Sunset

Summary: Lisbon knew that she should never believe him. Drabble- Lisbon, Jane, post-ep to s06ep06.

Warning: Drabble.

Set: Post-ep to season 6 episode 6 Fire and Brimstone.

Disclaimer: Standards apply.

I want to be there, Jane. I'm serious about this.
I am, too.

Close. So, so close. And yet so far away. Sometimes those things eluded him, genius or not. Sometimes things went beyond what others could see and he could sense. Sometimes, sometimes. Sometimes he hated himself more than he hated his enemy.

If there was a reason for his continued existence he wasn't sure what it was anymore. He wasn't sure who he was. What he was doing. And, more important than anything else: for whom. Because the two people who had been the most important thing in his life before had been gone so long he had to consciously make an effort to remember their faces, even if their ghosts always were near. Because life went on. Because sometimes he woke up feeling their loss so clearly it could have been that very day in his life again. On those days he would try to remember other things. A warm hand on his, a comforting, bittersweet cup of tea. Laughter in the bullpen. A tiny woman in a dim church, bent over her folded hands.

He had never asked her what she prayed for. He had just tacitly assumed she was praying for him. Now he wasn't so sure anymore.

(He'd been wrong about her before.)

So close. He had been sure he had the leverage he had been looking for, all those years. It had turned out to be a very different kind of leverage. No matter what it was, what it meant – it wasn't what he needed right now. The shotgun in his hand felt cold and heavy.

Think. Think.

There had to be a simple solution. There always was. If one did not find it, it was because one had run through all the complex solutions and had disregarded the simple ones. Three dots. Red John. The explanation was cold and clinical and laughed him right in the face. Patrick Jane smiled.

The explosion was visible even behind his closed lids.

(She knows it is not that he wants to protect her. It is pure egoism that drives him.)

There was a song stuck in her head, repeating itself over and over like a broken record. And yet. If Teresa did not concentrate on it, she would think of it: of how Jane had tricked her, once again. How she was alone and without any means of communication on a road that led nowhere. How a person that was dear to her was facing his arch enemy right now, fully intending to kill him, not caring what it would cost. Cost him. Because whatever he said she was sure Patrick Jane was still hurt. And whatever he said she was pretty sure he had told her the truth as he saw it but it did not mean his truth was hers, as well. Jane hadn't only tricked her, he had lied to her. Again and again and again. Why she still believed him when he told her something was beyond her. Maybe because she wanted to believe him so damn badly. She should know better by now. Fear gripped her again, ice-cold and numbing. And, underlying: the one thing that had been haunting her for years now.

At least she was wearing sensible shoes.

(Only one woman who could surprise him like that.)

How could such a tiny person have such strong arms? Patrick knew his brain was looking for subterfuge – what would follow next would hurt both of them – and for once he did not mind. Teresa's hair smelled lightly like apple and cinnamon. Her shoulders were thin but her arms wrapped around him tightly. There was something desperate in her embrace, in the way she trembled almost unnoticeably while she clung to him. He didn't regret his words. They had been the truth, even if he had used them to mislead her. She'd answered his challenging gaze so honestly when he had asked her whether she would forsake twenty years of principles for one person. He couldn't help thinking that it had been him: he had taught her how to lie and he had lied to her over and over. And he would do it again.

The sunset was blinding.