Thank you to Tromana for supplying the 50 prompts which inspired this story.
Disclaimer: Not mine, no money made.
Rated T: A little angsty and oblique mention of suicide
3. I miss you
"I miss you."
Jane slumped on the withered grass by the edge of Angela's grave, his stick hooked over the top of the headstone and his injured leg stretched out in front of him. Absently he traced her name with his fingertips. The stone was warm and polished.
"I got him, you know. We got him. Not sure who actually killed him. Rigsby, van Pelt and Cho have an equal right to that one, though Rigsby shot first. But we did it. And it was me that tracked the bastard down. After he took Lisbon. We got her back alive. Not unharmed but it could have been so much worse.
I'll settle for that. A team effort. I bet you never thought you'd see the day!"
Jane shifted, wincing at the shooting pain through his right thigh.
"Ten years. It's been a whole decade, my love. Sometimes it feels much nearer than that."
He scrubbed his face with one hand, leaning back on the other. The midday sun was hot on his head and back. The cherry blossom was fading, petals drifting downwards in the still air.
"So I've come back to talk with you. Daft huh, I know you're not here. Cognitive dissonance, they call it. But I'll talk to you all the same and I know that you'll listen.
I know that I failed you in every way possible. You and Charlotte. But never doubt that I loved you with everything I was and everything I could give. And I still love you. Both of you. I will till the final beat of my heart and the brainwaves fade to nothing. That will never change. It can't. Some things are immutable.
I did the most stupid thing imaginable. I taunted a monster on air. It never even occurred to me. If I'd have thought, even for a moment, that he'd have come after you, I'd have screamed down the phone, telling you to grab Charlie and run for it. But I was too dumb to even realise it then. After I'd shot my mouth off and sent the world to hell. It wasn't till I saw that note and opened our bedroom door.
The guilt is part of me. Generally it's manageable. Sometimes it's been overwhelming. Red John's death doesn't change that. But it is now making it more bearable.
So, it's been five weeks and four days since we took him down. Five weeks in hospital – there's only the leg now and that should improve – and four days in Malibu. Lisbon went spare when she heard that I'd discharged myself and gone back up there. Danny came through for me though. I'd only wanted a lift but he stayed. Got food in and kept an eye on things from a distance. He even gave up calling me out on it after a while. And I think, in the end, it helped him too. The ocean sings to him almost as much as it does to me, I think. He's making his peace with everything now. Our talk a few years ago set him back on track and now he has closure. He'll get there. I can tell.
Mother Teresa! He had to ring her in the end. Assure her that I was OK and not on my own. I bet she got van Pelt to trace the call to make sure. Sometimes she knows me too well. Nothing I could say could convince her. And after all those weeks at my bedside, she needs to work. To be in the thick of it again. I'm going back to the CBI too next week, picking up my old job. Good thing consultants don't need to pass physicals. It'll be a while before I'm fleet of foot, if ever, and that stick is now my faithful friend. And as for physio – sheesh – they're not going to let go of me any time soon. Legally sanctioned torture, that's what it is. Oh, and the other thing. Sophie called me up. They've given her special dispensation to do my psych eval – Lisbon's doing again I'm sure – given she's the only shrink that I'll actually talk to. I'm seeing her on Monday.
Back to Danny. He looks well. He's smartened up quite a bit since you last saw him. Same old. But he's doing OK. And he's found a woman. Serious, if I don't miss my guess. Won't let me meet her though, for some reason. We'll never be close again, him and me, though I suppose we never really were. But we're OK now. And I can't tell you how glad I am about that.
Heard from Sammy and Pete too. They'd seen it on the news. Daisy's still going strong, and as cantankerous as ever, from what Pete tells me. He wanted to check that I hadn't kicked the bucket yet."
Reaching round, Jane grabbed the water bottle that Lisbon left him with and took a few gulps.
"The CBI… Who'd ever have thought it, heh, but I have a home there and a purpose. I can use my skills to help, not exploit. And I have friends. Good friends. Who'd die for me and I for them. Somewhere along the lines, something went right. Though it's still strange to think I'll be back there soon. I imagine that Lisbon has secured the attic with the most advanced safe lock she can find. Though, given the elevator doesn't go that far, the bullpen couch is much more appealing.
You know, things have changed a lot for me since Red John's demise. I've done a lot of thinking whilst I had to lay back in bed and rest. I hadn't realised it before, but I never truly grieved for you and our precious angel. I couldn't. I could only drag myself through day by day and focus on revenge to give me a purpose. And I didn't allow myself to accept that you are gone. Apart from Lisbon, the team don't even know your names. I wasn't consciously aware of it, but I was still trying to hold our lives together, us, with everything that I had. If I could keep the pieces in the air, they wouldn't hit the ground and become hard reality."
He spun his wedding ring.
"And I still wear this.
You know, for the longest time, I struggled to remember. To recall anything apart from that night. What he did to you. How you must have suffered. I had every different scenario I could think of on replay/rewind and I still fear that none of them did justice to your suffering. Either of you.
