Chapter One: What If

Disclaimer: The plot's mine, just borrowing the rest.

And if this be our last conversation
If this be the last time that we speak for a while
Don't lose hope and don't let go
Cause you should know
If it makes you sad
If it makes you sad at me
Then it's all my fault and let me fix it please…
Safetysuit – What If


"Are we fighting?"

Lisbon stared at the road ahead and let his question hang there, swelling up in the silence. By the time they had dropped Maya Plaskett off and finished the paperwork with the remaining members of the sheriff department, it was getting dark again. She hadn't slept in over 36 hours and after the events of the past day, the last thing she wanted to be doing was driving for two hours alone with Patrick Jane.

"Because it feels like we're fighting."

His tone was light and he was somewhat relaxed, at least on the surface. In the space of a few hours Jane had managed to repress the dark agony of having killed someone and let Red John slip through his fingers again and was now choosing to act like this had been any other case. She hated him for it.

"You're angry." He said, as if resigning himself to the truth. "I save your life and you're angry. Kind of ironic, don't you think?"

Lisbon gripped the wheel tighter, willing herself not to rise to the bait. It was a cheap shot, even for him, and she thought back bitterly to all those times she had saved his life but had never used it as leverage even when she was on the edge of losing her patience with him. He knew just as well as she did that was not why she was annoyed and yet he was goading her, determined to have this talk tonight.

"Regretting that decision are you?" She said quietly. She knew they were both too volatile to head down this road right now but the more tired she was, the more her patience and self-control waned. "Hardy could have led you straight to Red John."

Jane noted the use of the pronoun. You. She was separating herself from him. "Your optimism is commendable, Lisbon, but you know as well as I do that he would never have given up anything useful."

"You don't know that. He could have said something to a cellmate; even the tiniest clue could have helped."

Lisbon didn't really believe that and yet she was pushing this anyway. It was his fault really for bringing it up; it was a low blow especially for him but he was tired and full of disappointment and her silent anger had been suffocating him. Like so many other things in his life, by the time he realised it was mistake, it was too late to take it back.

"Lisbon, you really think I would ever choose Hardy over saving your life?" The truth was there had been no choice involved: he had seen Hardy move and he had reacted instinctively. He didn't even have time to process what he was doing and it was only afterwards that the gun had felt like a foreign object in his hands and he had been overcome with nausea. He didn't regret it though, not for a second.

It was not until five minutes later after they had turned off the highway into a small residential district on the outskirts of Sacramento that she spoke again.

"You would choose Red John over me and the rest of the team." She said. She knew it was true, and yet a small part of her held her breath in the hope that he would deny it.

Jane stared out of the passenger window and held onto the side as Lisbon turned a corner too sharply, probably on purpose. Of course he wouldn't, not rationally, but even he could admit he wasn't in control of himself when it came to Red John.

"And that's why I can't do this." Lisbon said pulling the car over to the kerb and putting the brakes on.

They were still half an hour out from CBI. "It's okay. I'll drive." He said, hand on the door, ready to swap places, and it was only after she had turned off the ignition that he realised she wasn't talking about driving at all.

She turned to face him for the first time in the past hour and a half. Whilst he obviously seemed to be able to distance himself from everything that had happened in the past day, she had been replaying it all in her head, over and over again like a bad dream. Everywhere she looked she saw Hardy pointing the shotgun at Jane followed by Hardy pointing a gun at her and she felt her chest tighten, making each breath an effort. She was aware that the threads of self-control were quickly slipping out of her grip. "I spent half my childhood trying in vain to get my father to see that he had more to live for than self-pity and revenge. I'm not going through that again."

Jane had been so caught up in his own selfish despair that he had failed to understand Lisbon's fury with him until now. For a brief few seconds he'd allowed himself to consider the possibility that her anger was proof of just how much of a connection there was between them, but as much as their banter and her blushing was one of few things that helped him through the day, he wasn't delusional enough to think that their gentle flirting and teasing was anything real: he was complicatedly unavailable and she was far too rational for emotional crushes. The realisation that he was inadvertently making her relive her childhood suddenly put her anger into stark perspective. "I'm not asking you to Lisbon."

She stared at him. She wasn't offering. "Can't you see that by being so carefree with your own life, you're giving Red John exactly what he wants?"

He looked at her sadly. She was right, of course. "You don't know what it's like. Wanting revenge."

Lisbon glared at him, eyes blazing. She hated feeling like this, so angry that she was barely in control. She wished she could just flip a switch and get Jane to snap out of the self-pity and martyr mode and she could go back to being irritated by his smug smile and his unpredictable behaviour. "I don't know what it's like?! You think I didn't want to hunt down the drunk driver who killed my mother? You think I didn't blame him for my father's death and for the fact that he almost killed me and my brothers too?!" She blinked, hardly recognising her own voice and trying to tell herself that the tears in her eyes were simply due to exhaustion. "I've been both sides of the fence and damn if I'm going to let this happen again. I'm not going to watch someone I care about with no respect for his own life self-destruct and leave me sitting on the sidelines feeling guilty. If you want to be reckless, selfish and irresponsible you can go do it without me and the rest of the team. I've had enough. I won't be left to clear up the mess you leave behind, and I definitely won't be your collateral damage."

There was silence. Jane had never seen her like this and he was suddenly aware of how tough the last few days had been on her as well as him. Every time a case didn't go their way it seemed like a little part of her died. She had a God complex, worse than most cops. He had seen the way she had hugged Maya when they rescued her and knew that was the one moment that made all the hell she went through worth it. She wanted to save everyone, including him, and the thing that undoubtedly hurt her most was his telling her he didn't want to be rescued. He had already asked so much of her, he shouldn't have voiced the one thing he knew she could never give. "Lisbon …"

"Don't." She snapped. And just like that the defences she had built up around her had collapsed. She wasn't sure of much but she knew she couldn't be around Patrick Jane right now. "Don't." She repeated, a little quieter, pressing her fingers against her forehead, trying to repress the beginning of a headache. "Just get out."

Jane woke early the next morning to see that it had dawned sunny and bright, almost as if the gods had convened to spite him on purpose. Lisbon's outburst in the car yesterday had been weighing heavy on his mind and he realised that seeing her so broken had truly rocked him to the core. He had no doubt that if he hadn't pushed her to breaking point when she was already emotionally and physically exhausted, she would never have said half of what she had said. Yet in his selfish frustration he had, and for the first time he had seen his tortured soul mirrored in her and he had woken up this morning deeply aware that no amount of artistically shaped paper animals could make up for how much he had hurt her.

As for himself, his armour was dented but not broken and although he could see Hardy's bleeding corpse staring at him every time he turned a corner, he had managed to convince himself that that was infinitely better than the alternative.

Having decided that bringing everyone doughnuts and coffee was the least he could do, Jane left his house, stopping briefly to pick up the newspaper from his porch. 'SERIAL KILLER EVADES COPS AGAIN.' Disgruntled, he threw it into the trash can without even opening it and as he turned around to head towards his car, he was confident that this week couldn't possibly get any worse ….. and that's when he saw it: a small cross pendant on a gold chain hanging from his mailbox, glowing in the morning sun.

A/N:- Thank you for reading. Feedback's greatly appreciated.