A/N: Somewhat fluffy AU oneshot set between 6x15 and 6x16 (so before Pike). Inspired by a few Bastille songs and a lot of insomnia.
Major spoilers for 4x21. Standard disclaimer applies.
(Side note: Chapter 5 of All You Have Is Your Word is currently being edited and will be posted soon.)
It's been five days since she rode in the helicopter that touched down into the snow of New Mexico, five days since she found Haibach dead, Rigsby bleeding out, Grace sobbing, Jane stunned. When she sleeps she sees the axe coming down on Jane's fingers, then red and gold against white. When she's awake she doesn't let herself think.
Abbott's face is twisted into a frown when she gets to the briefing that morning, mug of watered-down coffee clutched in her hand. The suspect names break apart and recombine and the pictures of victims blur into abstract paintings. All she hears is Sacramento.
"We'll be working out of the FBI headquarters in the city," Abbott is saying. "This team was chosen specifically for your familiarity with the area. I trust that it won't be a problem for any of you."
She watches Cho shake his head, watches Jane take a sip of tea.
She chooses the ticket for 14C, the only seat isolated from anyone else on the team. When Cho offers to take it instead, a copy of The Brothers Karamazov in his hands, she tells him not to worry about it. A few hours pass through the pages of the case file, locations that mesh with dates that swirl with theories that leave her knowing less about the murders than she did before.
She drinks another coffee. They're out of sweetener, and the flight attendant apologizes five times.
Gunfire inside an abandoned spice factory comes a quarter inch from hitting their Sacramento liaison, leaving a charred tear in one arm of his dress shirt. Jane hypnotizes the second-in-command of a gang into giving away the location of a massive cocaine supply, and is silent when the man is found with a slit throat later that day. She's nearly pushed off the roof of a building, and five seconds later Cho fractures a suspect's wrist pinning him to the ground.
Abbott orders them all back to the hotel at seven.
She doesn't say anything when Jane gets into the passenger's seat of the FBI-loaned SUV she's driving, only buckles her seatbelt and turns the key in the ignition. A country station starts playing on low volume, and she shuts it off.
"They've closed down," Jane says a few minutes later.
Her eyes are fixed on the road ahead—red stoplight and red taillights of a small blue Honda, three campaign bumper stickers and Washington plates. She voted for one of the candidates in the last election.
"We're not done the case yet, anyway," she tells him.
"I know."
She won't see the flat roof and green awnings, see the We Deliver sign in the window, hear Rigsby ordering them one pepperoni, two cheese, one mushroom. She won't see the bail bonds agency or tax preparation company or cheap fast food joint that's replaced it.
"The Thai restaurant on seventh's still open," she says. "I saw it earlier."
"But that isn't where we're going, is it?"
She shakes her head.
The gate at the front of the parking lot has been dismantled and removed, in its place a joint sign for Wilson & West, Immigration Attorneys and The Smithson Agency.
"They sold the building."
Jane nods. "The state's in quite a lot of debt."
"Yeah," she says. "I know."
"But you didn't know they'd sold it."
Her hands gripping the steering wheel, car still stopped in the entrance as though she's planning to back out and drive away.
"No, I didn't," she tells him. "They did it after I left."
The car jolts when she hits the accelerator again, wheels rolling forward over pavement to a space at the back of the lot, halting between a battered black Subaru and a silver Yamaha with half the paint worn away. She pulls out the key and releases the seatbelt. Red brick in the rearview mirror, sun disappearing below the horizon.
"You don't have to go in," she starts. "If you—"
"I'll go with you," he interrupts.
"Fine." And then—"Thanks."
On one wall of the lobby in gold letters is Wilson & West, on the other are two paintings—the Empire State Building and the Golden Gate Bridge, both in dusk. The receptionist's desk is cluttered with paper and empty of people, the monitor to a small computer running a screensaver of colored ribbons. The paint on the walls is a pale blue now.
"You hear that?" she asks.
From behind a door and down a hallway—You know goddamn well that the judge won't take the brief after eight. What the hell were you thinking, Lisa?
"David Wilson," Jane says. "Speaking to Lisa West."
"You looked them up?"
"The paper on the receptionist's desk, nearest to you," he explains.
