Inevitable
Night, he mused, was never comforting for Patrick Jane. Like a child, he clung to the belief that bad things happened at night, so it was best to stay awake as long as possible so that the monsters couldn't get you before dawn. His line of work, consulting with the CBI should have proved to him that monsters operate in daytime as well, but his nightmares originated in the night, the horrors he had seen had been surrounded by a starlit sky and a crescent moon that would have been beautiful had its glow not been illuminating the mutilated bodies of his beloved wife and precious daughter. Monsters weren't reserved for the fears of children, as that night had taught him. Many years were spent assuring his darling baby girl that there were no monsters in her closet, or outside her window, or under her bed, because no monsters could possibly get past the best protection of all: a daddy. A daddy would protect you from monsters no matter what, a daddy would never let somebody hurt you.
It hurt him to think that his daughters last thoughts may have been similar to the realisation that monsters cannot hurt you when a daddy can protect you, but when your daddy is far away and not there, then it is much easier for the monsters to walk into your bedroom and hurt you in the place he always promised was the safest.
Nights like this, when the nightmares would usually scrape away his sanity and tempt him towards the downward spiral once again, he would usually stay at the CBI building. He would absorb himself in the area around him, choosing not to work but instead to familiarise himself with the aspects of his co-workers lives that they tried to hide from him. He'd discovered a lot about them during the nights when sleep would only remind him of how empty his life was, and how bad a protector he had been.
He'd learned that Grace was a hoarder. It had been no secret, especially to him, that she'd been dating Rigsby and attempting to keep it a secret. The secrecy wasn't something she liked, but it was something necessary for them to be together. But still, he could understand why she hoarded things – when she was forced to remain professional in her relationship with Rigsby during the day then it must be easy to doubt whether not they really had spent the night together only twelve hours before, or whether they had gone out to dinner, because he was using her last name, asserting the small amount of authority that he had over her as Cho had over him. So she collected mementos, storing them in the bottom desk drawer beside her spare pair of shoes – tickets from the movies they had seen, a token from the carnival he had recommended Rigsby take her to a month ago, a small stuffed chick that he had won her on the same evening. She kept things to remind her that even when their job was grinding her will to live, she could open her desk drawer and realise that as soon as they left the building there was a man waiting for her who would treat her as if she were his whole world.
Rigsby, on the other hand, was unorganised, messy, sloppy. There had been old food wrappers in one of his drawers, leftover from sneaky snacks that he thought no one was noticing during the day – an empty cookie wrapper from which he usually stole from whenever he refilled his coffee. The amount of evidence of food, only from the last week (Jane had watched before when he cleaned his drawer out on a Friday evening, always muttering a curse at the state of it) would have had anyone else believing that he was comfort eating, but they all knew he had no reason to. Grace would spend her evenings with him, the two of them confessing their deepest feelings for one another in a way that was highly unprofessional but that neither of them cared about. All he did care about was Grace, and there were lingering glances during the day that ended up revealing to Jane that sometimes all Rigsby was thinking about was how it had looked to wake up to Grace sleeping in his arms. He remembered looking at his late wife like that, watching her move around the kitchen after a night in each others arms. Knowing this, it was hard to wish the young agents anything but the best in their quest to hide their relationship from their superiors.
Cho was organised, not only in his belongings but in his private life. So organised that there was almost no hint of a private life, of course, to anyone who wasn't Jane. He kept a book in his top drawer, but it wasn't book marked in any way, obviously he had a strong memory and knew exactly where it was he had left of. Besides, when reading during a stake out and your suspect made a move, you didn't really have time to dog-ear a page and worry about saving your place. Inside the drawers his stationary was almost impeccably in order, there no business cards or notes with friends numbers on. Everything he needed to keep note of was work related.
But Lisbon...well, he didn't need her desk to know what her mind was made up of.
She'd been there for him today, in a way that she had never been before. He adored her for it, loved her for it even, but he couldn't admit that to her. Not yet. Not while his closet monster was still haunting the bedroom. He needed to get rid of the nightmares and assure himself that there was no monsters underneath his bed before he could tell her that, even if it was how he felt. It was why he was at her apartment tonight, rather than in the CBI building. Usually he'd have been there, tonight he was with her. She hadn't forced him to go with her, instead left the offer open and he'd been powerless to resist. A woman's lips can be awfully persuasive.
Red John was back. In the back of his mind, he knew that he'd never left, but there was something different this time from the beginning. He was leaving a blatant trail, obvious clues, to a certain location. He'd made it cliché and picked the docks, but Jane understood why – dark, secluded, anyone around would mistake any suspicious noises on a number of machinery and urban wildlife before worrying about any real danger. Be there, the message had said. Or she will die.
The team had spent hours trying to figure out who 'she' was, but Jane had known all along. If he didn't arrive at the docks, alone, at two-thirty in the morning, Red John was going to kill Teresa Lisbon.
The others still don't know who 'she' was, though. He refused to tell them that he knew on the grounds that they would take measures to protect her that would lead exactly in the direction that Red John wanted, or that she would take it upon herself to draw the serial killer out for the greater good, not quite understanding that she would, undoubtedly, die in her quest to help Jane with his demons. His demons needed banishing, but as he had learned a few hours ago, she was not the one that could send them away.
