A/N: Thanks a lot for all the reviews! I appreciate them very much.

Getting used to

One month later…

It was late and Lisbon stifled a yawn, as she read the e-mail for the 100th time. She couldn't let go of it. Part of her was still convinced that there was more to this than it seemed… but the longer she thought about it, the more she doubted her own instincts. Was she maybe just tormenting herself? Linda blamed her for her sister's death in her suicide note. She hadn't needed that note to be reminded of that.

Lisbon squeezed the bridge of her nose. She could literally feel a headache crawl up her neck. With a sigh she leaned back in her chair. Maybe that was the reason why she couldn't let go of this. Accepting Linda Shaw's death as a suicide meant acknowledging that her past actions caused another death.

Lisbon knew that rationally this wasn't strictly true. It didn't stop her from feeling that way, though. If the death of her only sister had in the end driven Linda to take her life…who else was to blame, if not her?

"What are you looking at?" Lisbon visible flinched as Jane stepped beside her. She hadn't heard him coming.

"Nothing." She hastily closed the document and turned in her chair to face him.

She saw the frown on his face, but he didn't say a word. Instead he sat down on his couch, taking a sip from his white cup. Sometimes it still almost felt surreal to Lisbon. Seeing him here, in Austin, on his couch. She'd hardly believed her eyes a few weeks back when they brought the couch in. She hadn't dared to ask him what he'd done to finally make Fischer give in.

Fischer… another thing she wasn't yet used to. They'd just started to get along, when a sudden illness in the family made Fischer transfer to Seattle. Exactly a week ago they'd given her a small farewell party. To Lisbon it seemed like yesterday. Which might be because they'd been drowned in work the last few days and being one person short meant more to do for the rest of them.

"Why are you still here," Jane asked her, taking another sip, "We closed the case. You should be home, get some rest." Lisbon looked at him. He was wearing one of his island shirts, as she used to call them, the sleeves rolled up. Something else she just couldn't get used to, the same was true for his beard.

"I had to finish up some paperwork," she lied. It pained her how easy it had become to hide the truth from him. How the hell had that happened?

"Ok," Jane murmured. She knew he saw through her lie, didn't even pretend to believe her…but he didn't insist on the truth. Not in the way he used to back at the CBI. It was ridiculous. Sometimes she missed him as much as she had in Washington, despite them being in the same room together. Things had changed, they'd changed and ever since he came back, she felt a distance between them, that hadn't been there before. Or no, that wasn't exactly true. It only had started the moment she officially began working for the FBI. Nothing of that tension had been there when he'd hugged her, just a few doors from where they were sitting now. She closed her eyes at the memory. It didn't make it easer, that she was pretty sure she was at least partly responsible for this awkwardness between them.

Lisbon stood up and walked over to the couch to sit down beside him. She was tired of lying. She probably would regret this the next day, but for now she didn't care.

This case was destroying her and she needed to get this of her mind.

"I wasn't working," she said, without looking at him, but she nevertheless could feel him sat more upright. She could almost sense him looking at her, his eyes fixated on her; patently waiting.

"Not one of our cases, at least." She stole a short glance at him. As she'd expected his whole attention was focused on her, in an intensity, which only Jane could do.

"You're talking about the suicide of Linda Shaw?" he didn't hesitate for a moment and Lisbon couldn't hide her surprise. "You knew?"

She shook her head. "No, forget it. I should have known. Did Wylie tell you?"

Jane smiled at her apologetically. "Don't be angry at him, he was worried."

She sighed again. "Who else knows about this?"

"Just me, unless of course you told somebody else."

She shook her head. "How much do you know? I never told Wylie more than her name and that she's connected to one of our old cases."

For the past four weeks she'd always thought of it as her case and she couldn't believe how good it felt to finally acknowledge that she hadn't been alone working on it back in Sacramento.

"That's all he told me." Jane put his empty cup on the little table beside him. "But I had a look at the file."

"Why didn't you say anything?" she asked him and regretted it the moment the words left her mouth.

"I-" Jane began, but she interrupted him. "No, never mind…" she avoided looking at him. What right had she to ask him this? She should have spoken to him, and Cho for that matter, the moment she'd returned from the crime scene.

"The coroner classified it as suicide, didn't he?"

Lisbon nodded. "Yes. The marks on her neck are consistent with a death by hanging. They found no evidence that she'd been strangled beforehand…" she hesitated for moment and he finished for her, "…as they did with Amanda." A short nod again.

"Which still doesn't exclude that she maybe didn't do it entirely voluntarily?" he asked.

"No. There are however no signs of a struggle. You would expect her to fight back."

Jane agreed with her. "Unless of course they drugged her first." - "They found traces of tranquillisers in her blood, but she had a prescription for them. And it wouldn't seem out of the ordinary if she took some before she ended her life. In short, there's no way to prove one theory or the other. The most obvious conclusion is that she did it herself, and that's what the officer handling the case wrote down. "

She rubbed her forehead in an attempt to keep her headache at bay.

"They found no evidence of a break-in and there was no DNA on the bedlinen used as a rope, besides her own." She continued, feeling that it helped to speak her theories out aloud for once.

"If someone did this, they were good. Very good."

Jane smiled at her, "I see, you were pretty thorough in your analysis. Why do you even need me?"

She looked up at him and she didn't know what he saw in her eyes, but his smile faded.

"What does your gut tell you?" he asked her more seriously.

Lisbon groaned, "I don't know what to think. All the evidence points towards suicide, but I just can't shake of this bad feeling."

She looked up at him. "It's just…" she stopped, suddenly embarrassed and struggling to find the right words.

"You're afraid that your feelings of guilt - of unjustified guilt to be precise, cloud your judgement?"

Lisbon nodded, to equals part annoyed and relieved that he was still able to read her.

"Yeah, I guess." Her voice was hardly louder than whisper.

"What should I do now?" she asked him.

"I think what we should do is have another look at the file, and at the original files in the Amanda Shaw case."

Lisbon shook her head. "Forget it, I tried."

A frown appeared between Jane's eyes. "What do you mean?"

"With the whole Blake Association thing, they locked all our old case files. Wylie tried everything, there's no way they're granting us access to the online copies. Especially not because of a closed case about a suicide."

Jane played with the ring on his finger. "What about the hard copies?"

"They're in Sacramento," she told him confused.

"I guessed as much. I just thought it might be easier to get access to them."

Lisbon still didn't understand where he was going with this. "Wylie mentioned something along that line. They're apparently still in the archive rooms of the former CBI building."

Jane stood up. "So we could access them there." - "Jane, we're not flying to Sacramento to break into the former CBI building!"

She knew the expression on his face and it usually meant trouble. "With Fischer gone, there's no way Abbott gives me a few days off. Not even talking about the two of us. Besides, I'm not sure the files would be of any help anyhow."

Jane sighed and Lisbon wondered whether he'd actually been looking forward to a trip to California. She definitely hadn't expected that.

"Fine, if you insist on being a spoilsport, we'll just have to do what we can with the file we already have."

He held out his hand for her. "We'll do it first thing in the morning. But not now. It's late and you need to go home and get some sleep."

She didn't protest as he pulled her on her feet.

"You're probably right," she said as she grabbed her purse. She hadn't been sleeping well the last weeks.

"I always am," he grinned at her and for a short moment everything was back to normal. Gone was the slight awkwardness that seemed to surround them whenever they were alone lately.

"Thank you, Jane," she said to him and she meant it from her heart. Talking to him had made her feel better than she had ever since she entered that house four weeks ago.