Chapter 1.
At last, spring has come to Sacramento; bringing with it warmer nights, early sunrises and days filled with flowers in bloom. I lie in bed, the thin duvet lazily hanging over the edge, almost touching the floor. The window is open, letting in the cool air and fragrant odours from the garden. As ever, the night is silent and all is calm. My eyes droop as I doze; it is sometime around 2 am, but without a buzz from either of our phones, we can afford to relax. Cases have become less frequent in our lives; maybe people are learning of the repercussions of killing someone, I just hope that it lasts; it isn't that not solving cases and putting bad guys away isn't fun, but every case is taxing both physically and emotionally; missed meals drain us of our bodies' resources, late nights keep our brains in overtime. How people can spend twenty or more years on the job is beyond me; no, more than that, it amazes me. But people pay the price when they retire; brains become sluggish after all those late nights surveying witness statements, stomachs bulge with the significant increase of food and lack of exercise. Hobbies become useless and boring; nothing can replace that rush of arresting the person who has ruined so many lives.
Last Christmas, I didn't have the pleasure of doing that to Red John, or who was respected in our neck of the woods as CBI Director Gale Bertram. I shot him in the neck and now, the world has one less villain to deal with. Whether that makes me feel jubilant or not has yet to be determined; I certainly won't miss him, but the thrill of the chase and the cryptic clues, I guess I'll miss them. There certainly won't be another killer like him; if it wasn't for what happened to Angela and Charlotte; I would even go as far to say that the pursuit for him was somewhat interesting and engaging. But, he is gone, and there is nothing else that he can do to us. It is still peculiar to say aloud that Red John is dead, but like he said, "all things must come to an end." And with endings come new beginnings.
I roll over to find an empty space behind me, an imprint in the mattress has gone cold with the lack of body heat to keep it warm. This is the second time this week that this space has been vacated at this time. There is a quiet nose that comes from outside the bedroom door and a strip of light glows from the space underneath the door. She is up again. As quietly as I can, I slip from underneath the quilt and move to the door that has been left ajar; placing my eye in the gap, I see a figure move from the kitchen to the sofa. As quiet as a mouse, she curls up on the end, bringing her knees up against her chest and resting a mug on top of them. For a minute, I watch Teresa from the bedroom; she quietly sits and sips her beverage, occasionally blowing on it to cool it down. A couple of time she lightly rubs the burn on her hand that she received when triggering an explosive that Red John made: he scarred me mentally, but Teresa physically. Giving a little sigh, I leave my hiding place to join her.
"How goes the night, my little owl?" I ask her.
Startled, she quickly turns to face me, her emerald green eyes open wide, staring at me with an intensity that – as the saying goes - if looks could kill, I wouldn't be standing here right now.
"Sorry," she immediately apologises, "I didn't mean to wake you, I didn't think that I was so loud."
"You weren't," I tell her, honestly, "I just woke up to find you were not there, are you alright?" I approach her slowly as one would do with a frightened animal.
"Yeah," she smiles, before pausing for a millisecond, "I was just thirsty, that's all," she answers, holding up her cup to show me.
"At two in the morning?" I begin to unwisely poke little holes in her answer, "you've never usually gotten up at this hour."
"I was just thirsty, Jane," she snaps, before removing her feet off the sofa, "sorry, I shouldn't have said that."
"Are you okay?" I ask her again, I know that she isn't telling me the truth; but knowing Lisbon, it will be a battle to get any kind of honest reply from her anyway.
"I'm good," she stands as I sit down beside her, "do you want a drink?"
The light from the single lamp captures her worn down face and her thin figure; I have noticed that she has been skipping meals, but not that much; the break from the CBI has had the opposite effect on her.
"Don't worry about that," I answer, "sit down Teresa."
Gingerly, she returns to her seat; I place my arm around her, lightly gripping the loose fitting pyjama top sleeve; she leans on my shoulder and closes her eyes.
"If something is wrong, you will tell me, right?"
"Of course I will," she replies after another millisecond.
"Promise?"
"Yeah, I promise."
"Good," I plant a kiss on the top of her head, "please come back to bed."
Wearily, she nods and leans forward, placing her cup on the table. We stand together, my arm staying firmly around her shoulders; I feel that if I move it, she will sink down to the floor. We walk back to the bedroom where I feel comfortable enough to release my arms from around her. She grabs the quilt from the floor – it must have slipped off after I left – and she climbs onto the now stone cold mattress and curls up into a ball. I retreat to my side, finding it unusually spacious, as normally, there is one of Teresa's limbs sprawled over here somewhere.
"Teresa," I softly call over to her.
"Mmm," she murmurs, half muffled by the folds of the king size duvet.
I wiggle over and find her amongst the sheets, "come here."