When he insisted he would be going to the meeting with Red John, there were many reactions. Grace had gone pale, Cho had stiffed, and Rigsby had told him that it was a horrifically bad idea. Lisbon had combined the three, only she had smacked his arm as well, threatening to put him in the hospital if that was what it was going to take to keep him from meeting privately with Red John in a location where they couldn't even hide protection for him. She'd sent the others away to find another way, to figure out if Red John had any connection to the docklands or if any of his previous victims had been associated with the area, leaving herself alone with Jane in her office. When he'd started to defend his reasons for going, she had kissed him, passionate, hard, and that alone had given him her reasons to convince him to stay.
They'd left together, the others assuming that they were checking something out, but all they were doing was exactly what two members of the team had been attempting to hide for months. In her apartment, things had unravelled quickly. Clothes had been tossed aside, landed all over her apartment, so much so that it had taken quite a while to retrace his steps and re-clothe himself in some sort of presentation.
He'd enjoyed what they had, it had awoken a part of him that had been asleep for some time: the part of him that wanted to fight to have his life back, the part of him that believed that there was more to life than avenging his family. He still had to, though. He couldn't be there to protect them, he wasn't there, but he could be there to make sure that the monster who did this to such sweet angels could perish in hell, the furthest away from them he could ever be.
He'd held her until she went to sleep, their unclothed bodies still pressed against each other, her holding herself to him with an urgency that showed just how badly she wanted him to be there when she woke up.
He wouldn't be. The last time Teresa Lisbon would see Patrick Jane alive was when she lifted sleepy, satiated eyes to meet his before she rested her head on his gently rising chest.
But as he became more determined to meet Red John, to find out who this monster was beneath the infamous publicity mask, to destroy him, he realised that this was ultimately going to destroy him as well. He knew that there was no way he was leaving the docks at sunrise in anything other than handcuffs or a body bag. And that's what made it hard for him to leave. The night his wife and child had died, he hadn't know what was going to happen, and it was so easy for him to leave the house, to kiss them goodbye as if he would be able to kiss them goodnight when he got home. Tonight, he knew this would end. No matter how this turned out, no matter which route they took, he could never lie beside Lisbon again. It would go one of three ways.
Option one: Jane could go to the docks, confront Red John exactly as they both desired, and Jane could finally destroy the man that had eradicated his reasons for living. Lisbon and the team would arrive when he called them to confess and Lisbon would be faced with the heartbreaking task of arresting him and eventually testifying against him so that he would be locked away in prison for a very long time.
Option two: Jane could go to the docks, confront Red John exactly as they both desired, and Jane would be destroyed by the man who had eradicated his reasons for living. Lisbon and the team would arrive at the docks at sunrise when the workers arrived and discovered his tortured and lifeless body accompanied by the taunting smiley face that would be painted with blood spilled from his own body. He would then go on to kill again, more than likely changing his goal to torturing Lisbon, now that he knew about the feelings they harboured towards each other. Each future murder would end up with a cryptic cruel message to Lisbon until she, too, became his ultimate target. And, like himself, Lisbon would pursue him to the ends of the earth.
Or option three: Jane could remove his clothes once again, crawl back into Lisbon's bed and take her back into his arms. He could wait there all night, stay by her side 24/7 until she got mad, sent him away for the shortest of moments and then Red John would take her from right underneath him. Then, it would only be a matter of time before he was walking in to her office, or her apartment, or his own home, to see her lifeless body, toenails painted in her own blood, more of it used to paint the face on the wall behind her. Another taunting portrait that would stare at him in the night behind closed eyes.
Option one seemed like the best for all involved. At least they would both be alive. Guilt and pride didn't come into it when weight against life or death.
But still, the fact that he was narrowing down his three choices meant that had stood in her bedroom door, fully clothed including his shoes, just watching her as she continued sleep.
Her bedroom had revealed things about her that he'd never have found from her desk drawer. He could have walked in here and convinced himself that this was a typical marital bedroom, simply lacking the husband. The walls were a calm peach colour, the carpet a similar shade just a fraction darker – he'd been able to tell that even in the darkness. The bed sheets were white, and the duvet cover that lay above them shimmered with a silvery tone to the white material – the moonlight glowed against it, making Lisbon all the more beautiful when he had lain her against his hours before and crawled over her body. Beside the bed on both sides were matching tables, the one on the right, obviously Lisbon's side of the bed, was holding a lamp and her jewellery, and he knew that there was no doubt a book and her back up weapon in the drawer of the table. On the other one was nothing at all, but there were things inside the drawer, he supposed, that she didn't need as often as the others – her address book, photographs that she loved to look at but held too many painful memories of the people inside them that she couldn't have them out on display.
