Disclaimer: I do not own any rights to "The Mentalist".
Summary: There's only one person who could make Lisbon leave Jane's side. A series of 25 drabbles woven together to make a single story. Jisbon, Jisbon baby. Rated T for language, adult references. Birthday fic for PetitJ.
A/N: I have clawed my way out of the depths of writer's block to pull this story together, and all for my dear friend PetitJ's birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY SWEETIE! Quotes in Italics are from the Hebrew hymn "Eshet Chayil" (A Woman of Valor).
A Woman of Valor
"A woman of valor, who can find? Her value is a price above rubies…"
The first time, it is not loneliness or alcohol that brings them together. True, they are terribly lonely without each other these days. And yes, there's an alcohol bottle on the couch cushion between them. But those things are just to the side. They are not why.
Jane has been railing at himself again, hating what he once was and what it had cost him. But this time, it's more than Lisbon can bear. "You are not worthless," she interrupts, taking his hand. "I love you. You mean everything to me."
He is too surprised to speak. So he kisses her.
###
How did she never notice that parts of them just fit together? That space in the small of her back just big enough for his left hand? That crook in his neck where she rests her cheek?
Long, languid bouts of lovemaking only confirm it. There is no mismatch or awkwardness, even if it seems there should be at first. Whenever they try to say goodnight, whispers become kisses. And she loses the "better judgment" battle every time.
She loves him. Knows it's a truly dangerous thing to love him. But at the same time, she doesn't intend to stop.
###
From then on everything seems so fragile. Each moment breathing into and through each other could be their last. He is so, so frightened, even more than she.
She is prepared for anything. Every week now, she makes sure she calls her three brothers and tells them she loves them. They need to know she does not begrudge them even a moment of her "lost" childhood. Not anymore.
They both worry most Red John will find out. That no matter how careful they are, he will steal away their time together. That one morning, one of them will be gone.
###
Nights turn into weeks, and life changes. All she can think about these days is food. She wants Caesar salad with bay shrimp, something she hasn't had since San Francisco. She wants Italian beef sandwiches, a specialty from Chicago. And she's not going without any of it.
She knows whenever he arrives at four in the morning that he's brought her some outrageous treat she asked for earlier. It's usually fantastically appetizing, but she always ends up wanting him even more, letting the food sit and practically dragging him upstairs.
He may privately find it funny, but he never complains.
###
The plus sign on the pregnancy test only confirms what she already knew. Regular as clockwork for over twenty years, then late? No mystery. Now she has to tell him.
When she walks into his attic, he takes one look at her and she knows he can tell. So she doesn't say anything about it. She raises an eyebrow, asks instead if he'll be coming to her tonight. He says "Not tonight. Get some sleep." And she feels cold.
Does he blame her for this life they've created? Does he hate her? What will she do if he leaves again?
###
He hasn't visited her in days. She can't remember the last time she spent every single night of a week alone.
On the tenth night, there's a soft knock on her door around eleven. He could've come right in, but apparently doesn't dare. She opens the door, but blocks it. "Well?" she whispers.
She isn't prepared for Jane to go down on his knees and wrap his arms around her waist. She pulls him up, drags him inside. "I was sure you wouldn't forgive me this time," he chokes out.
"When have I ever not forgiven you?" she asks him.
###
The moonlight makes his skin glow. His head is resting on her chest. She strokes her fingers through his hair, curls still damp from their exertions. She is waiting for him to say what he came to.
He begins to weep. He begs her to keep their baby, pleads with her in spite of the danger. Again, she isn't prepared for this. She would've been more ready for him disappearing.
So she says the first thing she can think of.
"I love you. I love our child. Of course I'm going to keep it."
He falls asleep in her arms.
###
Now, her morning ritual has changed. She checks her stomach in the full-length mirror every day, looking for even the slightest hint of roundness.
On the rare mornings he doesn't leave before dawn, he chuckles gently at her. "You're not showing yet, dear," he says one day. "But you will eventually. And then what are we going to do?"
She already knows his thoughts on the matter. He wants her to go into hiding while he finds and takes out Red John. She doesn't want to leave him to face it without her. But, honestly, what are her other options?
