When Lorelei died, I wanted to write something that showed, through her eyes, parallels to her and Jane, who I feel can be argued is more like Lorelei than he is like Red John. Ever since the news of Miranda was revealed, I've felt that she is essentially a younger, less experienced version of Jane who was brainwashed, and it did make me feel bad for her.
That turned into this fic, also known as A Brief History of Lorelei, And Her Death. Summarizes Lorelei's life as we know it in varying detail, with a focus on her dying moments and what she thought about in the final month of her life.
I don't own anything.
Lorelei Martins didn't know it was over until she felt the knife pierce her skin and sink deep into her gut. She had never imagined that this man would be the person who would cause her death, for years she had been Red John's girl, his closest associate, his mistress and her teacher. But when she looked up into Red John's eyes, she realized it wasn't just over now. It had been over for a long time.
Miranda, dear Miranda. Her death had sent Lorelei into a terrible depression; losing her sister after being reunited – finally reunited! – and knowing what exactly had happened to the other Martins in the days leading up to her death both churned Lorelei's stomach – it was her sister, after all – and infuriated her, and she took that fury out on both her weak, selfish mother, and herself. She had to lose her sister twice, and no one could possibly understand what it was like to feel that kind of grief. Meeting Red John was the moment that Lorelei would for years note as the moment that her life started over.
When, years later, Patrick Jane was assigned to her by Red John, she was excited to be trusted with such an important job – lead the sorry, depressed man to Red John's side. Thinking of what those two could accomplish working together sent chills up her spine – they could be the greatest team to ever exist, using their skills and resources to work together to accomplish what they never could while wasting those skills and resources as adversaries.
She was so caught up in her expectations that she hadn't considered Jane's past. Of course she knew it; he was the man who dared to mock Red John on television, and to prove his dominance, Red John had slaughtered Angela and Charlotte Jane and played cat and mouse with the fraudulent psychic ever since. She had observed him enough, by the time she spoke to him for the first time, to know that he really was grieving, nine years later, and she couldn't help but feel a pang of empathy for someone who clearly hurt as much as she had. But Lorelei was different than Patrick Jane. She channeled her grief into drive, into passion, into something effective, when he played around with the police and that Teresa Lisbon and then sank into despair when reminded of just how brilliant Red John was.
Then things got complicated.
Patrick Jane had been faking – at least in part – his emotional collapse, and it seemed like a half a second later Lorelei was in prison orange, working a menial job and having no change in routine. She went about her day, a model prisoner, waiting for the time that Red John saw fit to break her out. When the time for her escape came, she rejoiced, more than ready to get back to the brilliant man's side and flee.
She found herself, unexpectedly, at the side of another brilliant man, Red John's prize, Patrick Jane, and she balked, partly because she had fully expected it to be Red John or one of the associates, and partly because this was a man who was suffering, suffering from the same grief that she was, the loss of someone who was loved. His pleas for her to come with him, to tell him who Red John was, reminded her of her irrational, childish hysterics after learning that her little sister was dead. He had a fire in his eyes, a lust for revenge, and it was almost pathetic, but she once again felt the empathy bubbling up and it got harder and harder to push it back down. As she claimed that Jane and Red John were a lot alike, there was a voice whispering to her that it wasn't Red John to whom Patrick could identify with the most.
When Jane claimed that Red John was the one who raped and killed Miranda and provided the picture with the damning word – Roy – next to Miranda's body, it was over. Thinking back to that moment, as she felt the knife come out of her stomach and enter again, Lorelei realized she had in fact died at that moment. With the new information, she had to know, one way or the other, if the person who had killed her sister was the person she idolized with the kind of honor one would a deity.
The only person more important to Lorelei Martins than Red John was Miranda Martins.
Patrick let her go, not to return to Red John, but to find out the truth about Miranda's death. And that's what she did. She could easily have gone back to the serial killer and given him more information on Jane's state of mind, but she didn't. She couldn't, not until she knew. Not when it was about Miranda.
When the confirmation that Red John had been the one to rape her sister and leave her for dead, Lorelei felt anger, betrayal, and grief swell up within her again, mixing in her stomach like a vengeance concoction and bursting out of her eyes in a flash. When she looked at Patrick, who was begging her to tell him Red John's name, she saw her own eyes in his. She understood the man because she understood the look, the need, and now the voice in her head was no longer a whisper, but a shout. Patrick and Red John were not as alike as Patrick and Lorelei. Red John knew how badly Patrick wanted him dead, but Lorelei not only knew how badly he wanted to kill the man himself, or have a part in his downfall, but she understood it. But no matter what Patrick would say or promise, Lorelei knew that Teresa Lisbon would be involved in any plot to bring Red John down, and she would refuse to allow Patrick and Lorelei to give him the gutting that he had coming to him.
No, she thought. She couldn't let Patrick help. Red John is mine.
It took just a day shy of two weeks for a killing. But in the end it wasn't Red John that was lying half naked and bleeding on the cold ground. Lorelei felt weak, and it was getting increasingly difficult to breathe, but she looked up at the man standing over her and her eyes flashed one more time. "I hope Patrick Jane guts you like a fish."
The sick bastard simply smiled, and Lorelei's own face contorted, driven by anger and pain, into a sneer.
Her last thoughts were of Jane. The two of them had spent years in the same boat, Grief, and it had only been two weeks since she'd joined him in the life boat Revenge. She'd been rash, letting her emotions drive her, and the boat was filling with water as quickly as her severed lung was filling with blood. She knew Red John would clean her up afterward and make her presentable for when Patrick and Teresa Lisbon would inevitably see her body, and that disgusted her, but she hoped that Patrick would see her as a warning. If he wasn't careful, he would end up the same way, with no revenge and no happy ending. Red John wouldn't kill him, no, that was too easy. He'd go after Teresa Lisbon and watch Patrick fall apart all over again. Red John was cruel that way.
Her last breath was more of an attempt to draw one, a wheeze, and her last conscious action was to shut her eyes so no one would close them for her. She had failed to avenge her sister's death, but maybe Patrick would one day be able to slaughter Red John the way that he had Angela, Charlotte, Miranda, and all those other women and men. Or maybe he, Lisbon, and many other individuals would meet their ends at the hands of the killer. Lorelei would never know. She had been too foolish, too rash, too naïve to be given the chance to find out. This was the kind of game that you couldn't always learn from your mistakes.
The only thing she knew for certain at the moment of her death was that she was grateful that Patrick Jane had given her the opportunity to die Red John's victim. It was better than dying Red John's girl.