Author's Note: We're going with a post-series kind of fic. Not sure it fits the prompt, but it was running around my head when I heard the song "Who's That Man" by Toby Keith on the radio, and this is what came of it. For this to work in my mind we need to mess with the time line and make them all a bit younger than they really are. You don't have to do this; I just think it works better this way. Special thanks to lgmtreader for betaing for me. Trust me, you don't want to read when I've not had a beta look over it first.

Disclaimer: I was just watching the music video for the song that inspired this and realized that Toby Kieth from way back when looks a bit like my ex. I'm never going to be able to look at him again. So sad. I'm pretty sure if I owned the song I would have realized that a long time ago. Oh, and I don't own the show either.

Absent Without Leave

He hadn't meant for it to end this way, honestly he hadn't. They'd been so happy together. He never thought that he would be able to move on after Red John. He'd thought that it would be the end of him, that he would either end up dead or in jail. It was a surprise then when Cho and Rigsby had come busting through the door as he was staring down his nemesis, guns blazing to take down Red John. Somehow he managed not to get hit…

She hadn't said it, but he knew that it was her who had given the order to them to come in. They'd been walking the line between friend, colleague and something more for almost a year at that point. With Red John gone – and with him feeling surprisingly NOT as bad about the way it went down as he'd thought he would be – he was able to take a step over the line to something more with little hesitation.

The ceremony had been small and quiet. He didn't have any family, and hers was small, so it was mostly just the team who was there. They had it up in the mountains, in the same town where they'd realized that there might be something more to their relationship than just boss and consultant.

His smile was bittersweet as he thought of the case that had brought them to that town, a kidnapping that hit a little too close to home for both of them. They'd loved that town even after seeing the seething underbelly that small town life could be. After the wedding they bought a house there, to vacation in at first, though they didn't take much vacation time in the beginning. It was an older farm house, needed a lot of work that they hired out to one of the locals, situated on almost 2 and a half acres of land.

The first baby was as much as a surprise as his reaction to the ending of the Red John case had been. They hadn't planned it, but it wasn't unwelcome. She had worked up until the day she'd gone into labor, two weeks early, despite his protests. The second was less of a surprise, but a harder pregnancy, and she was on bed rest for the last three months.

After their little Juliet and Michael had been born they had talked about changing jobs, moving from the city. They spent more and more time up in the country, out in their house at the end of the dirt road. He'd been spending more and more time with the children and wasn't at work the day the suspect pulled a gun and started shooting, wanting to take as many cops with him as he could.

Twelve hours in surgery and 6 weeks later she wasn't in the CBI anymore, by choice. They'd both had a brief glimpse of what life could be like without her in it and had no desire to live it for real. They'd moved into their house shortly after, deciding to raise their kids there. When the position of sheriff came open two years later she didn't think twice before applying and wasn't really surprised when she got the job.

He still worked as a consultant for the CBI and other law enforcement agencies. It was one of those cases that finally broke him, broke them. They were on vacation in San Francisco, visiting her brother and seeing the sights. The kids were 6 and 4 and were having a blast with their father and mother just sightseeing and enjoying time away from the pressures of life, when Jane got a call. Just a quick consult with the CBI, for their good friend Cho, for old times' sake. He couldn't say no, even though there wasn't supposed to be work on this vacation, and he'd gone, off to save the day in some other city, close but still not with them.

What was supposed to be an afternoon turned into a day, then a week, and then his family had gone home while he was still there, trying to find the man who was killing families in their sleep with no apparent pattern or care. He was still there a month later when they got a break and Jane had gone with Cho to apprehend the suspect. He couldn't let it go; he had to see who this man was that had eluded him like no man had since Red John. He'd been the first in the room, had cornered him, used more force than he needed to… and then found out that it wasn't the right man after all.

She came to see him the next day; telling him he needed to come home, put some distance between him and the case and maybe it would become clear to him – but he couldn't, wouldn't let it go. He had to find him; had to find the monster.

They'd fought; she accusing him of throwing all care to the wind and only caring about the job, and he accusing her of no longer caring about justice, no longer caring if other people got injured so long as she was ok, as long as her world wasn't affected. He'd left her standing in that hallway, tears streaming down her face as she wept silently. He'd gotten a call from Juliet that night, and one from Michael the next day; but he couldn't talk to them, couldn't bear to be the disappointment he knew he must be to them, hurting their mother like that.

It had taken two years of missed holidays, no phone calls, and thoughts of revenge running through his head before he realized what he was doing. Apparently he hadn't gotten over not having the chance for revenge on Red John for the death of his first family after all. He knew that he should have gone home when there was a lull in the case, but the pull was too strong, and the words that they had exchanged too painful. He knew that Cho kept in touch, tried to push the subject a time or two, but he always pushed back, refused to talk about it, acted like he knew what he was doing. He knew that all he had to do was say the word and he could go home, but he didn't feel worthy anymore to be a husband and father, not when he'd failed, not just one family, but two.