I wrap my arms around her and she sags into my embrace, burying her head against my neck; I hold her tight and rest my chin on top of her head. Something is not right, ever since Christmas, she has been quiet, subdued. Even after the… It's not right to dwell on that now. Automatically, my eyes roam over to find the photo sitting in its silver frame on the chest of drawers, moonlight from the window shines directly on it, as if intentionally reminding me of that day. The day that there were no murders that we had to solve, the days where death was far from both of our minds, the day that… I loosen my grip a little; knowing from the faint body movements and relaxed breaths that breeze against my bare chest that Teresa has fallen asleep. Being like she was outside, I thought that it would take her a while for her to dose off; yet again, she has surprised me, and that is something that she will never stop doing. Years ago, I would have been afraid to admit this, but I love this woman with all my heart and I don't think that I will ever stop loving her. With her resting beside me, I too drift off into a deep sleep.
Memories return like an unruly plague to haunt my nights. We're back up that mountain, but this time, we are being led by Red John through the snow, our hands bound tightly with heavy chains which chaff our skin. He is shrouded in a black cloak, looking suspiciously like an identical twin to Death himself. The bite of the cold slows our movements, but he is relentless and hauls us along, up the mountain through the knee deep snow; Teresa and I struggle, but he parts the snow with ease, like Moses with the Red sea. Every mile or so, we pass the body of a familiar face; at first, they were all his first victims, but as we climb, they become more and more familiar. We reach the summit, and are greeted by an open blue sky with hardly a cloud in sight; standing firmly in the snow is a giant tree with five bodies gently swinging from one of the branches. Nothing is said, but from this distance, I can tell that they are the bodies of Cho, Fitz, Rigsby, Van Pelt and Willis. Red John drops the chain in the snow; we try to pull free, but it weighs what feels like a thousand tonnes. He approaches us and places two rope nooses around our necks.
"Let's play," he smirks from behind his mask.
He removes the chains from around Lisbon's wrists and leads her over to the tree; no matter how hard I struggle, I cannot break free and save her. In one swift movement, he…I can't say it… now he approaches me, there is no point in trying to break free, and like a puppy with its master, I follow him and he hauls me up. The rope around my neck gets tighter and tighter…I can't breathe!
Sweating like crazy, I sit bolt upright in bed; my hair sticks to my head as if I have been out in a sudden downpour and my breaths are heavy, like that dream was real. The sunlight pouring in through the window reassures me that we are not at that horrible place, that what happened wasn't real…but the one again vacant space beside me doesn't calm me completely.
"Teresa?" I call out, hoping for some sort of reply.
There isn't one. Suddenly, footfalls patter their way to the door and I breathe a sigh of relief.
"Don't do that, you scared me," I sigh, smiling a little.
But the figure in the doorway is not that of Teresa Lisbon; it is of a man, dressed in all black, a knife in his hand with blood dripping slowly off the blade.
"Sorry Patrick," he answers, stepping forward to reveal a disfigured face, not one that I recognise, "Teresa's a little busy right now."
With superhuman speed, he bolts round the bed and pins me down, holding the knife against my throat.
"Time to sleep forever, Patrick," he sneers, before sliding the knife across my throat.
I sit bolt upright in bed, not bathed in sweat like last time. Moonlight still bathes us in silver light from outside; I pinch myself to make sure that this is real.
"Ow," I automatically say as I leave a red mark on my arm. From the bedside table, the clock's red digits confirm the time of 4:04 am.
It was just a nightmare, I tell myself, it wasn't real.
Rolling over, I find the space next to me vacant.
"Damn it Teresa," I softly curse and rise to find her.
Once again, she has perched herself on the edge of the sofa, cup in hand, slowly rocking to and fro. I quietly approach her.
"I couldn't sleep," she tells me before I have a chance to open my mouth, "plus you were writhing like crazy."
"Nightmares," I answer shortly.
"You and me both," she sighs, "what was yours about?"
"I don't want to talk about it," I reply, hoping that she wouldn't press the matter.
"Now who's deflecting?" She points out, raising an eyebrow.
"I…they were about…bah never mind," I push those horrific images from my mind, "refill?" I ask, seeing that her cup is empty.
"Yeah, please," she hands me the cup, "looks like neither of us will be sleeping now;" her comment is disheartening.
"We will, it'll just take time," I tell her.
"Don't bother asking if you can hypnotise me again, we both know that it won't work."
"Hey, you were drugged that time," I counter playfully, "my hypnosis works perfectly well, thank you."
I hand her the third cup of the day; she nods a "thank you" at me.
"You're not having any?"
"No, I'm going back to bed," I yawn, "are you coming?"
She shakes her head.
"Okay," I answer, and I head back into the bedroom on my own.