Crème-colored with a letterhead, the two attorneys' full names and the address of her building—their building now. The rest of the print is too small to read from where she stands, but she sees their looping signatures at the bottom. A half-addressed envelope is nearby.
"Receptionist and secretary," she says.
"You're right. Which means she's probably only stepped out for a moment."
The floor has been retiled in white to complement the blue paint, and the sound of her footsteps is unrecognizable as they walk to the elevator. As Jane presses the up button—This is third time in two months you've just blown something off, Lisa. You think I don't know you're drinking again? You think I didn't notice?
"They don't own our floor, do they?" she asks.
"I don't think so."
The elevator is steadier than she remembers, as though maintenance has finally finished the repairs they promised every year of her time here. Jane's face is still—lips turned a fraction of an inch downwards at the corners, eyes fixed on the doors or maybe on nothing at all. When her hand moves to touch the gold cross around her neck, she stops and lowers it.
"You never saw it empty," she says. "After they took out all the furniture."
"No, I didn't."
She doesn't say 'you're lucky'. She doesn't say 'this can't be any worse'.
The doors slide open to gray tile and bricks painted white, the wall that should be in front of her torn down to make space for another receptionist's desk. Deserted also—this time free of papers or a computer, a layer of dust collected on the black surface. She thinks it was assembled by the owner.
"You think whoever was here shut down?"
"They've lost their receptionist," Jane says. "They haven't left, though."
Through an unlocked door and down a hallway rebuilt at a strange slant, Jane's footsteps echoing behind her—slower and out-of-sync. She won't linger to examine the placement of pictures on the walls, won't analyze the quality of the paint and tiling the way she's sure he's doing. She doesn't look at the nameplate on the only door they pass.
The break room is still a break room—but not theirs. She thinks it could belong in the FBI headquarters in Austin, all grayscale colors and institutional sparseness. A white coffee machine sits half-full on black countertop with a stack of upside-down styrofoam coffee cups beside it. There's a piece of paper taped to the wall nearby, reading Guests, please help yourselves.
Her breath catches when she lets herself turn to look.
"Lisbon—"
"Yeah," she interrupts. "I know."
The bullpen is gone. Not the empty space she walked through after Abbott's team removed their desks and chairs and couches—it's a small waiting room instead, with more white walls that shouldn't be there, two sofas upholstered in green, one brown coffee table scattered with magazines. She can't walk to the space where Van Pelt used to work, can't pretend to lift that necklace that used to hang from the potted plant. She can't imagine Jane sitting on the couch with the turquoise cup, the one she's put half of back together and can't get herself to finish. She can't see anything except two photographs of Japanese shrines, a plastic case full of travel brochures, one styrofoam cup rolled under a chair with a child-size bite taken out of the rim.
"I'm sorry."
"It's not your fault," she tells him.
"It isn't yours, either."
She drifts toward the back of the room with Jane following her, lets her hand reach for edge of one of the photographs but stops an inch away. Anything she touches here is going to become real in her memory, is going to surface the next time she dreams of this place.
"Can I help you two?"
Not Jane. She turns to see a man with brown hair chopped short, silver-rimmed glasses on the bridge of his nose. She thinks early thirties, thinks from his suit that he's in charge.
"This is the Smithson Agency?" she asks.
He nods. "For Foreign and Domestic Travel. I'm Alexander Smithson, actually. Were you looking to meet with somebody?"
Jane's hand slips into hers before she knows what's happening. "We were thinking of planning a trip for sometime in the spring, in fact."
The man's face brightens. "Great. It's after hours right now, but if you'd like to come with me to my office, I can take your contact information and set up an appointment."
The fake smile. "Of course."
They follow Smithson through a door and past a few other offices—most with blank nameplates, a few with images of foreign landmarks or clipped newspaper articles on world travel. Jane doesn't let go of her hand. She isn't sure whether he needs the comfort or whether he thinks that she does.
"Okay, here we are," Smithson says. "Feel free to have a seat."
Two metal chairs in front of the desk, one behind where Smithson sits and begins pulling up pages on his computer. She taps her fingers on the blue foam cushion and wishes she'd stayed standing—but they have to keep up appearances.
"You inherited this business from your father, didn't you?"
