The Consequences of Wishing
Summary: If he was right, then why did it hurt so much to leave her? J/L Jello-Forever April Challenge: Wishes.
Disclaimer: Uh.. I don't think it's mine--but you never know. ;)
Warnings: Language.
Spoilers: Before 2x08.
A/N:
I had hoped that I was going to get this up shortly after the first part, but life got in the way. Anyway, thanks to HERMIONE POTTER 1990, LSR-7, KOEZH, BOUTODOR and TROMANA for the reviews on the first part! *hugs!* Enjoy this last part!
VIII.
"It's a terrible thing wishing that it can be someone else's tragedy."
John Dyer
It's been three months since he's left her, he moves from city to city and rests in one shabby motel after another during the night, where he stares off into the direction of Sacramento, where he believes he left something behind because being out here on his own doesn't quite feel right. He doesn't try and linger on whatever is churning inside of him, and he doesn't let his memories linger on green-eyed, dark haired woman.
He hasn't had a descent night of sleep since he left her bedroom three months, but he looks toward the motel staff with a somewhat bright grin and a morning greeting in hopes that one of them may know something about Red John; but they never do and he feels as if it's the same old game: Quid Pro Quo, Give and Take, Cat and Mouse. A few places over, at the small café, he smiles as he stares at his cup of tea but inside, he knows he's breaking.
It gets harder to be away, he muses, while staring out into the hustle and bustle of the people outside the café's window. She did a number on him, and he wonders what would have happened if Red John hadn't targeted his family, hadn't killed his wife or child—would he still be hunting to kill him, would he happily be with his family still, watching his daughter marry, having more children with his wife? Or would his wife have left him, taken their daughter because even though he'll deny it to the grave, their marriage wasn't perfect and toward the last few months of their life together; she had begged him to give up his career and spend more time with them, his family.
Someone had to bring home the money, didn't they?
Someone had to be able to afford for all the silly little antiques, and trinkets his wife liked to adorn the house with.
He shakes his head to pull himself from going down that train of thought; and yet he still doesn't know where this Red John calamity would have ended, or even if it would have begun, but one thing is for sure—he'd never want or wish this on anyone, and there's always a slight chance that he would have never met Teresa Lisbon, and though he left her and doesn't blame her if she'll never speak with him again—he can honestly say, she'll always have a part of his beating heart.
IX.
"Whoever wishes to keep a secret must hide the fact that he possesses one."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
It's not until he's towns away from the last shabby motel, and back to the first town that Red John starts his twisted career in—that he realizes something amiss, luck would have it that as he rides into the town he notices two females and two males getting out of what looks to be a state issued SUV.
He pulls his car over into a discreet parking lot, just to make sure his eyes aren't fooling him like they've been known to do in the past. He squints and then comes to the heart sinking realization that they're here.
They can't be here for me, can they?
Jane scoffs, there's no way in hell that they'd even be able to find him—he's not driving his car, he discarded his cell phone, and he's not wearing his indentifying three-piece suits, which means they aren't here for him but they're here for a case. He resists just staring at them a few moments longer, because he has to get back to the task at hand, which has now become harder but it doesn't bother him. He's done cases under them before, he just has to watch his step and cover his tracks…not to mention, keep his emotions separate from it all.
* * *
It's all karma related, he decides as he hears Van Pelt's voice from beyond the faux-comfort of his shabby motel room with its paper-thin walls and horrible interior decorating.
Here are the rooms, boss
He almost sighs, but fights it and instead pinches the bridge of his nose—because now, he's going to be doors away from the woman and team he left behind; and instead of sitting in his room, turning on the television to watch static; he moves to the balcony beyond the room where he notices that the light of the crescent moon laces his features slightly but not enough to give him any identifying features.
He doesn't notice it, but soon he's joined by a brunette on her balcony—and his heart falls to pieces again, because she doesn't look strong in the moonlight; she looks…different, harder, colder and if someone asked him then and there to pick a word to describe her at that very moment with the moonlight trailing her features, he'd say: broken.
Broken. Just like him.
He felt an over-whelming sense of guilt crash down on him, and his heart caught in his throat—but wasn't that why he had left them in the first place?
His sense of doing what he felt was easy, instead of right—when all she was doing, was doing what was right instead of easy.
Have I seen you around somewhere?
Her voice startles him from his reverie, and he shakes his head in her general direction before opening his mouth to respond in a tone that's very unlike his own, rough and dry.
No, I don't think so.
She doesn't say anything else after that, and the both of them just focus their attention on the moon and the dark sky above—he's thinking about her, he wants to reach across the distance pull her close and hold her there, but he can't and he won't.
He shakes his head again, and turns to leave back into the comfort of his room for another sleepless night and even then after he settles down, he pretends not to hear something that sounds like a soft sob from the room over.
And he pretends it's the television, though the television sits before his bed off.
X.
