Disclaimer: I don't own The Mentalist.
Summary: Lisbon can't believe Jane still lives in that house. She hasn't known Jane all that long, but since the murders didn't happen yesterday, she figures Jane's had enough time to get his affairs in order and move, even if it was just to a crappy apartment near C.B.I. headquarters.
Lack
By Potterworm
When Jane doesn't show up for work one day, Lisbon feels a tinge of annoyance. He's not six-years-old; he knows enough to call in sick. But she certainly doesn't feel concern (no, never that).
The second day he doesn't show up, she checks her voicemail and hears him say, "Teresa," with that charmer-voice that almost makes her forget that him calling her by her first name is entirely inappropriate and annoying. Then he says weakly that he has the flu and that he'll be in next week.
The team seem to show a touch of concern when they realize that Jane is ill, but they get back to their work quickly enough; Lisbon is the one who - for one of the first times in her career - can truly not concentrate on the case. Van Pelt - newbie, rookie Van Pelt - ends up solving the case and getting a confession almost entirely on her own. Rigsby orders case-closed pizza, and Cho does the paperwork.
Lisbon heads out early from the case-closed pizza celebration, feeling like she's not earned it, not this time. She drives around for a half an hour, not wanting to go home, before, finally, after picking up a container of chicken noodle soup, she finds herself in front of Jane's house.
She's never been there before, not once; she only knows his address because it's in his employee file, which she's read enough times after all the fiascos he's caused at work. It's not like she needs to peruse his file to type up paperwork that comes down simply to saying, You're right, boss. I can't control my consultant. But there's something about him pulling some elaborate, infuriating stunt that makes her want to understand him, and since he rarely offers up personal information, his file is really the only place to get it.
Lisbon may not have ever been at his house, but she recognizes it. She's never connected the written address with this house before. She parks in front of his house now, like some kind of stalker, as she flashbacks on the night the Red John case flashed through the news again. It wasn't a particularly important news story to her, but she had followed it, like she followed all grisly murders. For all she knew, it would be her case one day. (Then, one day, it was.)
She had been eating some horrible, left-over Chinese take-out, flipping through the news channels when she saw the news reporters out front Patrick Jane's house, the sight of the latest Red John murders. She had watched for another five minutes or so, recalling vaguely seeing the psychic on TV before.
Lisbon can't believe Jane still lives in that house. She hasn't known Jane all that long, but since the murders didn't happen yesterday, she figures Jane's had enough time to get his affairs in order and move, even if it was just to a crappy apartment near C.B.I. headquarters.
She takes a deep breath though, digests another piece of the enigma that is Patrick Jane, and walks up his sidewalk - the same sidewalk that Red John once walked up - and knocks on his front door and feels the ghosts of Red John's hand pushing the door open (Red John was far too arrogant to use anything but the front door in her mind).
He doesn't come to the door immediately, but after a minute, the front door opens slowly, and she sees Jane's pale face look at her in surprise.
"Lisbon," he says, his voice actually scratchy.
Lisbon is taken aback for a moment, because although Jane had called in sick with the flu, she hadn't actually expected him to seem sick. Jane just does not get sick. In the six months she has known him, he has not once gotten sick and aside from some circles under his eye, he has never looked anything but healthy.
He doesn't look healthy now. For once, he is not in his typical three-piece suit; he is wearing a pair of loosely-fit trousers and a generic long-sleeved shirt. Lisbon observes that he looks sick, but not ill though; she's not quite sure what that observation really means.
He hesitates for a long moment, seemingly contemplating her, then opens the door, and Lisbon enters silently, only holding up her container of chicken noodle soup.
He takes the container of soup from her - still warm from the store she bought it at - and leads her into his kitchen. Lisbon's eyes flicker around his house and immediately take into account the absolute lack of personal possessions his house has.
There's not even furniture in most of the side rooms, only in the living room - which has a horribly uncomfortable looking couch and a cheap television. They pass through a large room, which she assumes was once a dining room, but now is entirely empty. They enter the kitchen, which has a card table and a rickety looking chair underneath it. The counters have a few appliances - a microwave, a toaster.
Lisbon takes all this in as Jane opens his fridge - sparse - and talks to her. He tells her that he heard about the case they solved while he was out, and good for them, but he knows they still missed him. He asks her about the date he knows she went on the other week, and when she doesn't say anything, tells her to not feel bad that it didn't work out, because the guy cheated on his last girlfriend, and she deserves better than a cheater.
While she thinks about that round-about sweet comment, he pulls out a coke from his fridge - diet, the only kind of soda she'll drink - and asks her what she's doing here. His voice isn't accusing, and after catching a hint of confusion in his eyes, she realizes that maybe, just maybe, he's finally asked her a question he doesn't already know the answer to.
