Title: Survival Instinct
Author: tromana
Rating: T
Characters: Cook, Red John
Summary: Red John's getting Cook to do his dirty work for him...
Disclaimer: I wouldn't be writing cracked out crossovers if owned either Skins or The Mentalist. Or both, you know. I'm not fussy.
Notes: Written forreddawg82 as a part of the Holiday Fics challenge.
Survival Instinct
I pad along unfamiliar streets.
It's been a long while since I was here last. Too long, some would say.
Once upon a time, when my mum actually gave a fucking damn about me, she'd send me to visit my uncle once a year.
Uncle Patrick. He's great. He knows all the coolest things. His card and coin tricks are like nothing you've ever seen.Nothing. He knows how to pick pockets and locks. How to convince people to give you money for little more than telling them the truth. Mum and him weren't exactly close, but close enough to palm me off on him for the summer. Can't complain, I s'pose. Better than some farm in the middle of fucking nowhere or something.
But then they had a bust up and he disappeared off the face of the earth. Mum didn't care, but I did. He's my fucking uncle and I'd always thought he was pretty cool. You know, for an old man.
It's been a while since I was last in California. I forgot how fucking hot it got.
Still, can't let it distract me. Gotta make sure that I complete my task.
It's the only reason I'm still alive.
Foster, the bastard who killed my best mate, Freddie, he wasn't just a psycho nut job shrink. Not just a murderer, who liked doing sick things to young girls (and blokes too, probably).
He's a serial killer. Famous in America.
He killed my Uncle's family. My cousin, Lottie. She was a cute thing, she was. Took right after my Aunt Angela, she did. Real smart too; she'd steal a biscuit from under your nose, if she could, the little fucker. Course, you always forgave her, cause she was cute and all. Lucky little bitch. But she's gone now. Because of Foster, because of Red John.
I'd have probably gone the same way as the Fredster is it wasn't for my connection to my uncle. If I hadn't been Patrick Jane's nephew, then Foster, Red John, whatever the hell you want to call him, would have done me in the same way he'd done in Freds.
Instead, he's sent me back here, back to Sacramento to see my uncle.
And not just that.
I have to kill him and the woman he loves. Just to save my own life.
Fuck.
I even have to organise their bodies in a special way. The way that Foster/Red John does. Who'd have thought that murder was so complicated? Why does it have to be so complicated?
And why the hell did I agree to this?
I ain't no murderer. At least not of people who mean something to me, I'd have done that bastard Foster in if he hadn't somehow turned the fight around and nearly bashed my brains out. But this woman, this Teresa Liston or whatever the hell her name is, apparently means something to my long lost uncle, so why the fuck would I want to hurt her? And yeah, so Uncle Patrick has been a bit of a fucking lame tosser lately, but he's grieving for Aunt Angela and little Lottie, so it's understandable. Not that mum sees it that way.
Glancing down, I check the address. This is meant to be that Liston's home. I don't even know what she looks like, what her job is. What if I kill the wrong fucking woman? What if they're not home? What if they moved house? But if I don't do this, Foster has promised to hunt me down and kill me. He knows how to do it, he promised he does. The only reason he was in Bristol at all was to find me in the first place, or so he said.
Swallowing, I knock on the door.
It's now or never.