I went to see the movie version of Les Miserablés, the other day, and my favourite song from it, entitled "On My Own", inspires this story. It's not AU or anything, I just took one of the themes from it and turned it into this.
This is set about a year in the future. Beware of major angst. Rated T.
Obviously, I own nothing recognisable.
"You just don't understand, Lisbon. Nobody understands."
Jane has cloistered himself away in the attic for the best part of the day. He won't see anyone, or talk to anyone or do anything but wallow in his own grief. The only reason he's acknowledging me now is because I threatened to kick the door down, but I can tell he wants nothing more than to be rid of me, and to be allowed to be miserable in peace. It's the tenth anniversary of his family's murder and it's not getting any easier for him. If anything, it's worse. A fresh reminder that he's failed in his mission to avenge them and that time is slipping away.
I only wish I knew how to help him. The right words to say; or the right thing to do to make it hurt a little less.
"Nobody could truly understand."
He's swapped his teacup for a liquor bottle tonight, and takes a hearty swig, wincing at the sharpness of the alcohol within. I wonder how much he's had to drink; he's never had much of a tolerance for it.
"Give me that." I attempt to wrest it from his grip. "They wouldn't want you to drink yourself into a stupor."
"And how do you know?" he snaps, viciously. "You never met them. You wouldn't know them from a bar of soap."
I feel like I do know Angela Jane, a little. I've read her case file many times and adding it to the few snippets Jane has told me over the years, I've got some idea of what she might have been like. She had dark hair, and piercing blue eyes. She was tall, and slender, loved to eat pasta, and hated the colour pink. She had a daughter she loved and a husband who adored her.
"You're right," I tell him, sitting down beside him. "But I would prefer it if you didn't drink yourself into a stupor." He smells of the expensive cologne he likes to wear, mingled with the smell of the whiskey he's been drinking. His hair's a mess, his shirt is untucked, and his tatty old shoes seem to blend in perfectly with the dusty floor. It's not often that I see him in such a state; he's normally groomed to the last degree, but of course, even scruffy and dishevelled he's still heartbreakingly beautiful. The normal rules don't apply to him, and never have.
"Just leave me alone," he says, shuffling away from me. "Just for once, would you stop trying to fix me and just let me be depressed?
It breaks my heart to see him like this. And these little episodes of despondency are getting more and more frequent, as the Red John saga goes on. There are moments like this when he just seems to give up on us, on himself, on life. Sometimes I worry that he'll sink so far into the darkness that I won't be able to pull him back.
With a deep sigh, he lets the bottle drop to the floor with a dull clunk, and I snatch it up quickly before he can try and retrieve it. There isn't much left in it; he's drunk nearly the whole bottle. He's going to have a major hangover tomorrow, and a small part of me is glad about it; it serves him right for thinking alcohol is going to solve all his problems. I knew another man once who went down that road; and it didn't turn out well. It left four children fatherless.
On his makeshift bed beside him, there's a manila folder, dusty and dog-eared from being thumbed through so many times. Even though he burned most of the Red John files last year, he couldn't bear to part with this one. He flips it open and turns to the page which bears a photograph of three people; a dark-haired woman, a fair-haired little girl and himself, wrapped around them both, looking happier then I've ever seen him in life.
I know this picture well. Every so often, after another failed Red John arrest attempt I check this file out of the archives and look at it, just to remind myself why we're still fighting to catch this guy. For Angela and Charlotte, and all the other wives and daughters and mothers that this monster has taken away.
"I'm sorry," he says, softly. I'm just about to respond when I realize his eyes are on the photograph and that he wasn't talking to me. It's as if I'm not even here.
Sometimes it feels as though I'm back in high school again, madly in love with the popular guy who never looked my way; only this hurts even worse. The only thing worse than not being noticed at all, is to be noticed and yet never be enough.
Angela was his true love, his childhood sweetheart taken from him too young. She was the mother of his child, and the one he chose to share his life with. It was mere chance that brought him to me; had I not been handed the Red John file, we would never have met.
