Epiphany
Oneshot that came to mind… Ended up angsty as most of my stuff does.
Disclaimer: Isn't it clear by now?
Everyone has at least one of them in a lifetime.
An epiphany.
You'd think it's some kind of a rare thing that only happens to lucky chosen ones, but it isn't and it doesn't.
It could be the moment when you're standing in the line, waiting to apply for college, and just as they're about to say 'next', you realize, for the very first time what you want to be when you grow up.
It could be the moment you walk down an aisle overly decorated with flowers, and you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with the person waiting for you at the other end.
It could be while sitting in a pew at church, and suddenly discovering some deep, hidden religious meaning that changes your life forever – it happens.
For some it's triggered by something shocking: a near-death experience, or the loss of a loved one.
He's survived both of those things (well, sort of), and never did he ever have anything close to an epiphany – unless, of course, deciding on devoting your life to vengeance counts.
He decides it doesn't. An epiphany is a feeling of sudden and complete clarity. Clarity implies clear, implies clean, implies pure. Revenge-driven, bloody missions do not count as an epiphany.
Not like the one he had today, anyway.
His first epiphany (good one, at least) hit him today like a strike of lightening. Nothing else could really describe it well enough.
A shock, followed by blinding light, blinding clarity.
Leaving him frozen and speechless and disbelievingly glued to his place.
Leaving him with a feeling of wanting to kick himself in the ass for not seeing it earlier.
X
It was a completely normal day today.
There was nothing distinguishable, nothing noteworthy.
A case like any other, some high-flying, big shot friend of a senator got murdered and the CBI was called in to investigate. They were at the palatial apartment building where he lay face down on the floor – dead.
It was there where someone fired the first shot.
The first that was followed by many, many shots in succession.
He ducked as he normally did, behind the SUV. He heard the shouts of the team, the shots fired in return.
He heard her voice bellow above the rest to whoever was shooting to drop their weapons and other threatening phrases.
And he heard her small, strained exclaim of pain through the ruckus.
Somehow, in all the flurried drama, either Cho or Rigsby (he forgets) snuck up behind one of the shooters and managed to regain control over the situation.
As customary, he yelled out for her. He always did so, and he wasn't really sure why. Possibly to get help from her, possibly to see if she was alright? Possibly all of the above.
But she didn't answer when he called. She didn't move to pull herself up, holding her shoulder or arm or leg where the bullet scraped her.
She didn't even raise a hand or something or yell for help.
In the noise of the crime scene, as police officers escorted a small group of men with guns, her voice wasn't there.
He was the first one who saw her leg sticking out from behind the SUV.
And the see the crimson blood already pooling beneath her.
X
He was pacing.
Pacing.
Patrick Jane didn't pace. He walked with a swagger, he occasionally ran when danger threatened. He'd even consider leaping like a fool to safety, if the situation called for it. But he never, ever paced.
But here he was, pacing in the cold, tiled waiting room of the hospital, waiting. It's been hours – hours – since they arrived in the ambulance.
Lisbon, stiller and paler than he's ever seen her, with the small crowd of green-clad paramedics buzzing around her, attaching wires and pumping her chest and screaming out orders for him to get the hell away from the patient!
He insisted in an evenly loud voice that there was no way he wasn't riding along in the ambulance. So he sat the entire ride, squashed in the corner of the ambulance, watching in horror the way the colour seemed to fade more and more from her cheeks every second. His eyes stinging with tears that he didn't know could still be there. Especially for someone who wasn't dead and buried and to be avenged.
His eyes kept flicking to the place – the big, bloody hole, defiling the smooth, ivory skin of her abdomen – where the paramedics have lifted her shirt to reveal the bullet wound.
"It's too deep in there." They kept saying to each other, seemingly unaware of his presence. Then: "Shit! I can't find the bleeder!" Their voices were filled with anxiety and a film of sweat glistened on each of their brows. "She's going to need emergency surgery. Tell Bob to step on it!"
