Chapter Four

'Faith in the strangest of places'

Working still seemed wrong, like a missing piece of the machine that made the journey clunky. Like expecting another stair when climbing in the dark the whole team feels off kilter and incomplete.

It hasn't been the same since his arrest, and she can see it's hurting the whole team. They've been quieter, less snarky. She doesn't like the change. It's as if their spirits are diminished, spending so much time in their heads she's almost surprised any of them come to work at all.

But people still need them. There are still criminals to be chased, victims to be saved and families that needed closure. The world doesn't stop just because your heart has broken and it damn sure didn't stop when you wanted it to.

They all try to ignore the way that they keep glancing at the couch. Conversations that once normally pulled him in were now left hanging in an awkward fumble. She tries to tell herself that she always scanned the room, that the couch was just a couch.

Hating him had made it easier. At least assuring herself that she hated him made it easier to cope with what he had done. So when they brought him through their department again she expected anger, even a little bit of sadness and grief at his choices. But she expected to hate him.

So when all she felt was this strange sense of relief it threw her.

She was relieved he wasn't harmed. She was relieved that he was alright. If she hated him so much, as she'd told herself at least a thousand times in the nights between, why was she so damn relieved to see him again?

Why was it that this pressure, that she'd barely noticed, around her lungs suddenly eased with confirmation of his safety?

He was no prize in this state. No longer as concerned with neatness, his hair was a mess of gold, his clothes rumpled. The once proud and immaculate consultant was now no more than an average ordinary person in handcuffs.

She notes distantly that her team has gone silent, eyes darting between them anxiously as if waiting for the show. Normally they'd have cause to watch and wait. To see the explosive fight that had yet to occur. But today, today was different. The play had changed and the characters were left reeling.

Part of her wants to rush over to him. To sweep him up in an embrace and reassure him that everything was fine between them, the way she has always done. To hold him close enough that she could feel him breathe, feel the warmth she's well aware he exudes like a damn furnace. She craves that warmth, because since this started she's felt frozen solid. As if parts of her, important and essential parts, have been blocked off and locked away.

But the part that wanted that was ruthlessly kept in check by a simple thing.

Things weren't okay between them.

Despite the provocation, despite the reasoning's she could produce, she still hadn't figured out where she stood on the matter. Hating him was an easy thing, it let her pretend that he was nothing more than a criminal and that meant she didn't have to care.

But she still cared. She still cared enough that nightmares still dithered between the scene of his act and losing him altogether.

His lawyer notices her preoccupation, strolling to her side as if there was no reason in the world to be concerned., "I'll be talking to him soon. Would you be willing to speak in his defence?"

She should say no. That's the cop's choice. He killed someone and she can't make it better just by wishing that he hadn't. she should leave him on his own and testify on behalf of the prosecution.

But she can't. Despite what he's done, the dilemma he's put her through, she cannot abandon him now. She's Teresa Lisbon and he's Patrick Jane, ever since they met its been her job to clean up his messes.

These thoughts flicker through her mind, when without her consent her mouth opens and she tells him "yes."

Inside her mind she's at war, but inside her heart?

She knows that she's just made the irrevocably right choice.

Authors Note: So this ones a little shorter this time round, i've managed to do some damage to my wrist, which makes typing a bitch.

I'm hoping the next chapter will be longer, and that you guys will continue to enjoy this story :D

As always please let me know what you think in that pretty review box down below.

Ta ta for now,

~MadamRed