It's not easy, loving a man like Patrick Jane, but somehow I found a way. I love his smile, the way it sounds when he calls me Teresa, the way I feel on the rare occasions that he hugs or touches me. I love his sense of humour, his rapport with children, and even the way he can still get so much pleasure from a particularly nice cup of tea. But I know that under that confident veneer there's a fear and vulnerability that never leaves him. And I love that, too. I love everything he is, the good stuff and the bad.
"May I?" I request, holding out my hand, and he passes me the picture in silence.
Angela Jane laughs from the photograph, not knowing what would befall her just a few weeks after it was taken. She was beautiful, and looking at her smiling face is like putting an exclamation point on what I can never be. She is the woman I could never live up to, even though she's gone from this world. She still holds a piece of Jane's heart and always will.
"You would've liked them, Lisbon," he says.
"I'm sure I would have."
"And Angela, she'd have loved you." For a split second, an almost-smile appears on his face. "I can just see it now, you two going out for coffee and comparing notes about the things I did that pissed you off."
To placate him, I give a half-hearted smile, but to be honest, I could never see myself as being friends with Jane's wife. If anything, I'd have kept my distance from her, I'm sure, never wanting her to know the way I felt about her husband. And I don't think I'd want to have to hear about all the wonderful things he did for her, wishing it were me.
The brief shift to a lighter tone dissipates as quickly as it came. "It doesn't matter now anyway," he says, sadly. "She's gone. They both are."
"You know you can always talk to me about her, Jane," I say. "And Charlotte too. Anything you ever want to tell me, I'll listen."
I'll just not think about how much I'd love to hear the same tenderness in his voice when he talks about me as he does when he talks about them. Even as that thought crosses my mind, I want to cringe at myself. The man I love is in pain, and all I can think about is how it affects me. I am selfish.
"What's the point? It's not going to bring them back."
"No," I agree. "But it might help you."
He scoffs. "Is that right? I never hear you talk about the people you've lost."
I should've known he'd bring this up. "That's different."
"No it isn't. Your parents, my family, they've all gone somewhere we can't reach them, and never will," he says.
"I don't believe that." I have to believe that there's something more for us than this life on Earth. Because if this existence is the only one I'm getting, so far it's been pretty lousy. I'm not a bad person. I say my prayers. I go to Mass when I can. Yes, I've lied, I've even killed people, but only when there's no other option. I'd like to think I have something to hope for other than death and destruction and the utter agony of this unrequited love.
Another almost-smile. "I'm not like you, Lisbon," he says. "I can't turn to some non-existent spiritual being for strength, like you. I wish I could, but I can't kid myself that way."
I quickly touch the cross around my neck. "Forgive him, Lord," I think to myself. "He doesn't mean it."
"Oh, but I do mean it," he says, half-laughing, reading my mind again. "Focus on your own soul for once, Lisbon. Mine's a lost cause."
We could argue that point for a week, but I know there's no point. He'll never change his mind on this, and to a point I can understand why. Someone who has been through as much heartache as he has is bound to have a bleak outlook on life.
He sighs again, takes the photograph back from me and slides it back into the file, slamming it closed, as though he's slamming the door of his memory palace too, trying to forget.
Nobody should have to suffer so much, and I hate that there's nothing I can do to make it better. I feel so powerless, so useless.
All of a sudden, he makes a grab for the bottle still in my hand, but the alcohol has dulled his reflexes and I deftly whisk it out of reach of his grasping fingers.
"You'll thank me for this later," I scold him, as he curses me under his breath. "But don't look to me for painkillers in the morning."
He looks at me with the kind of anger in his eyes that my father used to have whenever I tried to stop him from going on another bender. I remember how he used to glare, hating me for looking so much like my mother, reminding him of what he lost. A chill runs through me. I'm not a teenager anymore, and I know full well that I could overpower Jane if necessary but the mere thought that he too could hate me so much, makes my insides coil like snakes.
"I know a little something about pain," he snarls. "I think I can handle a hangover easily enough."
"Famous last words."
Outside, a gust of wind makes the window rattle against the frame. In the swirling silence, it sounds like a jackhammer going off.
