Title: Questions and answers

Words: ~1320

Rating: K+

Genre: Hurt/comfort; romance

Characters: Patrick Jane; Teresa Lisbon

Summary: he knew he was being stupid and irrational, but emotions and memories were overcoming his rationality and impairing his judgment. All because of a very simple question, soemthing he should have already taken in consideration in the past, but never did. He had to answer, and he didn't feel like lying to his son. But still, he didn't know what to say.

Disclaimer: Uhm. well, my father is called Bruno, but since it's Negro and not Heller, I'd say tha t I don't own the rights to the Mentalist.

Patrick Jane wasn't a man who got scared easily. Even in front of guns, sometimes, he could keep his cold blood, as there was always a person behind the gun, and he was the kind of man who could sweet-talk anyone in anything.

(With, maybe, the exception of Lisbon. But that was another story).

So, deep down, he knew he was being stupid and irrational, but he couldn't help it. The emotions and the memories were overcoming his rationality and impairing his judgment. All because of a question, a very simple question.

Something that should have thought about in the past, but never took in proper consideration. Which, in his opinion, had been pretty stupid.

And yet, he couldn't help it.

He simply stood there, slightly trembling, sweating, in utter silence, looking at the darkness right before himself. At his back, at the front door, Teresa braced herself in silence, not knowing what she was supposed to do, or to say. She didn't want to make him feel guilty, didn't want to impose on him even after so long, but the baby boy was silently sobbing, wondering why a simple question had made his daddy so sad, and why wasn't he answering. He was just a five years old kid, and she remembered Tommy at that age. Her little brother always used to feel guilty over whatever their father used to do. It was something young children often did.

Their baby was no exception.

She could feel Jane's intake of breath, and saw him moving in utter silence, slowly, in the darkness just to sat on the boy's bed. The sounds he did while he was stroking the child's hair told her he was reflecting on his answer, and that, deep down, he wanted to answer. He had to.

And he didn't feel like lying to his own son.

If he was anything like her, and he still was the same man six years prior she had confessed being pregnant after just a couple of months of proper dating, he was probably panicking. Both had dreaded this moment, this specific question.

He could say why he loved her - How could anybody not being in love with mummy?- and he could even say the exact moment he had understood he was in love with her - and even when I understood that I had a huge crush on her - but there were a couple of questions he wasn't ready to answer to.

And, if she had to be honest... even after six years of being together she wasn't so sure she wanted to know the exact answer to that question, because...well, it left too much room for thinking about the past, and what they meant for each other. Even after so long. Because, as much as he had always said he was sure... every now and then, she still had her good dose of doubts.

Luc wasn't stupid, and he was growing up. They just couldn't tell him simply that they met on the job. That much, he already knew. He wanted to know more. He wanted to know why they were doing their jobs, how daddy could be a cop without being actually a cop, why did he waited ten years to marry mummy...

They wanted to tell him the truth, and yet, they were pretty sure it wasn't exactly a good idea (more than sure, actually).

How could he say that h had been married once, to a woman who wasn't mummy, that he used to have a child, but that said wasn't his baby boy? How could he explain that he failed them because he was an egoistic idiot and con-man, and that because of him they had been killed? That the only reason he had gone to work with mummy was because he wanted to slowly kill their murderer, as painfully as possible?

Once again, the breath died in his throat, and for once in his life he struggled for words. Once again he was on the verge of a good, old-fashioned panic attack, but as she always did, Lisbon's soothing presence calmed him down. As soon as she caressed his shoulder, he leaned in her touch, sighing dreamy as she sat at his side, ruffling like he had done Luc's hair.

"Do you remember Beauty and the beast, honey? The prince who had been turned into the beast to learn a lesson?"

"Daddy isn't bad! are you, daddy?" She sighed, running an hand through her hair as her husband chuckled shamelessly. She was trying to help, but he wasn't doing anything to meet her half way...

"Ok, sorry. Wrong choice." she bit the inside of her moth, trying to remember every story she had ever heard as a child, to see what she could use as an explanation. It wasn't like she could simply send to sleep her child, not with Luc. He was just like his dad. Like a dog with a bone.

So... if beauty and the beast was a no-no...

Cinderella? The curls were all right, after all (even if the idea of Jane with a gown made her laugh) but both there and in Snow White the main characters was female, like in the Little Mermaid (that was too sad) and she had never bothered reading 1000 and one nights because she hated the premise.

So, she decided to improvise- something she had become quite good at, after having worked with the almighty Patrick Jane for so long.

She told him the story of the prince, who angered the evil wizard because he had everything, and still he wanted more. She told him how the wizard cursed the prince, how he couldn't neither love or be happy any longer, how the evil wizard was taking over realm after realm. She told him how the prince went to join the knights of a fare away realm, in order to stop the wizard once and for all, how the wizard was evil and kept tricking them, menacing their lives, how the princess, lady of the knights, fell in love with the prince, but waited until he wasn't ready, to confess her feelings, and how, doing so, she broke the spell, allowing the prince to love her back.

And at the end, she told her baby how, together, all of them, they finally won, freeing the world from the wizard's shadow, allowing the prince and the lady-knight to love each other freely and eventually start a family together.

"Is daddy the prince, mummy?"

She smiled, as she cupped her son's face, Jane's nose nuzzling her neck. "Yes, honey, he is the sad prince, and when I met him, when he started to work with me, he was very, very sad..."

"Because a bad man had punished him? Like the wizard?" she simply nodded, hoping it was the end of it, but there was still something that troubled the child. "Was daddy a bad man too? Like King Midas, who wanted to turn everything into gold?"

She didn't know what to answer. Yes, Jane hadn't been perfect back then, and yet...

In that moment, Jane decided to add his two cents to the conversation.

" You see buddy, I wasn't a bad man, but I wasn't perfect either. I was... kind of lost, and I used to do a lot of mistakes. All because your mummy wasn't around yet. Because that's what your mummy does. When people are around her... they want to be better. Just to see her smile. And that's why I love her so, so much!"

Finally happy, the kid didn't ask any more questions, but lulled by his parents' soothing presence, he fell asleep, satisfied by their answers, and by the fact that he and mummy were finally making daddy happy.

The same mummy and daddy who were wondering what they would have said once the fairytale wasn't going to be enough any longer.