Title: If she could…
Author: Miss Peg
Rating: K+
Characters: Van Pelt, Rigsby, Cho with mentions of Lisbon, Jane and Craig O'Laughlin
Summary: If Grace could change everything before 'the incident', she would do…except…

Prompt: ROMANCE: Rigsby/Van Pelt, what could have been (by tromana)
Notes: This fic was written for The Mentalist Ficathon on the brand new Paint It Red (The Mentalist) forum (if you want to join, send me a message and I'll send you details).
Spoilers:Contains spoilers of the SEASON THREE FINALE!

Grace sat in a chair in the lounge, as she'd done every night since the incident. She didn't like to consider it in greater detail. She'd lost a fiancé and had very nearly lost a friend too. She'd analysed the situation more than she cared to admit to herself. Why did she need to think about what would have happened had herself and Madeleine Hightower not been ready with their guns? Hightower would have been killed, she was sure. Lisbon could have been shot again, or left to bleed to death had Craig shot her too. He didn't love her. That much had been clear from the way he spoke before she'd pressed the trigger.

Since that night she'd sat at the foot of Lisbon's hospital bed for hours, waiting for her to wake from her anaesthetic induced slumber. When she finally had, Grace had held her tightly in her arms, probably overstepping the boundaries they were supposed to have due to Lisbon's senior position. She didn't care. She needed to apologise to Lisbon for ever allowing her to end up in that position.

A knock at the door pulled her from her thoughts, the same thoughts she'd mulled over for the week she'd spent on compassionate leave. Her phone had rung off the hook, journalists wanting an exclusive. Not only had she been requested not to speak to anyone about the case, but she didn't want to anyway. The pain cut too deep for her to ever want to talk about what had happened.

On the other side of the door, she found Cho and Rigsby, their faces sullen and their mouths curled up in sympathetic smiles. The general mood of the team had dropped after 'the incident'. Jane was locked up in a prison cell somewhere, awaiting trial. She suspected he wouldn't get out until after he'd served years for murder. Lisbon had been discharged from hospital, but had also been on leave to recover. From the few messages she'd received from Rigsby, Cho had temporarily taken over Lisbon's job and a couple of agents from other departments had been shipped in to help out. It wasn't every day that three members of the same team were unable to work.

Grace didn't really want to leave the house, but Cho and Rigsby had made it impossible for her to say no. She slipped her jacket around her shoulders and followed them out into the night. Contrary to what she usually did on her days off, she still dressed in her usual clothes; the only difference being that she didn't move from her chair to go to work.

They drove to a small bar a few blocks away, one that they'd been to before, her and Rigsby spent a lot of time there before they broke up. It had been their spot, the one where there was no risk of ever bumping into anyone from the CBI. She hadn't been there after their relationship ended, despite Craig attempting to take her a number of times. Being back made her reconsider the last year of her life. So much had happened, so many changes had occurred. She'd lost the love of her life, someone she could see herself spending the rest of her days with. It wasn't like they wanted to end their relationship, they were forced to. They sacrificed being with each other, in order to protect their futures.

Then she'd fallen for Craig, perhaps not in the same way that she'd fallen for Wayne, but enough to accept his marriage proposal. She should have known from the way Rigsby reacted that he hadn't moved on. She didn't move on either, not emotionally.

If she could do the whole thing again, she would do.

If she could refuse Craig's offer of a date, she wouldn't ever allow him into their world and then he wouldn't have had the opportunity to injure Lisbon and leave her struggling to go back to work. If she could go back to the day she told Wayne that they couldn't be together, she would do without question. If it was possible for her to be transferred back to the day when she chose to work for the CBI instead of her local police department she would do.

Anything to stop 'the incident' from ever happening.

If she hadn't met Craig then none of this would have happened. If she hadn't worked at the CBI, then she wouldn't have had the opportunity to meet him, or work on the Red John case.

But if she hadn't started working for the CBI, then she wouldn't have met Wayne. If she hadn't met Wayne, then she wouldn't have had a wonderful relationship. No matter how it ended, no matter how much she wished they hadn't ever had to break up, she wouldn't change that for the world.