Year one. He spent most of the year in hospital, nine long months of doctors and sickening pastel walls and intensive physical therapy. He hadn't gotten through his revenge unscathed, but there was no doubt in his mind that it was worth the slight tremor in his left hand. The scar was puckered and pink when he had the stomach to look at it, a reminder of the almost incapacitating pain of his own ceramic blade embedded deep in his shoulder. Red John had been much smaller than he expected, and he had underestimated the man's strength. He remembered retching as he watched Red John bleed out, gutted from navel to sternum, Lisbon in the doorway turning away as her face went white, Rigsby holding Van Pelt as she relieved the contents of her stomach, Cho stone-faced even as he surveyed the carnage. His injury saved him the indignity of handcuffs as he was led out of the house, limping on a twisted ankle to the back of an ambulance. Then EMTs forced him onto a stretcher and a police escort that was not Lisbon sat by his side as he fought for consciousness until he felt an IV slide under his skin and he knew he could drift off into blessed sleep. The jury didn't buy self-defense, and he didn't blame them. He'd been in a courtroom for killing Red John once before, and that was sure to tarnish his record. Still, the grim set of his lips as he waded through the pain in his shoulder was enough to get his charges reduced to manslaughter and his sentence set at twenty years. He didn't have any part of it, but he expected there were more than a few words put in for him at the higher levels of the judicial system. Whatever did it, he ended up at a low-security prison and generally in the good graces of the California penal system. He was even on good terms with the inmates, most of whom were thoroughly impressed by the violence he'd done. All in all, enough to be considered a victory. So why didn't he feel victorious?
