A/N: chapter 6…maybe one more after-epilogue? Must confess: listened to Florence and the Machine's Never Let Me Go and Taylor Swift's Safe and Sound while writing this entry. Ahhh they never cease to inspire…
Dark Red Demons
Your eyes, they shine so bright
I want to save their light
I can't escape this now
Unless you show me how…
One hundred sixty-eight cuts.
Twenty-four hours of constant pain.
Twelve hours in surgery.
Three times she coded.
5:08 a.m.
Teresa Lisbon slipped into a coma.
XOX
Patrick sat in the hard, deceptively cushy seeming blue hospital chair. He hadn't spoken since Red John's last breath left his body. Van Pelt couldn't help but think he looked a bit like a wilted flower, lively, bright…and then gone with the wind.
If boss didn't make it, Patrick Jane wouldn't either. That was gospel.
They walked on eggshells, scared of their own shadows now. Of the tedious connections breaking.
Van Pelt touched his shoulder gently, telling him she was getting coffee and tea. He nodded, but dared not meet her eyes.
The mad man was gone. Red John had gotten his just desserts.
Patrick Jane had finally taken Red John's life, exacted a revenge of sorts…but now, he'd climb through hell to give Lisbon her life back.
He sniffed, opening his palm reflexively, eyeing what he held with reverence.
It was the last thing she'd been able to give him.
It meant the world.
XOX
Her vivid emerald eyes held everything in that moment, lying on the floor of his former bedroom, bleeding out of hundreds of deep gashes and the gunshot wound inflicted by him.
Teresa's fingers folded, grasping, for his, and when he realized what she was doing he immediately grabbed for her cool, ashen hand. In the chaos that surrounded them, it was a grounding feeling.
She tried to relay a million words and feelings in that look, but then her eyes grew distant. She saw past him, to another world where someone as good and kind as she would be welcomed into the arms of her departed family, friends…and who was he to keep her from it?
Her hand became limp, fingers sliding from his one by one.
It revealed what had kept her going.
A bloodied, crushed, little paper frog.
The one he'd made for her so long ago.
He'd never let it go now.
Like the face on the wall, it was all he had…
XOX
Another pang of guilt struck him. The kind of guilt that had him jumping from the sticky, plastic chair.
Their unspoken conversation still hung over them in a sort of suspended animation.
Every exchange spun through his head on a loop.
A man so smart…why was he so, and how could he be so…ignorant and dismissive to the beauty, the love, of this woman?
He would owe her. Beyond any amount of paper frogs, especially with what he decided to do in that moment.
Grace returned, having brought tea for Jane, well aware he'd no doubt complain about it anyway.
The elevator dinged and she stepped out.
"Jane, I—"
Grace looked around. Her heart sunk.
He was gone.
XOX
Three weeks in a coma.
It hurt so badly, she could hardly bear the pain. Sure, more than likely she'd heal physically—some scars would fade; others would remain a glaring reminder of her ordeal.
But Teresa remained in her foggy limbo, waiting.
A different soul came to her. One she recognized instantly, her consultants delightful little girl. Charlotte. In her dream, much like the last, she could see herself asleep and damaged, scarred. Instinctively, Teresa knew he had not come to her bedside.
That thought killed her.
"Teresa?" She whipped around, found herself seated next to the glowing child. All blonde curls like her father, vivid blue eyes and softness of her mother. She was older, far more so than she'd been when she'd passed.
"Charlotte?"
The girl smiled charmingly, nodded. Then she spoke. "You should wake up, you know. My father misses you. He doesn't know how to show it properly, that's all."
Teresa's smile was watery at best. She felt such affection towards the girl she'd met only in the pages of her case file. "I wish I knew that. I wish…I could believe that," she whispered softly.
Charlotte rested her hand over Lisbon's. She was surprisingly warm. "Like my mom, I have a message for my father too. Could you please tell him that moving on doesn't mean forgetting mom and me? We so desperately love him, but it's time. I'd…" the girl blushed, looking away from the woman next to her. But the light smile returned, and she made sure she caught Lisbon's eye now before speaking shyly. "I'd like to know my dad could love again, I'd like to know I had a little brother, or a sister, to watch over. To guard and protect them. I always wanted to be a big sister, but you know as well as I do that anything can happen. Please, Teresa. Please wake up. Please tell him this. Please, for me."
The small child wrapped her arms lovingly around Lisbon. She felt warm, so, so warm. Teresa had cried enough in the past year, but these tears were different.