She was lying in the bed, curled up on her side near the centre exactly as he had left her when he had moved from beneath her and left to dress himself. The white sheets and silvery blankets were raised only to her hips, but the outstretched arm that had been lying over his chest covered her dignity, and the middle of summer was enough to warrant sleeping without nightclothes anyway. The important thing, however, was that in her sleep her face had a wash of relaxation covering it, particularly with her features half covered with the glow from the full moon outside her window, the astral glow sneaking in from the miniscule gap in her curtains. Her dark hair was spread around the pillow, tousled and tangled from the ferocity in which he had ran his fingers through it and used it to bring her lips to his. There was an exhausted beauty in a satiated woman, particularly when he had put her in that much of a relaxing state that he could leave the room without her even noticing she was no longer holding him – it made her look ten times more beautiful than he had ever seen her look before.
He silently crossed the room and closed the window she had left open just a crack in the summer heat, knowing that even though it was rather warm and that the room would be unbearably stuffy in the morning, and that she would complain about it before she'd even crawled out of bed, it was better than Red John using an open window as an advantage to get to her. As he went to go back across the room, he stopped at the side of the bed, looking down at the woman who lay within it. Her lips were parted ever so slightly and he could see the gentle rising and falling over her chest where the blanket was pulled down.
It was a captivating sight, one that made him want to change his mind and pursue the first part of option three, but he knew that he couldn't. It was too late for that now. Instead, he reached down, pulling the blankets further up her body even though he'd just shut off the cool air that would have had her needing cover. In truth, he was worried that Red John had already started to watch her in her home, as he had obviously done with Jane's wife and daughter, and Jane didn't want him to see her in the beautiful and satisfied state she was currently in. This was his moment, his doing, and he had wanted this sight to remain only for him. Settling the blanket over her shoulder, she snuggled under the new weight, letting out a content sigh. When he realised that she wasn't going to wake up, he smiled sadly, watching her with a fondness that he hadn't allowed himself before. She hadn't lost any of her beauty even though she'd recently moved into her late thirties, and he was starting to believe that she never would. She still had the same captivating charm that he had admired when he began working with her almost ten years ago.
At that moment, when he considered how lucky he had been to have someone like Lisbon admit that she had genuine feelings for him, guilt flooded him. He finally understood what he was doing by disappearing tonight. He had lied to her. He had promised her that he would stay the night with her, that he would forget Red John for one night, that they would find a new way to lure him out tomorrow that didn't involve any danger of his demands. The whole time, he knew that he was going to meet Red John, on time, at his chosen location. To start with he'd seen it in the same way he had seen any of his usual antics; simply keeping a fraction of the truth from her, but now, in this vision of innocence and peace, he realised that he was flat out lying to her.
She didn't deserve to be lied to like this.
He leaned down, placing a gentle kiss on her forehead and allowing his lips to linger against her skin for a moment. "I'm so sorry," he whispered to her, causing her to stir.
"Patrick?" she mumbled, not opening her eyes but her hand seeking for the body that was no longer beneath her. That was it. That was the last time he would hear her voice. He knew it by the sinking in his stomach.
"I'm here," he told her. "I'm just going to get a drink of water," he said, linking their hands together before he kissed her palm, too.
She murmured nonsense before drifting back off to sleep. Instead, he walked out the bedroom out of her front door, never making a sound as he left. He didn't look back until he got to his car, knowing that guilt would overflow him into staying if he gazed back before the car door was closed, shutting him off from the entrance. He leaned his head against the steering wheel, gathering himself for a moment, preparing himself for the fact that by sunrise, Red John will have got what he wanted; he would have killed Patrick Jane.
The following morning, when the sunrise crept through her window, Lisbon would awake, bare and humid in her bed, unsure why the blanket was above her, and she would feel her stomach drop when she realised that she was alone. She would pull a sheet around her, covering herself for a reason she wasn't sure of, as she knew that there was nobody there to see her. She would walk around her apartment, calling for him even though she already knew that he had left, and she would find a note on her kitchen worktop, near the coffee jar that he knew she would go to first thing in the morning. Before she could read the note, her phone would ring. It would be Cho, telling her to get down to the docks, no further explanation other than an insistence that she got there as quickly as possible. She would rush, the note crushed in her hands, not bothering to shower or do anything to control her hair. She would arrive at the docklands, and she would walk into a corner of a warehouse where her world would fall apart.
Later, when she finally left his lifeless side to allow the coroner to take him away, she would find his cell phone, the number ready on the screen for his next call. She would see her number selected, and know that after he had been gravely injured, he had retaliated, killing Red John with his own weapon before understanding that his injuries would eventually take him. The coroner confirmed that he had died roughly an hour before Cho arrived to the scene, two hours after his meeting with Red John had been scheduled. For an hour after killed Red John, Patrick Jane had lay alone, his life slowly and painfully leaving him, the entire time trying to get up the courage to call Teresa Lisbon and apologize, and ask if she got his note.
And she would have told him that the note would stay with her forever. It would be in her wallet, alongside photographs of her nieces and nephews – never any children of her own. On days that hurt her, Jane's birthday, the anniversary of his death, the anniversary of his burial, the same site that his wife and daughter had been, the three of them laid to rest together, she would take out the note and read the words that she had memorised the very first time she had read it.
My dearest Teresa.
Never doubt that I have loved you and that I am sorry.
Patrick Jane.
End.