Smithson looks at Jane, eyebrows raised. "I did, actually. Took over a year ago. How'd you know?"
"Only a guess. But you haven't been in this location very long, have you?"
"You're right. Seven months. We bought the floor from the firm downstairs," Smithson tells them. "Alright—I just need your names, email and phone you two can be reached at, and when you'd like to make an appointment."
She lets Jane speak for her, half-listens as he gives Smithson two fake first names, one fake last name, a made-up email address, what she thinks is Abbott's phone number. She knows why he agreed to do this. The hallway's taken them to where her office was—or close to it, at least—the floor tiled now, the walls shifted as though she's in some mythological maze, every trace of her as a CBI agent gone. But it's something, still.
"Okay. You two are meeting with Alicia Pryor at two PM this Friday."
"Thank you," Jane says. "We'll be there."
"Perfect." Smithson looks at her. "It's a nice building, isn't it?"
"Yeah," she manages.
He must have noticed her absence, noticed her studying the junctures of the walls that should never have been built, noticed her searching for a chip in the paint on the ceiling.
"You two lived in California long?" he asks.
"Just a year," she tells him.
Smithson nods. "You probably didn't hear about it, then. This used to be the building for some kind of state police force—CBA, maybe. Or CBI. That sounds right. Turned out they were all a bunch of dirty cops."
"I hadn't heard that," Jane says before she can speak.
"Really makes you angry, doesn't it? That's what our taxes went to pay for—mine, at least. But it's a great location, so I can't complain. And I think the firm downstairs did a lot of work up here before they sold the floor to us."
"I see."
There's a silence after Jane speaks—something heavy that settles on her ears, something that makes Smithson's expression twist into a frown, makes his eyes narrow. She can tell he's new to this, new to business, new to customer service. He's tried to find common ground with them and doesn't know how to do it, tried to make them comfortable and failed miserably. But she doesn't feel sympathetic, not at all.
"Can I show the two of you out?" he finally asks, voice unsteady.
"No thank you," Jane tells him. "I think we'll find our own way."
She's empty of words in the elevator, and Jane presses the button for the top floor without asking her. She doesn't know who owns it, doesn't want to speculate, doesn't want to think of their construction crews tearing down walls and putting up new ones and tiling over the floor as though no one from the CBI has ever walked there.
"You could go back down," he tells her. "I only need a minute."
"I'm not gonna leave you up here by yourself."
"Lisbon, you—"
"I'm not."
When the doors open she can't move for three seconds, can't force her feet to step over the threshold and into the open space.
"I thought so," is all he says.
Every inch intact—no out-of-place furniture, no paint on the walls, no redone flooring or new offices built from scratch. She's travelled back years to a CBI that still exists, to a building that still belongs to her, to Jane, to Cho and Rigsby and Van Pelt and everyone she worked with here, to Bosco and Wainwright and LaRoche and everyone she lost.
She follows Jane to the sliding metal door now without a padlock, breathes stuffy air and dust as he opens it. The room is full of furniture now—all broken, all piled as though in a landfill. Against one wall are two janitor's carts and an array of extra cleaning supplies, mops and dusters and window spray.
"I need—"
"Yeah," she interrupts. "I'll stay."
He shuts the door behind him, but through the windows she can still see him standing on the balcony, still see him facing the edge.
Nothing's changed at all.
She could be here trying to persuade him to leave the Red John files alone for the night, to come back downstairs and have some pizza before it got cold. She could be here trying to convince him to talk to her, to tell her a thought or a theory or anything beyond a you'll see. She could be here terrified that he's leaving her again, that she isn't ever enough to keep him from running away.
But downstairs they've branded her corrupt—taken her interrogation rooms, her bullpen, her office. Downstairs she's an alias planning an imaginary vacation, and not Teresa Lisbon at all.
"Okay." Jane, from the doorway. "Would you…?"
He doesn't finish. She knows it's going to happen, knows she can't stop herself anymore.
"Do you want me to go back outside?" he asks.
"I'm okay." Cracked voice, swallowing. "I'm fine."
"It's alright if you need to…" he trails off. "Are you sure?"
She means to nod but shakes her head instead.
"I can leave for a few minutes, if you need—"
"Stay."