"Okay." She whispered.
The pushing feeling returned.
Her eyes opened, taking in the brightly lit room.
She whispered his name in question.
She knew he wasn't there.
XOX
Grace had dutifully stayed by her side, speaking to her every day about the team, until Lisbon woke mid-conversation, listening to Van Pelt's rendition of Rigsby's son already learning to burp the ABC's.
Of course, Lisbon's first question was of Jane.
Van Pelt looked away, demeanor sad, eyes quickly downcast. The red head before her was one of the worst liars she knew.
"Grace?" Lisbon had queried after a long pause.
"Gone. Teresa, he's just…gone."
"Oh…" she'd whispered, turned away, and silently cried into her hospital pillow.
For Van Pelt, typically the most respectful to address her as anything but 'boss' in the five, rounding six, years she'd known the headstrong team member…
It could only mean that her words were true.
Since that day, progress had no longer become important. She didn't want to speak to a shrink—well, especially after the last time—who had no idea who she spoke of, and why. They didn't understand her pain, her tragedy.
Her scars.
The only one who would know, understand her, had left her alone.
Teresa Lisbon should have been healing. She saw the doctors faces, one after another, in and out of her room at all odd hours; knew they were irritated that her progress had all but come to a stop. They were worried.
So was Lisbon. Just not for herself.
She missed him so.
XOX
He weighed his options, twirling the gold cross pendant absently as he walked the familiar shoreline. The beach helped him think. The waves were soothing in times of peril. And he needed all the soothing he could get.
She was awake.
Van Pelt refused to speak to him since he left—the message had come from Cho's consistently stony voice.
She asked for him. Constantly, to his great surprise. On the contrary, he'd figured the mere presence of him after she'd disappeared, been scarred and ruined by an evil not meant to touch her, been shot through her shoulder to kill the darkness that stood behind her…well, suffice to say he doubted it would go well.
He wanted her to heal. To forget.
He wanted her to stay away.
He didn't want her lovely, pure soul to change because of the aura of death and destruction that followed him wherever he went.
He'd stay here, a little longer.
Jane's hand crushed the little gold cross.
It's sharp edges bit into his hand.
XOX
Three months.
That's how long it took her to fully recover. Well, to the doctor's standards anyway. She had been with Patrick Jane long enough to know how to pull at wits and nerves and manipulate.
The shrinks had been harder to con, but he'd be proud.
After all, she was anything but fine.
Van Pelt nervously offered Teresa the small spare room in her apartment the day they left the confining hospital. She gave her agent a strange look, but then it clicked.
The face on her wall was still there. Red John had been in her life for so long, that he'd been in her home made her nauseous. And that was a violation she was not able to overcome.
She had movers box her life into cardboard.
She broke the lease to her apartment the next day.
They wouldn't let her return to 'active duty' but she was allowed to supervise the cases that rolled in and catch up on weeks of paperwork.
Life would not stop because she'd been taken and tortured.
It wouldn't stop because Red John was dead.
Teresa couldn't be in her office. She made her way through the bull pen, past desks of curious onlookers. She'd become quite a celebrity—the woman that survived Red John. The only one. She wanted to laugh, because they venerated Patrick Jane a hero as well, and she knew he saw himself as anything but. She knew he saw himself as the monster in the story.
Lisbon didn't stop her movements until she reached his attic. It was the only place she had left of him, and she lay on the cot, breathing in the scent that lingered in the indents of the pillows.
It wasn't long before she was asleep.
It was dreamless. And she was thankful.
She hadn't dreamed since her talk with Charlotte.
XOX
Patrick stood, basking in the warmth that surrounded him. He had only one way of letting go of the tragedy in this place.
He watched the demons flee with the flames.
He watched his house burn.
XOX
It was late. Or early, she couldn't tell in the dim attic. She sighed, glancing into the cracked mirror across from the cot. She had not really looked at herself since she woke.
She stood, walked to it. She'd avoided this too long, she knew, as she slipped the black blazer off and began unbuttoning her white blouse, trimmed in bright green.
She vowed never to wear red again.
Her shirt fluttered quietly to the floor. She sucked in her breath at the sight of herself.
It still hurt to move, to stretch the tight cuts only to grimace in pain. She would take their medicine, see the shrinks, and embrace who she was now.
The vain part of her winced and looked away from the pink, mottled, bunches of pinched and puckered skin she wore. He had at least left her face untouched. She'd taken to long sleeves.