She says something that sounds professional in her mind, but really ends with her just sort of pointing at the soup and saying she wants him to get well soon.
He laughs though and says, "I'll be back on Monday, right in time to hear Van Pelt gloat about closing her first case."
She doesn't ask him how he knows that Van Pelt nailed the bad guy and confession this time. Lisbon has been a detective for years, so she's good at keeping her emotions closed-off, but she knows the moment Jane realizes her eyes are still flickering around his house - at the empty walls and yard-sale furniture. (Maybe he's realized since the beginning that she's been staring. Lisbon's not really sure, except that she is. She always notices him noticing things after the fact.)
He doesn't give her an explanation right away, doesn't smooth-talk away the situation, doesn't even try to spin some story about a fire that destroyed all his personal possessions. And that's when she realizes that the emotion that's been driving her eyes back and forth from the empty dining room to the fridge with just a carton of milk and a six pack of diet Cokes is concern.
He walks around the kitchen, grabbing two spoons from a drawer and two bowls from a cabinet.
"I can't stay," Lisbon says half-heartedly, thinking of the pile of paper-work she should be catching up on and the apartment she hasn't seen in half a week.
He says, "Nonsense," and before she knows it, the two of them are sitting on the floor of his living room, with their backs up against the couch, watching some old movie on the television.
(When they had first walked in the living room, Lisbon had stood in the doorway awkwardly, before Jane had walked in front of her, and plopped himself right down in front of the couch. She had done the same moments later.)
When the movie's ending credits begin to roll, Lisbon looks around the room again, at the two empty bowls of chicken soup and then at Jane. It occurs to her that he doesn't seem sick. Aside from the tired expression on his face, he looks almost normal. Lisbon realizes now that Jane probably doesn't sleep much anyway; he's just not hiding it well at this moment.
Jane thanks her for coming and makes some comment about the movie that Lisbon has already forgotten.
"Jane," Lisbon says, her voice sounding surprisingly lost.
He stops talking.
Lisbon opens her mouth to say something else, anything else to articulate what she's thinking now, but she's not really sure. It's not as though she knows him particularly well; he's the one who can tell everything about someone after a minute. She needs more than six months to feel truly connected to someone. And yet…
"It was my daughter's birthday yesterday."
Even though she knows how to be stoic, in this moment, Lisbon's mouth opens and her hand covers the noise of shock that escapes it.
"After they died, I got rid of most of my possessions. The rest, I put into a storage unit."
Lisbon still can't speak. She knows that if she does, Jane will stop.
His voice is sore and distant as he says, "About a half year after that, I realized I needed some possessions, so I got some things, but I couldn't bring myself to actually go furniture shopping." He indicates to the couch and the TV. "It's not as though I spend much time here anyway. " He pauses for a moment, then, sounding a little bit broken, adds, "Everything's different, but… everything's the same too. I never even painted."
"Jane," Lisbon says, then stops, because she was about to ask if he was okay, and though she's in a state of shock, she's not stupid. She knows what his comment about never having painted means though, and it horrifies her. "You're not coming in for another week."
He looks at her, his eyes just a little bit too knowing.
"You'll infect us all," she adds, though she's starting to realize that he's not sick, that he never was.
"Lisbon," he says, "I'll be in on Monday… but thank you."
Neither of them say anything after that, but when Lisbon gets up to leave, (because it would be entirely inappropriate for her to crash on his couch, no matter how late it is) she realizes that she understands Jane just a little bit better than she did the day before. (And maybe he understands her more too.) She also knows they'll never mention this night again. For a moment, she misses that lack of knowledge she had about him; her belief that he had a tragic past but was functioning fine.
She goes to her car and stares at his house for a minute or two. She sees a light go off in the living room, then go on in a room on the second floor. It doesn't turn off again, not then and not ten minutes later when she is still sitting there.
Finally, she pulls away from his house. It's only been six months, but right now, she feels like she finally knows Patrick Jane.
That night, she does not sleep.
Author's Note: Ever since the ending scene of the pilot episode, I've wondered how Lisbon, Cho, Rigsby, and Van Pelt would react if they realized Jane lived in his house with almost no furniture and a red smiley face to lull him to sleep. So I wrote this. I'm not quite sure I captured the characters, because my gosh, they are very hard to write, but I did my best. Also, I'm fairly certain that my time-frame is messed up here, that six months after Jane started working at the C.B.I., Van Pelt hadn't been hired yet, but I'm not positive, so I can't be bothered to change it. Just suspend your disbelief. I'd like to know what you think, so please review.