###
Time passes. Finally, she's standing in front of Bertram, giving a well-rehearsed story as her reason for requesting a leave of absence. He suspects she is lying. She knows he does, but also that he doesn't know the truth. He has no legitimate excuse to deny it, so she's granted a 6-month sabbatical.
She meets Jane on her way out of the building. She has also had to deceive the team, and she's angry. He knows it, and for once keeps his mouth shut, doesn't push her for a reaction.
He knows things will get harder before they get easier.
###
South America. She's never been there before, and her Spanish is rusty at best. But here she is, at a restricted airfield in the middle of the night. Waiting to be whisked off by private jet far away from home, job, Jane, the team… and Red John.
Hopefully.
Jane knows where she's going. And she left a key in Cho's desk to a locker (full of contact information) at the train station. If anything happens to Jane, she wants to know. So there has to be a way to reach her, even as a last resort.
The plane is coming.
###
"Take care of yourself," he murmurs against her hair as they embrace one last time. "Don't worry about me."
She chuckles humorlessly. "Of course I'm going to worry. These days, I always worry when I'm somewhere I can't watch over you."
"I know. But I had to say it, all right? You and our…" his fingers brush over her still-flat belly, "You're what's important. The rest can all go down in flames for all I care."
"Including the team?" she asks. "Including you?" He snorts dismissively, but he won't meet her eyes.
She boards the plane, but she isn't comforted.
###
She settles in a place not so very different from California. Beaches, palm trees, high-rises near parts of the coast. And the population is a mix of races and ages, so a petite white woman doesn't really stick out in the crowd.
She keeps her own first name, but she's not Lisbon here. And she limps along in Spanish always, never caving when a kind person attempts to switch to English to make it easier for her. "Tengo que aprender," she argues. (I have to learn.)
She watches the news, but there is nothing of her old life to see.
###
Looking back on this time in her life, she'll always think of it as "the year without a summer." Being in a different hemisphere has completely warped the wheel of her year.
She left California in the spring, which was autumn down here. So instead of a relaxing, golden summer, she's gone right back into winter. It's exhausting.
Perhaps she should be grateful that she won't be heavily pregnant during the hottest part of the South American year. But somehow it's another subtly wrong part of this whole business.
More than anything else, she just wishes Jane was with her.
###
Three months pass. The immersion makes Spanish come easier every day; she even finds herself thinking in the language sometimes. She is now unmistakably pregnant, her belly round and full and firm.
This gives her an advantage whenever she is out and about. She can move immediately to the front of any line, and no one says a word. She makes the most of it unashamedly.
The snippets of news received from home are not encouraging. Jane is definitely closing in on Red John, and she isn't there to temper his madness.
She could still lose him to this fight.
###
She has a new phone here, one for which no one back home has the number. So when she gets a call with an unfamiliar voice asking "Agent Lisbon?" cold dread seeps into her heart.
First of all, she dumps it. Second, she crosses the border to make a scrambled call to Jane. "Stay there," he says in a tense voice. "But don't get another phone just yet."
She goes back to her apartment, but nervousness has her studying every shadow. When she hears knocking on the door next morning, she doesn't want to answer it.
Thank goodness it's Cho.
###
"You're getting big, boss," Cho says, in his usual deadpan. She rolls her eyes. She doesn't need to ask why he's here. He's been sent to protect her.
If Jane thinks she's in real danger, he won't want her there alone. And he knows Cho looks up to Lisbon as his team leader, and loves her like a sister.
She knows Cho wouldn't think twice about killing someone, if he knew he had to. And she's also sure he'd put himself between her (and the baby) and harm, no matter what.
"It's good to see you, too," she replies sincerely.
###
She can't believe how comforting a familiar face is right now. After a week, it's like falling into an old routine. Of course, she and Cho had never shared an apartment before. And the element of danger is never far from their minds.
But it's really nice to be able to talk to someone who already knows so much about her. Someone who will speak to her in English, and will call her Lisbon, even if it's only in private.
