Breakable Things
Summary: How many times can he crush her without expecting repercussions? Drabble. Jane, Lisbon.
Warning: Drabble.
Set: Post-Ep to season 4 episode 13, but only minor spoilers.
Disclaimer: Standards apply.
We don't always get what we want.
Jane never realizes he's been quoting Lisbon to Erika. He's just like that – genius he is, over-perceptive, cunning and incredible – and he's been working with her for so long perhaps he forgot that she was, in essence, quite human. Not like him. Never like him. Had he allowed himself the thought he'd realize it was an immensely relieving one. He didn't. It isn't what Patrick Jane does.
Sometimes he wonders. How far can he go? He's tugged her in a million directions, pushed her towards the wall a thousand times. He hammers away at her every day, every year, strains and bends and tugs with just the right amount of force necessary to apply in order to get what he wants. Sometimes more. Mostly more. Perhaps he's too far gone to realize normal people don't work like he does, don't bend like he does. Normal people don't see the myriad of ways things can go and unfailingly chose the only path to bring them to their goal; normal people don't run on hatred and revenge alone. Normal people do not bend infinitely.
Normal people break.
How many times can he crush her without breaking her? Not that he wonders about it. Teresa Lisbon, ultimately, is as much a tool to him as everyone else in the CBI is, as Erika Flynn is, or Rosalyn Harper. They are nothing except as what he sees them fit for. Lisbon, Rigsby, Van Pelt and Cho- sometimes he regards them with a predatory glint, possessive, calculating. Lying to them, using them as his tools, the enforcers of his schemes – he does not feel guilty about it. His conscience does not work like that. Perhaps he would even call it friendship, the strange relationship they have grudgingly formed throughout the past years. But the fact remains that he would leave them behind, one after another, if that meant reaching his goal.
Sometimes he looks at Lisbon and feels a twinge of something. Not guilt. Pity, perhaps. She's beautiful when she's furious like that. He lies to her face blatantly, pushes, prods, edges, trips and tears, and she goes along with it. His very own Saint Teresa. Sometimes he thinks she looks like she wants to cry but he turns away pretty quickly then. And, besides, Lisbon never cries. He can lie to her, leave her out, use her name, betray her trust, force her into a corner and against the wall, push her into the abyss, dump the outcome of his schemes on her and lie to her again and again and again and still she will refuse to believe what he has long known. It would be sad, would he allow himself to think in that kind of lines. He doesn't.
Jane never realizes how breakable some things are. He thinks he has already seen it all. Fact is, things break differently.