AN: Happy New Year to you all. This is post-Nothing Gold Can Stay. X
He leaves after Vega's funeral and she once again is left alone. As she watches him walk away from her, one footstep and then one more, she is reminded of the last real time he had done the same – walking away from her to get to Red John. She had watched him go then and had remained behind, and she watches him now and does the same. How many times has he left her behind? She blinks and tries not to count each one.
Jane has always been a contradiction of qualities, both flippant and sincere, cruel and kind. Now he is both rational and irrational, and she cannot blame him for either. He had lost his wife and daughter, it is rational that he is afraid of losing her, she reasons. It is irrational for him to think not being present will prove to be any kind of preventative measure in the harming of her. He has told her he is afraid of their being separated, and yet he is the one who has walked away. He has always been the one to walk away, and for want of not seeing her hurt he is hurting her once again.
Once they had come together as a couple, she'd thought that would be it, that they were in it all together, for better and worse, as they really always had been. She had trusted that her love for him and his love for her would be enough to see them through any hardship or strife. She had never fathomed that she could watch him walk away from her. This time he does it out of love for her, or some strange notion which he has thereof. When she pushes herself, she gets it, as she infuriatingly always does and at once she curses herself for being so damn understanding. Her empathy has always been her downfall, and she recalls vaguely LaRoche saying the self same thing many years and miles away from here.
She stands very still on the spot where he has left her and she does not move. Her eyes burn with the threat of tears but the only tears she will let fall today will be for Michelle. It would shame her to do otherwise. This day is hers. Jane has hurt her, by trying not to see her hurt. The juxtaposition clogs her understanding. But Jane, though she loves him, has hurt her many times before. She will not allow the fact they have become one to make a mess out of her when she'd put on such brave fronts in the past. And so she bites the tears back and looks around, but the only figure she can make out is Cho, solitary as always as he stands at Vega's grave. It hurts too much for now to watch him mourn, so she tears her gaze away and focuses on a fallen leaf where it rests on the ground, curled up into itself. The colours are faded to dull browns and bronzes but its edges are still tinged with gold.
She remains a while till the crowds are mostly gone and when she looks up Cho is at her side. This has devastated him, she can see. She knows him, really knows him, much more than most, and she sees how the hurt aches through him still.
"Where's Jane?" he asks.
"He's gone," is her simple reply.
If he reads into her answer he does not let on, but she takes his arm and they walk back to his car in silence.
They congregate in the kitchen back at the FBI. Lisbon watches as Abbott tries to send Wylie home. No work will be done this night, but Lisbon thinks he needs the company, needs not to be alone and thinking of her. She and Cho sit around the table in sad, easy silence. Wylie, usually so aware of himself and his status here joins them without a thought and without a word, aged now with grief and hopelessness, accompanied by Abbott, thoroughly worn out and wearied by these days.
"Bottle of whiskey in my bottom left drawer, Jason," Cho says quietly after a while. His eyes flicker quickly at Lisbon and she knows he is remembering a similar long-forgotten conversation in the same circumstances and the raised glasses and whisper of Sam Bosco's name amongst the shadows. Her smile is sad and short and she thinks briefly on how things don't really change at all.
Their glasses are raised unwillingly to toast a life they never wanted to, and the burn is long and welcomed by all when it comes.
No one here wants to go home to their empty houses. Abbott, Lisbon, Cho, Wylie; all alone, together. Time blurs into itself as they sit, it passes and remains all at once. Wylie stands then, tells them he's going home. Lisbon's heart tightens at the thought, for this is his first great grief, his first great loss, and it is in that moment of solitude that it will hit him. Cho stands then, and Abbott does too. Lisbon follows, and puts her arms around him once more this day. She is not ready to go home.
"Alright, Jason," she says. "Goodnight," she says then, for there is nothing else to say.
"I'll walk you out," Cho says, and Abbott nods in approval. It is clear he had it in mind to do the same.
"Thanks," Wylie says then. He looks up at Abbott and Lisbon hopelessly. "See you.." he gestures pointlessly with a hand.
"I'll call you," Abbott assures him. "Get some rest, Jason. It's been tough."
Abbott follows Cho and Wylie out to the bullpen and watches them leave by the elevator, leaving Lisbon alone in the kitchen. He goes to collect his things and when he comes back to say goodbye, Cho has arrived back and sits with Lisbon once more.
Abbott watches them a while. They are sitting in sad, comfortable silence with one another. They both respect him and, dare he say, enjoy working with him, but he has never had this with them. He would have a lot on which to catch up with them, something he will never do now. They have worked too long together, have known one another too long for him to try and decipher and prod at. Not that there was anything necessarily out of place in this, he reasons. He has been their boss, and say so himself he has done a fine job of it.
He had not had a difficult of job of it. His team had been great. Vega and Wylie, his two newest recruits, and Fischer who had been last to go. Jane, the wild cannon, and the completion of that trio, the steadfast Cho and Lisbon.
They have weathered so much together. Earlier Abbott had wondered aloud where Jane had gotten to. Lisbon hadn't replied but Cho had said he was already gone. Just now Abbott wonders just how far Cho had meant. Jane has left Lisbon alone many times, Abbott is aware, but it occurs to him just now that it has always been left to Cho to be there for her when that he does.
He is being there for her now, giving her the space and silence she needs as she does to him. He decides to let him get on with it. He does it well.
He bids them goodnight and takes one glance back at them as he goes, a picture framed by their fractured and heartbroken FBI home. He will miss the two of them, fine agents, always making the best of every situation which presented itself to them with a certain style and dignity, and using teamwork only they could. Fine agents, and fine people, and he will miss them both. They will miss him too of course, but they will have each other, as they all will.
Over the next days, Cho and Lisbon seem to grow nearer, and more than once it appears to Abbot that they are, for want of a better word, conspiring together. Once, at first glance it appears to him as though Cho is patting Lisbon on the shoulder, but when he looks back the hand has fallen away, and he wonders if it ever rested there at all. Wylie is still quiet and more than once Abbott notices him turning absentmindedly to look at Vega's desk. Abbott leaves him alone, convinces himself it is for the best, but he keeps a keen eye on him. He will get through this, will have to learn to do so.
If he had not grown to care for these people so much, Dennis would be willing the day to arrive that he could get out of here and leave for Lena and for Washington; for this place is different now with the loss of Vega, it has changed for want of her.
Had this been years ago, he might not have been thus affected but despite their rocky start he cares for these people now, these infuriating, wonderful people who have been through so much together already, that he finds himself wanting to help. When Abbott thinks back to the Red John case, his first encounter with Lisbon and Cho, and with Jane, he cringes slightly at his mistrust of them, of his treatment of them. Regret is too strong a word – he had done what had been asked of him – but following what he knows of them now, of the good he has seen them do together, for himself amongst others, he is uneasy at the thought of the hurt he had been the one to cause them.
That hurt has long since been healed and it is well that it has, for more hurts are always on their way. They are all hurting for Vega tonight, every one, and other hurts will surely come too along each path they go, but he is sure that they will see it through, as they do, as they must.