My first ever Mentalist fic. I've seen parts of Season one only, sorry if this contradicts canon discovered later on. This is the first of three semi-related fics.
On the Outside Looking In
Working with Patrick Jane has taught Lisbon a lot about what goes on under the surface, about what people hide. About what Jane hides, every day. From everyone.
Lisbon's team knows the rules for dealing with Patrick Jane. Unwritten, unspoken, unofficial, but just as important as the laws they live by and uphold every day.
Don't try to one-up him; it won't work, and you'll just make him focus on you instead. Don't leave him alone at a crime scene; he'll find a gun and end up on the wrong end of it. Don't try to keep him out of a Red John case; he'll find out and make your life miserable. Don't show him when he hurts you; he'll have something to use against you. Go to Lisbon first if you want him to do anything; she's the only one he listens to.
Keep an eye on him when the case involves children, especially as victims.
Never, ever let him see pity.
Don't be fooled by the smile.
Lisbon and her team have all learned these rules through experience. Most of the rules have been learned too late.
Patrick Jane is a good man. That's never been in question. But he's not a nice man. He has compassion, but no mercy (sometimes, on the bad days, Lisbon thinks all his mercy was burned out the day he found his family slaughtered). He has empathy, but no forgiveness. He sees all the darkness in people, but can't see the light.
Patrick Jane is all sharp edges and quicksand, and just as you think you've avoided the edges you find yourself sinking. If you're lucky, and if he's in a good mood, he might pull you back up. Jane's bad side is not a safe place to be. Lisbon's been on his bad side; it's not something she wants to repeat. Luckily, he is a good man, so he usually saves his bad side for murderers, kidnappers, and thieves – and occasionally, Virgil Minelli.
There's a line, Minelli had told him. And, I will throw you to the wolves. Jane had nodded, pretending obedience, but he didn't see the line. He never has seen it. He trusts Lisbon to do that.
Lisbon has no idea how she gained the respect and trust of this strange, terrifying man. She's well aware that she's the only one he listens to, even if inconsistently. It's a burden on her when she is the only one who can stop him; everything he does becomes partly her fault.
Patrick Jane is almost certainly the most intelligent person she's ever met. She has no problem admitting that as long as he can't hear her. But he has no filters; he can't understand that other people don't think, see, react the same way he does. She thinks maybe he's aware of this lack, and that he allows her to stop him because he honestly can't tell when to stop on his own. The nuances of interacting with people escape him, and the facade of empathy does him no good, either. Lisbon thinks she's become his conscience, his self-control, and it scares her. She wonders how Sophie Miller managed.
Patrick Jane uses his family as a tool. He uses them to gain power, to gain sympathy, to gain understanding. He'll accept sympathy from the team in small doses, but no pity, not ever. Pity is only for victims and Patrick Jane is anything but. He uses his family to make himself stronger, but swallows the pain of their loss. He still thinks of himself as a married man, and as a father. Lisbon watches it kill him a little each time he tells someone his wife and child are dead.
Patrick Jane will kill Red John given half a chance. Lisbon doesn't doubt it in the slightest, never did.
"If you try to do violence to him, I will stop you. If you succeed in doing violence to him, I will arrest you."
"I understand."
He would understand. Patrick Jane understands duty, even if he lives only for vengeance. Lisbon sees that in him now, sees behind the mask of his easygoing persona. She's just not sure if she's getting better at reading him or if he's still only allowing her to see what he wants.
Patrick Jane is a good man. Presents for his co-workers, sympathy for victims; murderers caught, and kidnappers punished. But he's not a nice man. There is no mercy in him. Someday he will find Red John, and he will kill him, and Lisbon won't be able to stop him. Without vengeance to keep him going, to drive him, he'll self destruct. If he ever lets go of his guilt, he'll fall. He'll have nothing to keep him alive, nothing to prompt him to pull on his mask and face another day.
Lisbon thinks maybe he wants help. Maybe that's why he lets the mask slip, why he told her his plans for Red John, and why sometimes he pushes and pushes until they're all on the verge of snapping. Maybe he knows he's killing himself. Maybe he wants to be stopped, maybe he wants to be forced to face what's happened and what he's become. But he's too clever; he can beat any test he's given, tell them what they want to hear, make her or anyone else believe he's fine. He can't be made to get help if he chooses not to. He can want it and refuse it, all at once. And no matter how hard Lisbon tries, she can't save him from himself.
She thinks that someday, she'll either arrest him or watch him die. Both outcomes seem equally likely on the bad days. On the good days, when Jane is laughing in the office, teasing Van Pelt gently and playing tricks with Rigsby and Cho, when they've saved a life and made the world a bit lighter – on those days, Lisbon lets herself think that Jane can climb out of his pit. Come back to the light. And she hopes he knows she's waiting above, ready to help pull him up.
When he's ready.