Title: Threadbare
Author: Kaliflower
Rating: K
Pairing: None
Warnings: Spoilers for the pilot for the Mentalist
Disclaimer: I do not own this; many other people like Bruno Heller and the good people at CBS do. I just play in the sandbox.
Challenge: Box
Summary: Jane bought a new suit a week before he found his wife and daughter dead.
Author's Notes: I was inspired by what Simon Baker had to say about Jane's clothes on the show in a Washington Post article: "The idea was to show he hadn't bought any suits since the tragic incident with his wife and child. At that moment, he gave up on the physical appearance." ("Reading 'The Mentalist's' Mind," December 21, 2008, Washington Post, electronic edition)
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Jane bought a new suit a week before he found his wife and daughter dead. It was a gray hand tailored three-piece in a wool/silk blend. He prided himself on his appearance; partly, because he was vain, but mostly because it was part of his job as a psychic. A job he abandoned along with its requirements the moment he found their broken bodies posed on his bed.
The suit arrived the next week in a box, delivered by the sixteen year old nephew of the tailor. He wasn't expecting to see Jane answer the door in his boxers, but he had been trained to be polite to all the clients and mutely handed the white, rectangular box over. Jane put it away in his closet, the only area of the house left untouched when he sold off the rest of his family's belongings.
It took another four months before the CBI called for his help on a case. He had worked for them once before, as a psychic. This time he outed himself as a fake, but insisted that he would happily use his expertly honed skills of observation to help them. He wasn't sure why, but he stayed and continued working in Sacramento. He grew busy, sometimes busier than a television psychic.
As his clothes grew threadbare he would occasionally take out the box and consider wearing the gray suit. Every one of his other suits had a memory of his wife connected to it, but his wife never saw this one. After he remembered that he would gently put away the box and bring in another, older suit to be mended by the laundry near his office.