I knew I hadn't forgotten the other stuff. Your lives. The time we shared. That it was all safe in the memory palace, but the rooms were filled with a thick smog that I couldn't penetrate. In the last few weeks, it's begun to clear. Just flashes. Moments. But I feel you here now with me and I sorrow in a way that I couldn't before. I've cried so much in the last few weeks. More than the last 10 years combined I think. I wouldn't say it's healing but it's not festering either.
Whilst I was in the hospital, I met someone. Really strange.
I was beginning to get mobile, testing out the crutches, and I went for an amble round the ward and into the visitors' area. Least, that was the plan. But I overestimated my stamina and I ended up having to rest near one of the benches. A lady was there and she made room for me. Even brought me a cup of tea – if you can call it tea from those vending machines. We got to talking. Her name was Lisa. Lisa Hanabrooke. She was waiting to hear about her friend, who'd fallen and broken her hip.
After a while, she told me a little of her life. She was 86 and had been widowed for the second time three years ago. I asked her how she could do it. Survive it a second time and she took my hand. I let her.
It turns out that her first husband took his own life. She spoke of the anguish and the guilt. The sense that it was her fault somehow. If she'd have recognised just how bad things were, if she'd have known what to do, what to say. How she must be a terrible person, must have somehow betrayed him and his love.
But then, she said, she was one of the lucky ones because it started to get better. And she began to realise two things. Firstly, no matter what the circumstances, you are not responsible for someone else's actions and can never be. It is their doing and their doing only, whether they're in their right mind to take responsibility for it or not. And secondly, if you truly share your love with someone, both giving and receiving, then you're bound to them for the remainder of each of your lives. And if you are left on your own, you must make a choice. To see, feel and experience that love as a blessing, despite the anguish and the pain, or to twist it into a curse and use it to beat yourself. She decided that her man, despite what happened, loved her too much, as she loved him, to defame what they shared. And, terrible though the circumstances, and hurt though she still did, therefore she had to find a way to live that reflected this.
After a while, she said, she opened her eyes to the suffering around her. Other people's losses. The fragility of life. And how many of those people who die every day would fight for a chance at life with everything in them. She decided that, if life and love are a blessing, and too precious and too short to demean, then that means accepting who and where you are and choosing to embrace the miracle, engage with it as fully as possible. She said that it's not easy and it's certainly not painless, but how many worthwhile things ever are?
A few years later, she met the man who she was to marry the second time around. Their love was different to her first love, and never occluded it, but just as strong and fulfilling. And the memories of both her loves sustain her even now.
I don't know how she did it but she got through to me. I had a crazy night were I cried almost non-stop and my brain started to re-sort and shuffle. Re-wire.
For the first time, I accepted what Lisbon's been trying to tell me for years. I did something insanely and criminally stupid and that's on me - but I did not kill the two of you. I had no intention or thought of harming you and I didn't wield the knife. Red John did that – of his own volition and out of his own bloodlust and arrogance.
And I've been thinking a lot about what you and Charlie would say to me, if you could be here now. What you would think of my life. My choices. What you would want for me and from me. And I know what your opinions would be. You'd be horrified. I can almost hear your ranting in my head. You would hate it. Utterly hate it. What I let myself become. And, if it wasn't for serendipity - meeting Lisbon and the team and being taken on at the CBI – how much further I would have fallen. Teresa has been my saviour. I have no doubt of that.
So, I have decided that I would like to try living, if that's OK with you. To turn back to the light and the people who are with me now. The team. Sophie. Pete, Sammy and Danny, Virgil Minelli, JJ Laroche and Madeleine Hightower, for a start. And I'm here to ask for your permission. I would like to try to love again. To build a future with Lisbon eventually and to make new rooms in that dusty attic in my head. If I didn't know how much she means to me before, I certainly found out when I discovered her strapped to Red John's chair whilst he threatened to cut her like he did you.
And I ask for your forgiveness. For everything but especially for what he did to you and my part in that."
Jane held his hand up to the light, watching as the sun sparked on the gold band. He took a deep breath and then slowly pulled it from his finger, clasping it in his right palm.
"Thank you, my love."
He shuffled forward, pressing his lips to Angela's gravestone, before reaching over and doing the same to Charlotte's.
"Daddy loves you, my angel, more than he can ever say. And he always will. Look after your Mummy for me."
After a few moments, Jane swiped at the tears in his eyes, trying to stop them but they kept falling. He gave in, sobbing quietly for a while, before he was able to regain his composure. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out his phone.
"Lisbon? Yeah, I'm ready.
No, I know I can't stand up without help. You coming?"
He smiled as he pocketed the phone. She'd be here. She probably already was, though she'd never say. And she'd got the paint. And after they'd finished, Malibu could go on the market. Be a family home for some other couple, untainted by the memories of Red John.
And in a few weeks, when he could no longer justify bunking down on Teresa's couch, Jane knew he would find a new place to call his own. And he'd be there for Lisbon and with her, step by step and day by day, until they were both ready to take their relationship to the next stage and be honest about their love for each other.
A future without Red John.