The word leaves her throat with a shudder and it's been so long since she let herself cry, since she let herself mourn a person or a place, since she let herself feel something beyond caffeine headaches and exhaustion. She's missed being sad. She's missed being furious. Jane is crossing the room toward her and she doesn't—can't—care anymore that he's seeing her like this, that he's seeing everything she's quarantined and hidden away since she packed up her belongings and moved to Austin.
"Lisbon, you know what he said—"
"A travel agency?" she interrupts. "Who the hell uses travel agencies anymore?"
"No one does. They're very close to going out of business." He steps forward and brings her into his arms, touch light as though unsure. "They've only kept four or five employees, and the man we spoke to was very happy to talk to us, even though it was after hours."
Letting herself lean closer, letting herself breathe. "I'm not a dirty cop."
"No," he says. "And no one who knows you thinks you are."
"I know," she tells him. "I know that."
His hands gentle across her back, her shoulders. "There isn't anything you need to prove."
"Yeah, there is." The anger again on her lips. "You don't get it, do you?"
"What do you mean?"
And she pulls away, rubbing at her eyes.
"Jane." Clearing her throat, making her voice steady. "I'm not gonna do this anymore."
"Lisbon, I'm not sure what you're—"
"You," she says. "I'm not gonna do this anymore with you. I'm not gonna let you hold my hand and pretend that I'm your girlfriend or that we're married or whatever."
"It was only to—"
"I don't care what it was for, Jane." The words easy, already on her tongue. "I'm not gonna let you treat me like I'm some kind of prop for you, like I'm not even a human being. You can't come back here and keep hiding everything like you did before. You have no right."
"I know that." His voice soft. "This hasn't…been very easy."
"Because I'm avoiding you," she says. "I'm not gonna do that anymore. If you don't really care about me, if you don't want what I want, then I need to know. You have to tell me so I can figure out what to do."
"Lisbon, I don't…" he starts. "I don't know what—"
"Dammit, yes you do," she interrupts. "You always know. You always—"
And a hand beneath her chin. Her head lifted an inch and another hand on her waist and his lips against hers. Apologies and reassurances and truths—wordless, repeated. Her fingers gripping his jacket, his drifting to the back of her neck. She's wanted—needed—to kiss him for such a long time.
"I knew," he says when they breathe again. "I knew, Teresa."
Her arms wrapping around him, pressing closer. "You were waiting for me to say it?"
"You were angry." His hand trailing through her hair. "If I'd said something, you would've been angrier."
"Yeah, probably," she tells him. "But you should've said something anyway."
"I should have."
His lips brushing against the top of her ear, the side of her face—not demanding. She let herself imagine him kissing her every so often at the CBI, let herself have a little bit of hope for their future once in a blue moon. Always here, always in this room after hours, always after they'd caught Red John and sent him to prison. Somehow, she was almost right.
"I think," she starts after a minute, "I'm gonna go back downstairs and punch that guy in the nose."
Jane laughs. "I certainly won't stop you."
"But really." She pulls back a bit. "Did you want to get dinner or something?"
"I would," he says. "And if you're still in need of cheering up, we'll be in time for cabaret."
It takes her a moment, and then—"You think they're still there? Glenda, and…?"
"I passed by the building with Cho this morning."
She smiles. "Back when we had that case…you weren't gonna tell me, were you? About what really happened to Archie Bloom?"
"It wasn't my secret to tell you or anyone," he says. "But then you said you'd never been more depressed about a case before, so I couldn't leave you thinking that everything in the world was dead bodies and bad guys."
"I didn't think it was," she tells him. "I know it's not."
"But sometimes you forget."
"Sometimes," she starts, "it's hard to remember."
When the elevator arrives she stands in place as Jane steps forward, enters the compartment, turns to press the button for the lobby. She's seeing years ago again, hearing it on his lips though he isn't speaking a word.
"You're sweet."
His hand goes to block the door from shutting when he notices her—his head tilting slightly, eyes searching.
"Not ready to leave yet?"
"No," she says. "I'm fine. It's just…"
"I'm sorry for everything."
She sees the recognition on his face, sees his expression soften.
"Teresa." His voice is steady, certain. "I'll stay."