a house. This time he knew who's house it had too be.
"This is a little later, a little longer down the road," Angela narrated.
The three dark haired boys were older, more rough and tumble looking. When Teresa walked past him, two laundry baskets balanced precariously, yelling that dinner was on the table, he realized she was truly a saint. She returned, picking up scattered toys and back packs. The boys charged into the kitchen, piling their plates as young boys do. Just as the one, Tommy, he realized with a smile, was about to shovel a heap of mac and cheese into his mouth, Lisbon shot him a glare. He dropped the spoon and folded his hands together with a clap.
"We thank God for the meal before us, for our health and for each other," the young Teresa recited, eyes open, staring straightforward as the boy's heads were bowed. Her voice was calm and mothering, her eyes were bitter and full of contempt and a lonely anger. "Amen."
He watched as she ate a bite, and then another before gently setting the fork on her plate. The boys regaled her with stories from school and recess and which teachers were killing them with homework. Her eyes had gone cold again, iced over like a pond on a cold winter night.
Jane turned, realizing she was staring at her father, a bottle of whiskey to his lips before he dropped the bottle on the floor. It clattered, spilling. Jane cringed, as did Lisbon. As if she knew what would come next.
"Boys, take your plates upstairs. You can eat in your rooms tonight."
Her brothers looked at her like she'd grown another head. "You never let us eat upstairs!" James said, a grin on his face.
She did not look at him or respond. Her father was swearing, the sounds becoming louder. "Go now, stay upstairs!" she said, trying to keep the fear out of her voice. They grabbed their plates and sodas and dashed up the stairs without a word.
"Goddammit! What the hell! Get me another bottle Mary!" Her father called. Teresa did not move. "Mary, I said get me another whiskey, now!"
She remained seated. He stood from his seat, wobbling as he made his way into the kitchen, holding onto the walls for support.
Their equal glares met. "My name is Teresa," she bit out, pushing her chair back. "I am not mom!" she screamed. "Get your own damn drink!"
"You're sure mouthy like her!" he said, stumbling. She began clearing the dishes, but even in his stupor he was quicker and grabbed her arm, bruising it roughly, causing her to drop the bowl. The glass shattered into a million little pieces. He let her go, and she pitched forward, clutching for anything solid but was met with the glass shards on the floor.
He shook his head, waving his grimacing daughter off like a fly.
Teresa turned her palms over, staring blankly at the red-coated glass that punctured her hands and arms. She pulled a large piece out, jagged and cruel. She held it temptingly over her left wrist.
"Reese?" came Tommy's small, scared voice from the middle of the stairs. His eyes were confused and lost and he held his empty plate in his small hands. She dropped the glass shard and stood, carefully.
"I fell. It's nothing. Don't come down, I broke the bowl. Leave your plate there and I'll get it. Time for bed, okay?"
"Angela. Why are you doing this to me? I don't want to see this."
"You may not want to but you have too, love."
"I know she's suffered. I get it," he said, voice becoming hard as he watched the teenager wash the glass and blood away.
"No you don't. You don't understand the extent of her pain; you only see yours, what you lost. And that does not make you a whole person Patrick. It does not make you a good one either."
He sighed. "What's next then?"
She grinned. "This one is lighter, I promise."
He opened his eyes to see a pretty twenty-something flashing an ID to the security guard for the first time, watching the gate open for the first time. "Her first day at the CBI?"
"Yes. This part you know I'm sure. She was quick, rising through the ranks with ease, even as her experience was limited and she was a woman and they didn't take kindly to that idea."
He remembered, fondly, the large man he could no longer remember the name of punching him in the nose.
"What's important about this?" he asked carefully.
"This is important because it proves her strength. Her ability to move on. Something you haven't learned yet, my dear husband."
He frowned. "Funny, Angela."
"It was not meant to be funny, my love. It's supposed to mean something. And it makes me sad that you can't see that something yet. But I assure you…you will."
The CBI faded from view, as did visions of Lisbon. They were replaced by the Malibu House once more.
"Now, I have to go, Patrick. But don't worry, please. Someone else is here to see you," she whispered.
"No, stay, please!"
She shook her head, gently kissed him. "I love you, you know that."
He swallowed hard, as she faded.
"Bye Ange."
He blinked, seeing Charlotte once again, all attitude and like mannerisms.
She had a sly grin perched on her pretty face.
"What is it that you want to show me, Charlotte?"
"Everything, father."
And I could write a book
The one they'll say that shook
The world, and then it took
It took it back from me
And I could write it down
Or spread it all around
Get lost and then get found
And you'll come back to me
Not swallowed in the sea…