Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

A/N: Well, I can only say a big THANK YOU for all the reviews and the story alerts I've received! I'm trying to answer all the reviews and I can't express how much it means to me. I don't usually have much time to write or read, but I'm on holiday and I thought I could get this one out of my system by writing it. Anyway I promise I'll also try to catch up on some stories, and of course review them, because I can see some very talented writers around :)

So, back to the story. I have to say I had to type this last night because, as I said, the story was close to be completed, but I realised there was something missing. You'll understand later.


Teresa Lisbon couldn't hold herself up anymore. Her legs had already given way, and her eyes were threatening to close. She just wanted to give in, to surrender to the pain. Dying couldn't be as bad as what she was feeling now. She wanted it all to end. And still she fought to stay awake. She was a fighter, damn, and she would die fighting.

But her body couldn't take anymore. And oh how she longed to close her eyes and stop it...


18 hours earlier

A loud sound brought Lisbon back to reality from the land of dreams. She raised her torso from the bed, but remained seated on the mattress, trying to keep her eyes open and still confused by the abrupt awakening. She scanned the room through its darkness, and looked at the alarm clock on the bedside table. 6.45am, still fifteen minutes to sleep. She was still wondering what that sound might have been, but she thought it might be a product of her imagination. She thought of lying back and closing her eyes for a few minutes. However she was feeling awake now, and decided against going back to sleep.

She raised from the bed and made her way to the bathroom, adjusting the oversized jersey she was using as a nightgown. She switched on the light but she wouldn't have needed it. Her first half hour of the day usually ran in automatic mode. She used the toilet, tied a quick ponytail and brushed her teeth without being conscious of her acts. At least she saved her baths for the evenings, she usually needed them to relax after her long working days.

She also washed her face throughoutly and reached for a towel to dry it without giving herself a look in the mirror. It was only when she left the towel next to the basin and raised her face to look at her reflection, that she saw she wasn't alone.

She barely had time to turn around. She opened her mouth to scream, but the sound didn't reach her lungs quickly enough. Her right hand went immediately to her hip looking for her gun, but she didn't have time to remember she was barely wearing any clothes, let alone a holster. The intruder was quicker than all that. He raised his hand and slapped her, with such force her left cheek crushed against the wall. And all she saw was black.


She woke up what felt like hours later, curled up in the corner of a dimly lit and cold room, her hands cuffed. The first thing she noticed, besides the steel surrounding he wrists, was that she felt the soles of her naked feet sore, and she realised she had probably been dragged on the rough floor. She felt a throbbing pain on her left cheek and raised her hands to touch it. She didn't see any blood but she was sure there was a purple bruise. She tried to unstiffen her neck to look around, her eyes still adjusting to the low lightning. The farthest corners of the room were sunk in the darkness, but she could see most of it now.

She couldn't see any windows, it looked like a basement. It was dirty, not out of use. There were multiple cobwebs hanging around the joists over her head. That place had most likely been abandoned for years. This didn't look like a normal basement. It wasn't remotely "homey". There weren't bicycles there, nor cleaning products, or washing machines. It was almost empty, and she could have said it was in ruins, although it didn't actually looked to be on the point of collapse.

The only piece of furniture she could see was a chair, and it was empty. It made her remember she was there because someone - a man - had broken into her house and knocked her down in her own bathroom. But who was him?

"Glad to see you're back from the land of the dead, Teresa. I was starting to think I had ended the game soon enough".

She saw a figure approaching her from one of the corners she couldn't see. She tried to focus on his face. Dark-haired, tall, middle-aged, not very handsome. Hadn't she seen him before? He surely wasn't a friend or an ex-boyfriend, but it somehow felt familiar. She tried to recall some of those she had recently interrogated, suspects from older cases, but she was fairly sure she'd remember those. She always did.

Who was that man, then?

"Don't try to remember me, Teresa. I know what you're doing, and it's useless. You don't care about who I am. You should care about what's going to happen next".

"I... Where am I?". She should try to think of a better question next time.