He lay there in the grungy hotel room, a cheap pay-by-the-month dive, and thought about the cards that had come so steadily at first, but had tapered off and then stopped completely. He remembered the last one and the note she'd written inside:

My love,
I will always love you and be here if you want to come back. The kids miss you; I miss you. I don't know why you felt you had to do this, but it's killing me, and I know it's hurting you, even I you won't admit it. Come home, please.
Yours forever

It had been almost 9 months since he'd gotten that card, and he hadn't called or written or anything. He wondered what she'd told the kids when he'd stopped answering their calls, when he didn't call for their birthdays or Christmas. He felt like a bastard, felt like the lowest form of pond scum. He didn't know why he'd done it, but he'd just felt like a failure to them, and now, he really was. He had abandoned his family, abandoned the woman he loved, his children…

The next day he walked into Cho's office and told him he needed help. He needed to get out and he was having issues. He'd always heard that the first step to solving your problem was admitting you had one, and this seemed the best way to do it.

Cho had given him a look that clearly read, "No shit" before sitting him down in a chair and telling him what had been going on in his wife's and children's lives for the past two years. School plays and sports competitions. Juliet had become quite the softball player and had traveled to the state competition right there in San Francisco, one of the calls he hadn't taken. Michael was the smartest kid in his class, having skipped over kindergarten; apparently he'd inherited his dad's slightly quirky intelligence.

Then Cho told him about how she'd been doing since he'd been so consumed in his misplaced revenge. She'd started keeping horses; the local man that had been hired all those years ago to fix up their house had been the one to help her with that. She'd kept working as the sheriff, and had taken an active interest in programs at the high school for kids who wanted to be cops, giving them a chance to go on patrols through the county and find out what it was like in the saddle, even sending a few of them to work internships with Cho.

He'd sat there while Cho told him exactly what it was that he'd missed for the past two years and how close he was to losing it completely. "A woman can only hold on so long, man," Cho'd said before kicking him out of the office with the offer of a ride to the country in the morning. But this was something he needed to do himself.

He'd not had his car when they came on vacation; he'd gotten the first car he'd come across for sale on the street. It was an older beater of a pickup that he wasn't even sure would make it up the mountainside, but he was going to try anyway. He didn't wait; he had to start out that night. He had to see her, to tell her that he had been wrong, that he was sorry for leaving her like that, to beg her to give him a second chance.

He drove without stopping for anything other than gas and to pee, and made it there in record time. The town looked the same in the early morning light as it had the last time he'd seen it; the trees were a little larger, but that was the only discernable difference.

He followed the well-worn road towards their house, noticing that it had been paved; something that they'd been pushing for when he'd left. He slowed as he got closer, not as sure about his plans now as he had been before. As he got closer he saw his old blue car still sitting in the driveway, looking freshly washed and as clean as it had the day they'd left for vacation.

He smiled slightly as he saw the kids come out of the house, backpacks on and lunch boxes in their hands, followed by Spot the Dog, a lovable mutt that they had rescued as a puppy from the swollen creek one winter after they'd moved in full-time. He was about to pull the car up and get out when he saw her come out of the house with someone else. A man, someone that he knew. The man who was helping her with the horses.

His chest grew tight; it couldn't be, he couldn't be too late… Cho would have told him if it was hopeless, wouldn't he? He pulled into the driveway of the house across the street, pausing for a second to look over his shoulder. They hadn't seemed to notice, and other than Spot barking at the truck, no one even noticed the strange truck on this small lane. He watched as the other man put his arms around his wife and threw the truck into reverse; he couldn't watch it. He couldn't watch as the best thing that had even happened to him moved on with her life without him and took his children with him. He just couldn't bear to see it.

Turn left at the old Hotel/I know this boulevard much too well
It hasn't changed since I been gone/Oh, this used to be my way home

They paved the road thru the neighborhood/I guess the county finally fixed good
It was getting rough/Someone finally complained enough

Fight the tears back with a smile/Stop and look for a little while
Oh it's plain to see/The only thing missing is me

That's my house and that's my car/That's my dog in my backyard
There's the window to the room/Where she lays her pretty head
I planted that tree out by the fence/Not long after we moved in
That's my kids and that's my wife/Who's that man, runnin my life

If I pulled in would it cause a scene/They're not really expecting me
Those kids have been thru hell/I hear they adjusted well

Turn around in the neighbor's drive/I'd be hard to recognize
In this pick-up truck/It's just an old fixer up

Drive away one more time/Lot of things going thru my mind
I guess the less things change/The more they never seem the same

That's my house and that's my car/That's my dog in my back yard
There's the window to the room/Where she lays her pretty head
I planted that tree out by the fence/Not long after we moved in
That's my kids and that's my wife/Who's that man, runnin my life

Toby Keith- "Who's That Man"