Just a short drabble I wrote because I am curious about Van Pelt and because Sundays are boring.
I don't own the Mentalist.
A Little Grace
She is fourteen when it happens, the event that changes her life. Always popular, she walks with her head held high and a spring in her step. She is constantly surrounded by other girls at school and boys too because she is pretty, she always has been. People tell her all the time. So much so she doesn't even care anymore.
But Grace is different too. She is soft and sweet, she gossips a little but she doesn't bully. Ever. And she tries to stop it if she sees it. She watches her favourite crime drama every week and reads Sherlock Holmes while the other girls go out for milkshakes. Sometimes she joins them. Sometimes not.
Grace wants to be a cop. Not just a badge holding country town one she sees around but like the glamorous ones on TV that wear suits and solve real crimes. Really help people. She doesn't tell anyone. Except her Dad because he thinks she can do anything. But he kind of wishes she could play baseball because Sol, her older brother, is an English major. She is good at it, baseball, especially fielding. Grace can catch anything anyone throws at her. She loves Maths, part of her needs to know the answer to a problem so she doesn't stop until she gets there.
She goes to church. Everyone knows the Van Pelts. Good christian family, beautiful children going places. Grace sings in the choir there and she likes it but she longs for more glamour and more action and to be taken seriously.
But Grace is in no way perfect and she knows that more than anyone. She thinks awful things in her head. She is jealous of her brother, the way he is her Mom's favourite. The other week she kissed a boy she knew had a girlfriend because he was really cute and it was all she could think about doing in that moment. She allows herself to get walked upon and she kicks herself down every time she does. An Agent can't do that, they wouldn't survive.
Leah is perfect. Grace's elder sister, they're eighteen months apart. Close. Except that Leah has been distant recently and Grace knows she has just broke up with her boyfriend.
Leah holds the gun to her head and nothing means anything anymore. Not the boy, nor the cops, nor the milkshakes.
Grace screams but she is too late. She sees blood. She can't find Leah. Where is she? Grace thinks of nothing but pain. Breaking, unbearable pain. The carpet feels soft on her face and Leah is warm in her arms.
Grace wakes with a start. She jerks so violently that Rigsby stirs beside her.
"You okay?" Wayne mumbles, stroking her hair. He knows she is prone to nightmares, he knows she watched a lot of horror films at too young of an age and that she sees a lot of horror now. He knows that gets to her and that she doesn't tell the others. Grace confides in him. He likes it.
"Yeh" She says and rolls over, letting herself be cuddled even though touch is the last thing she wants right now.
Rigsby's Dad was violent, Lisbon lost both of her parents and had to take care of her brothers and Cho was in a gang. Grace is aware of all this. She knows about Jane's past.
But she will never, ever tell anyone.
Grace has forgiven Leah. She hasn't forgiven herself.