One problem: Cho doesn't know who her baby's father is. And if Jane didn't tell him, maybe she shouldn't either.
###
Sometimes they don't talk at all. Cho has brought a few books with him, and on nights when he doesn't feel chatty Lisbon asks him to read from them.
She appreciates his eclectic taste. She was sure he focused solely on the classics, but to her delight he brought some fantasy with him as well. When he gets to the prayer in "A Swiftly Tilting Planet", she is silent, lost in thought.
"Do you think he'll be alright?" she asks quietly.
"He's got Rigsby and Van Pelt, and you have me," he answers. "We'll all be alright. We won't lose."
###
At first it's just a small pain, a twinge in the bottom of her belly.
She writes it off, ignores it, because she has had a lot to process in a short period of time. Red John's death made international news, as did the critical injury to his killer.
She'd felt her heart drop when she saw the footage of Jane being wheeled away on a stretcher, thick white gauze wrapped around his throat. She'd wanted to fly back immediately, but Cho won't budge.
"He told me not to come back right away, boss. He said something else would happen."
###
It's 2am when the sound of splintering wood wakes her. Someone just broke the door down, around the deadbolt lock.
Her gun is never far from her hand these days, and she grasps for it automatically. Cho is out in the living room already; she heard his familiar tread about a second after the crash.
Maybe she should stay in her bed, but she'd never leave him to face an enemy alone. She turns the corner, and flashes of gunfire momentarily blind her.
But Cho is not hit, and the intruder is dead. The pain in her belly is excruciating.
###
"You need to get to the hospital," Cho says.
"I need to get to Jane," Lisbon counters, even as she winces and places her hand on her stomach.
"They wouldn't let you fly anyway. It's time to drop that baby, boss," he says matter-of-factly. "Then we'll go back."
She opens her mouth to argue, but the pain comes again. "Fine, damn it," she grumbles. "Great timing, sweetie," she admonishes the bulge. "Can't wait to meet your father, can you?" she adds, without thinking.
"That's Jane's baby, boss?" Cho sputters, and he seems so genuinely shocked she can't help but laugh.
###
When she's wheeled into the birthing room, the first thing Lisbon notices is the angled table. They apparently expect her to give birth mostly upright.
"What the hell is that thing?" she snaps, and not in Spanish.
The young nurse with the large brown eyes is quick to try soothing her. "It's all right, Mrs. Teresa," she says in gently accented English. "We want… gravity? To do some of the work, yes?"
Lisbon's mouth is set in a firm line as the next contraction hits. She doesn't really feel like arguing.
It's time for her baby to meet the world.
###
From then on, much is a blur of noise and light and scurrying figures and shouted commands. She pushes when directed, breathes when told, and grits her teeth against the pain.
She's lost all sense of time. It might be minutes, hours, or even days later when she hears a thin gasp, followed by a loud wail. Nothing wrong with baby's lungs, at least.
The young nurse is smiling when she hands over a tiny bundle. "Your little one, Mrs. Teresa. Qué hermoso bebé, senora!"
Lisbon is awestruck. She's never seen a newborn with a full head of blond hair.
###
A week later, Jane is lying in his hospital bed. He's awake, but the feeling of emptiness is overwhelming. How is he supposed to go back to a normal life after years of revenge?
Has he ever had a normal life to be able to tell when he's living it again?
Van Pelt and Rigsby visit him every day, but they have trouble coaxing more than a few words out of him. They haven't heard anything from Cho, or Lisbon for that matter, and it's making them all anxious.
Jane curls up into a ball, waiting for sleep to come.
###
The first thing he hears is a low humming, but he can't place the tune. Jane wishes whoever it is would go away and leave him alone. He doesn't want to be awake.
But the humming persists, until finally it's broken by a short cry. His eyes fly open of their own accord.
Lisbon is sitting in the chair by his bed, nuzzling a baby with soft chubby cheeks and a mop of blond curls.
"Looks like Daddy's awake," she whispers, and then looks at Jane with eyes overflowing with love. "Well, Patrick? Are you ready to meet your son?"
"Strength and honor are her clothing; she smiles at the future."
The End