A/N: This is a little AU fic that just popped into my head one day.
Disclaimer: If I did own The Mentalist this story wouldn't make any sense.
It had been just another day on the job. There'd been a suspect, they'd hunted him down. He'd taken refuge in a vacant house. They'd surrounded it, waiting. He didn't surrender however, instead he opened fire. They retaliated.
In the midst of the streets on the opposite pavement a little girl, no more than eight maybe ten was walking home from school. Her dark pigtails swinging from side to side while the afternoon sun highlighted her freckled face.
Unfortunately nobody noticed her before it was too late, she had unknowingly entered a temporary battlefield and was within shooting range. She was a smart girl and as soon as she heard gunfire her instincts told her to run in the opposite direction, but before she could run, duck or hide, she collapsed on the cold pavement. A stray bullet, never meant for an innocent child, had hit her square in the chest. Someone rushed to her side, an ambulance was called, she went to the hospital, but it was too late. On that beautiful afternoon the little girl died on the operating table. Her parents were devastated. She was their firstborn and she'd been their only daughter. She was a bright and clever little girl, always smiling and compassionate. When she became a big sister she had taken to that role with pride, she loved the twins and recently she'd gotten to be a big sister again, and although sad it wasn't a girl this time she'd loved the new baby with all her heart. But even though she was the oldest, she was still their little girl. And now she was gone.
'An unfortunate tragedy,' was what the newspaper headlines read. This was of little comfort to the family, that was never quite the same after this.
Some 30 years later, far away from the windy city of Chicago another tragedy - with no apparent connection to the previous one - unfolded. In a warm California night a mother and daughter was murdered. Due to the callous actions of a serial killer and the mind games of a fake psychic. The husband and father (the aforementioned psychic) swore to get revenge, and made this his new life goal to.
Unfortunately he had no one to tether him to reality in his quest for vengeance, no saving grace. This got him killed a few years later. He died without exacting his revenge.
We often find ourselves in an unfixable situation, some would say that nothing is beyond repair, but who knows. What defines us is how we deal with it. Two seemingly unrelated and so very different circumstances, who in their wildest mind would ever guess they'd have any effect on each other. People whose paths cross or never crossed, what is meant to be and what isn't. Fate intervenes, takes charge and in a blink of an eye either makes you a millionaire or flushes your life down the toilet.
Well, they do say - whoever they are - that we're all connected somehow and that every cause has an equal effect. So maybe just maybe if this girl hadn't been killed then she could have grown up and maybe prevented the man from getting killed too. Then they might not have lived happily ever after, but then again they might have, you decide.
It's a simple study of 'the butterfly effect'. You change one thing which then affects another and the ripples it creates will have unforeseen repercussions on the bigger picture of things. I guess you can say the world changes with every decision we make. Take that and mix in some fate, chance, luck, etc. and you'll get a life lived.
So if the lesson here is that tragedy breads tragedy, doesn't that also mean that happiness breads happiness?
A/N: Sorry about the ending, I had no idea how to tie this story up otherwise, I guess it became a little philosophical. Didn't even think about the fact that it was basic butterfly effect theory before my hands wrote it, go figure.