"Beware what you set your heart upon. For it shall surely be yours."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
It's another two months before he sees them again, but this time—it's not a situation where the both of them just happened to be at the right place, at the right time, instead it's the situation he's dreamt of for seven and a half-years; his hands tremble as he holds the sharp instrument in his hands and stands over the man who ruined his life, while the man laughs mockingly only to press himself into a corner.
You've waited all this time for me, and now you can't kill me? Ha. You're pathetic
His fingers tremble, blood pounding in his ears causing him to want to drop the weapon, and pull his hands to his ears just to get it to stop—but he can't, because he doesn't trust the man below him. He hears the laughter again, and his blood boils beneath the surface of his own skin.
I'm waiting.
He makes the first move, with a slight stumble which causes the instrument to fall from his fingers and clatter to the ground. Neither man moves from his spot, eyes glued onto the instrument as Jane stares at the man who ruined his life; the man that had taken everything away from him but as he moves to pick up the blunt tool, loud voices echo into the once silence chamber—he's not listening to them however, because his mind is a million miles away. The doors burst open as he still holds the knife in his hand, and Red John just laughs darkly.
Time is up, Mr. Jane and you failed.
Everything happens in slow motion, Red John lunges for the knife as Jane swings it upward to drop it only for the sound of a gun to fire and the serial killer falls to the ground, drops of liquid rubies bubbling from his mouth as he laughs, and keeps laughing until his last breath is of a twisted garbled laughter, eyes rolled back in head and smirk still bleeding across his shadowed face.
She won't even look at him when he finally turns around to stare at her, anger written across his features.
Red John was mine.
It echoes in what seems to be silence, and all Lisbon does is tell Jane to follow her as if he's a suspect to one of their cases. He doesn't want to follow her, because though he paused—Red John was his to kill, and she knew that.
Cold metal suffocates his pale wrists, and he's led away as if he really did kill the bastard.
XI.
"Man is free the moment he wishes to be."
Voltaire
It's a few hours later, and he sits in her office with his wrists free from the metal confines--he wants comfort, but he wants it from anyone besides the dark haired woman who has her hard eyes trained on him from across the small distance the both of them create with body language which consists of crossed arms and heated glares.
If I had to choose, I'd shoot him again to save you.
Jane doesn't look directly at her, he can't bring himself to face her and he has his arms crossed against his chest to prove to her he's serious, and his ears focusing on the soft ticking of a clock before he responds so softly, she has to lean slightly across her desk to catch his words.
He was mine, you knew that.
Neither said anything for a few minutes, and he wonders how she'd feel if he storms from her office and threw something in her general direction or at one of the glass windows—but she doesn't deserve that, and she definitely doesn't deserve to see his anger or the pity he holds for himself.
I will say this again, Red John wasn't yours—you'd kill him at what cost to yourself?
He brings his narrowed eyes up to meet hers finally, and with a hushed whisper and steel resolute he stands from his seat.
I'd be free; I would have been free from all of this.
Revenge doesn't make you free, it makes you a fool.
Oh? I don't see you saying that when you punched…
Get out.
See, you tell me that revenge makes you a fool but you've enacted revenge plenty of times, Lisbon, you're a hypocrite.
She sits there speechless, calculating and fuming as he turns on his heels to leave her office—barely even seeing clearly enough to stumble out from the CBI and back into his car where he manages to hit his steering wheel in blind, seething anger while her words resonate the silent space:
Revenge doesn't make you free, it makes you a fool
And he wonders, not for the first time—if he's really dug himself six feet under and if he has a way back out.
XII.
"We live, not as we wish to, but as we can."
Mencius
April 2012.
It's been two years, he's not getting any younger and he still feels the anger over everything but in retrospective, he decides that the anger may never fully go away; he still works for the CBI in the Serious Crimes Unit and he still brings in twice as many lawsuits as he solves cases.
Things haven't changed much around the Serious Crimes Unit, they still deal with homicides and from the outside—everything seems perfect, but on the inside—everyone struggles with Jane's place in their unit because (though they don't say it to his face) he left them, and more importantly—he left her.
Not a day goes by; as he reclines on the brown leather couch in the bull pen and pretends to snooze while the others complete their work that he doesn't regret what he did, and though his relationship with Lisbon gets slightly better each day, he's still holding onto his cards that maybe one day she'll forgive him, and they can start what they had before he left but he realizes that both of them still need time to comprehend what the other (and what their own selves) need before they can even start to pick up the pieces.
So for now, he lives each day as if none of the past nine years have happened; which is easier said than done, and he doesn't dare tell her that he was one on the balcony that night—but he bets anything, that she knows and just doesn't want to bring it up anymore than he does.
He opens his eyes slightly as he hears Lisbon's footsteps echo out into the bull pen, and his heart constricts—as he watches her smile in his direction slightly, he knows though—he has a long way to go to redeem himself fully in her eyes.
And he'll take the rest of his life if need be, to do just that without the wishes and hopes that so many people rely on to make the truth easier to handle; because from where he stands right now, he'll never be forgiven and no amount of birthday candles blown out or coins tossed into park fountains for wishes is going to fix that.