"Does that always happen?" I ask, and he nods.
"Well, why don't you get it fixed?"
"People don't come into my attic." He says it in a cold, flat kind of voice, utterly final.
"I do," I point out.
He shrugs. "You're already all over the rest of my life. You might as well be up here too."
"Is that supposed to be a compliment, or an insult?"
Another shrug. "It's an observation. Interpret it any way you wish."
"Fine," I stand up and toss the bottle as his feet. "Shut me out, drink yourself into oblivion. See if I care."
He makes no move to pick it up, just looks at me, with his head cocked slightly to the side, as though he's pondering something. He doesn't often look at me that way. After all, he's been telling me for years that he has me all figured out.
"What?" I snap.
"You don't mean that," he says, finally.
"Yes I do," I lie.
"No you don't," he repeats. "But you wish you did. That's interesting."
Of course I don't mean it. I'd be the one rushing him to hospital, standing by him while they pumped his stomach, holding his hand when he came round, telling him it was all going to be OK, begging for him to be given yet another chance.
I wish I could love him less, or not at all. But with every day that passes I fall even further past the point of return. Sometimes I dream of what will happen after Red John. I see him in a cell, behind iron bars, and myself, unable to stay away. It's like the beginning of a bad joke; a cop and a jailbird walk into a prison visitor's room-only there's no punchline, just heartbreak.
Or there's the vivid image of myself walking into a dimly lit room. A blown-up photo of his smiling face atop a mahogany casket. The small cluster of people that would know or care that he's gone.
Either way, there's no happy ending in our future. At least not that I can see.
"I'm glad that you're entertained."
He shakes his head, and then stands up too, kicking the bottle aside, sending it spinning across the floor until it bounces off the wall and into the shadows.
"I'm sorry," he says, and touches my hand. "I know you're just trying to help."
"Believe it or not, I actually do care about you," I say, not daring to say the real word to express how I feel about him. "I want you to be happy."
With a rueful smile, he looks deep into my eyes, and for a moment I think I can see his gaze soften a little, but it's gone before I can be sure.
"I'm not sure that's a possibility anymore."
"Well, at the very least you could not give up so easily," I tell him. "He's taken so much from you already. Don't let him take your life too."
He leans toward me, and the gap between us is closing, and this just can't be happening. I'm just dreaming again. But the ground beneath feels solid and I can feel my heartbeat increasing in pace, and I can feel his breath on my skin and my dreams are never this realistic.
Or maybe I've just progressed to full-on hallucinations.
But he's still moving closer and I'm just itching to put my arms around him and hold him like I've always wanted to, just to help him forget all his pain, even for a moment.
I'm tingling all over and my brain seems to have lost the capacity for comprehensible thought. My lips part in anticipation-and then his lips land on my cheek.
One tiny peck, so quick I almost didn't register it, and then he's backing away again. Disappointment and humiliation burst through me as though a dam inside me has just ruptured.
"Thank you Lisbon," he says. "You're the best friend I've ever had."
Every word he says is a dagger in me, but from somewhere I dredge up enough sense of self to respond.
"Thanks Jane. And as for you, you certainly make the top…twenty."
Finally, a smile, a real one, appears but instead of making me want to smile back like usual, it seems to draw all the heat from body and leave me feeling as cold as ice.
"You're a tough woman to please, Lisbon," he says, then winces and massages his temple. "Oh God, you were right about the hangover. Got any painkillers?"
I want to tell him to go to hell, and suffer with the headache. He deserves it after what he just put me through. But as he looks me beseechingly, I know I can't do it.
"Desk drawer," I finally say.
"Next to the mysterious hammer?" he quips.
Some alien inside me produces a weak chuckle. "Stop asking about it or I'll use it on you, and then you'll have a real headache to complain about."
Right after I've used it on myself of course, for being so damn stupid.
Obviously, this is not how I would really want things between them to turn out. :)
The story is rather depressing I know, but it's a very sad song. I hope you liked it and Lisbon didn't come across too OOC. I'd really hate that.