They can't step on it hard enough, he kept thinking. But somehow his voice had left him, and he was frozen and speechless for the first time in his life.
When they skidded to a stop at the hospital, the paramedics flew her out, and he was left alone.
They were long out, rushing her to the ER, when he gathered the brainpower to tell his legs to stand up and leave.
Somehow he ended up here, where he could pace and harass nurses for updates. Updates that never came soon enough, and were never specific enough, and were never satisfying.
At all.
"They're doing all they can, sir, please be patient, sir, it's a high pressure case, sir, and you're starting to annoy me so sit and try to calm down! Sir."
He tried to. He closed his eyes and tried to escape to his mind palace where everything was under his control.
But the only things that sprung up in his mind palace were memories of her…
He walks into the bullpen, sees her sitting at her desk. She's got an angry expression on her face. He thinks to himself that it's kind of becoming on her…
"Don't bother, I'm still mad." She says.
He smiles, and places a little origami frog on her desk. This'll be good, he thinks.
"A frog?" She says incredulously. "Well, that makes everything better."
He can't help but smile. But as he turns away and walks, he thinks: One… Two… Three…
POP!
The little frog jumps out and he hears her slight gasp. Feels, rather than sees, how she startles and jumps a little in her chair.
It makes him smile…
Then they're at the high school reunion.
They're bantering, as they ever so often do, and then a song starts to play. More than Words, by The Extremes, if he's not mistaken…
And she smiles nostalgically – he etches that incredibly rare smile into a wall in his mind palace – and she says: "I used to love this song."
She wants to dance. "Well, obviously you want to dance." He extends his hand.
She refuses, makes lame excuses about work. So he replies teasingly. "You can pretend that I'm that mean, cold-hearted guy you always used to worship from afar."
Then she agrees, somewhat begrudgingly, but with a smile.
He leads her onto the floor, and they sway softly, gently to the music. Her head is rested against him, and he tries to ignore the infiltrating, slightly intoxicating scent of cinnamon, because it's obviously just his overactive observation skills going a little bit crazy on him. He continues interrogating her about what instrument she played in high school all the while.
And for just a moment, he forgets about the ghosts that haunt him every other moment of the day.
Then they're in a crate, heading to somewhere unknown, and she's mad at him for being an idiot.
He tells her he'll always save her; she tells him she knows she'll lose her job over him one day…
She's beautiful in the low light…
A million moments, each more vivid than the next. In each memory, he realizes how much there was to say that he didn't; he realizes how her eyes shine when she smiles, how they light up like green flames when they argue.
And with each passing second, the regret grows and grows and grows.
And then it happens.
The epiphany: he loves her.
How could he not have seen it? How could he not have seen her?
Sure he saw Lisbon the pocket rocket Senior agent whom he loved to mess with; he saw her as a friend and as a person, he saw the cracks in her mask when her past came up and the insecurities that lay thinly veiled in her eyes. He saw her as a woman – really, he did. He knew she beautiful and eligible – especially to men like Walter Mashburn. In retrospect, he wants to kick himself for reacting the way he did to Lisbon and Walter. He pushed them together because he felt something he didn't know (or at least, wasn't used to anymore).
Jealousy.
Because she was Lisbon, and even though he didn't admit it to himself, she was his.
He loved her.
Oh no… I love her.
His eyes lock on the doors of the ER, where he knows she is. Inside, she's probably lying on her gurney being resuscitated by a small crowd of doctors and nurses.
Cold and alone and scared out of her mind.
On the very edge between life and death – the same edge that she's balanced so well throughout her childhood and then her career.
But she tripped and fell and now she's hanging in the balance…
I love you, his heart yells. Please don't leave me.
I don't think I'll survive it again.
What do you guys think? Currently a oneshot, but if I get enough positive feedback, I might reconsider and make it a two- or three-shot.
Much love,
Zanny