"Do you really care, Teresa?", he looked like he was stiffling a laugh. "Do you really think you'll be able to send a message to your team, to that friend of yours? Oh yeah, you'd like that, wouldn't you? But no worries, dear. I left a message for him so that he knows were spending some time together. He's probably missing my signature too, but I'll leave it here when the right time comes. First things first. You're not anywhere near dead, are you?"

Signature... a note... a note to her friend... a signature after death.

A red smiley face started to shape in her mind, and she looked panicking at the man's face.

Oh no, she was in so much trouble now.


"Why? Why didn't you just kill me?" she felt the tears threatening to fall from her eyes.

"Because I want him to suffer even more than he's ever suffered before. Because long ago, I made my personal quest to drive him crazy beyond impossible". He crouched so he was at her same eye-level and looked into her eyes.

She tried to avoid his gaze.

"You've already done that. Every time we find a bloody smiley he turns into someone else. He won't stop until he finds you and kill you".

"Oh, but he's not really crazy, is he? I thought he wouldn't be able to go on after I killed his wife and child. He was probably near enough, but that hospital and that doctor helped him. They probably didn't do much more than keep him alive. I saw the opportunity again when he started working for the CBI. He wanted to find me, and I wanted to torture him. The best scenario for both of us". Red John was smiling at that point. But Lisbon saw his expression turn darker. "But then, somehow, he found something to make him feel alive again. Something that made him get up every morning. And I didn't know what it was. I just knew the smileys were not enough now. He... he seemed to be... content".

Lisbon didn't say anything, but she had a feeling she knew what Red John meant, and it made her blush slightly, her heart skip a beat.

"I started watching him closely. But it wasn't until that fool of Hardy tried to kill you and got a bullet in the stomach instead, that I realised what it was that Jane had found".

Lisbon looked away.

"He found you, didn't he?".

"I... I don't know what you mean. We're just friends".

"Yes, but you're close friends. You're family. And you may not have acted on your feelings, but you know it's not only friends you'd want him to be. I've seen the longing in your face when you look at him sometimes, Teresa".

She was positively sobbing now. She wasn't going to deny the evidence but she would stall him as long as she could. She couldn't know what time it was, there were no clocks, no windows to see the light outside, but she knew the longer she was alive, the better. And talking was a way of keeping him busy.

"How? How did you see all that? I've hidden it from my own team, from my boss, from him. How could you watch me all those times?".

"Again, Teresa, you don't need to know that. Don't you see? I win, that's all it is".

"Then why didn't you just kill me at home? If you thought Jane would care about me, why didn't you kill me then?".

"Because killing you right there is quick, and he would have found your body and been crazy for a short while, and he would have probably been in hospital just like before but he would be released after a while".

"And you think that won't happen if you just delay my execution?". Teresa wasn't a fool, she knew there was something else.

"It will happen if I delay your execution by torture. Right now, he's somewhere, thinking about the note I've left for him, wondering how much I'm going to make you suffer before you die. And that's already killing him. That's driving him mad".

Lisbon was terrified. She couldn't help but wonder, too, what he was going to do to her. And she couldn't possibly understand what made a man hate another so much to become such an evil soul.

"You know, I thought what I did to Kristina would shake him. But I didn't see - how naive of me - he had never had a real interest in her. It was only you. Always you".

Teresa didn't look at him while he got up and went to the corner to pick up something. She just thought of Jane. It was only you, always you... she was sure Jane didn't really had any romantic feelings for her. She would have died for him just as he would kill for her, but every night she went home alone thinking about her consultant and the life together that would never be, while he went home alone thinking about his dead wife and daughter.

That was just the way things were.

A voice brought her back from her thoughts.

"And now Teresa, it's been too long and we really need to start. I'm a man of action and this is getting boring, isn't it?".

She looked at him coming back and saw the large hunting knife he was holding in his right hand. She tried to curl up further in the corner, her eyes wide in horror. But it was useless.

He sliced right below her ribs and a large gash started bleeding. A cry of horror and pain crept past her lungs.

But only Red John heard it.


A/N: So yeah, the story was missing Lisbon's point of view. Thoughts? :)