She didn't want the questions. The pity. The looks.
Another part of her beat at the vain thoughts, her hand trailing curiously over the gaped bullet wound in her shoulder. The scars she had…they proved she was a survivor.
Even if she wasn't alive but alive.
XOX
Patrick Jane may not have been a real psychic, but he fancied himself at least a decent guesser. He had the ability of always knowing where she was. He could feel her, as he carefully avoided the team and pressed the button for the attic.
It's where she'd run, he knew. She'd left her apartment a week ago, Rigsby had told him, and was staying with Grace.
He climbed the few stairs, pushed the door of the attic open.
What he saw made him want to cry and scream and kill the bastard again.
Her lithe form stood, empty, back to him, feeding off the scars on her body. He could see the disgust on her face, the sadness, that fear that she was no longer desirable.
It was worse than he had initially thought. There had been so much blood before. He had not seen the aftermath. Had not thought it either.
Jane approached delicately, soundless in the gray. Her back stiffened and he knew she could feel him there.
Clad in her black bra, the modest bit of lace that peeked out from its edges, she made no move to cover herself, to pick up her shirt or hide herself away.
She wanted him to see it all.
She wanted him to hurt too.
XOX
Teresa Lisbon wanted to laugh. Sure, now he appeared, he'd come to see the show, she taunted herself darkly as she boldly showed off her scarred body to him.
She turned to face him. It wasn't pity she saw though. No, the look he gave was something indescribable, broken.
He came closer. One foot, another.
He reached out, reached to touch the bullet wound she'd admired mirthlessly a moment before.
She flinched, pushed away. "No," she whispered.
Patrick couldn't help thinking the "no," sounded so much like "don't look at me."
He never listened to her before. It wouldn't change now.
"Teresa…" Jane whispered with a shake of his head. He wanted to assure her more than ever Lorelei was wrong, and Red John had not ruined her beauty. "You are not plain. You are not ugly, nor undesirable. You're heart, your kindness, they make you the most beautiful woman I've ever seen," he faltered.
Her arms crossed defensively—like the last time they'd been here in this place, speaking of how little she laughed.
"You have saved me from myself, countless, endless times. I owe you nothing more than my life," he said with reverence.
She bit back the tears, still refusing to look in his eyes. She didn't know what she'd find there, and that scared her more than anything.
Lisbon felt warm, comforting hands pull her in, running over her rough, knife marred flesh, wrapping her up in an embrace fit for heaven.
She couldn't stop it now. The dam broke, the sobs came loud and bitter, and she cried for herself, for what she'd lost in that house. She cried until nothing was left but him gently stroking her ebony hair, and he lowered them to the ground.
He pulled back, awhile after her sobbing had ended, trailing his hands from her back, up to her shoulders, down her arms and back up, and collarbone, lingering on the harsh gash in her neck, the ridges in her skin that had never been there before. He'd meant to stop there, but the pull of the deep autopsy-like mark drew his traveling hands like a magnet. Red John had barely missed her vital organs, distracted by his hatred for Jane.
She was so blindingly white before him now, all the blood loss, for her body to create more of the life-aiding substance was wearing on her. She was thin and hollow. His hand drifted once more to where the dagger had stuck in her ribs—ribs he could feel, see, jutting now.
"Don't…just, please…don't do this me Jane?" she managed helplessly. She sounded so childlike and shattered. How could he make this up to her? How could he prove himself…
She wanted to curl up in a corner, never return.
She closed her eyes, leaned against the mirrored dresser.
She felt something feather-light brush the bullet wound. It confused her. She opened her bright, vivid green eyes. His face rested against her shoulder. His lips had replaced his fingers on the wound.
He began following a pattern, of scars that zigzagged and the memories of every good thing that happened to the pair. She had to know, he thought, his lips following the patterns deftly.
She was shaking, sliding down, down, down. Her head came to a jarring halt on the attic floor as he blindly kissed the scars.
Only then did she see it. The little flash and flicker of gold. She reached out for it instinctively.
He stopped, hovering only a little over her, placed his hand back into the softness of her hair.
She was confused for a while then, staring at her gold cross around the neck of her atheist consultant. Her words flooded back to her at lightening speed from their day in the park.
"What will you wear for me?"
She had her answer, then. He wore her faith, in him, in them.
Nothing came from her mouth, even as she opened it to speak. He only smiled small at her reaction.
She swallowed. He had to know. "When…when I was dying…she came to me. They both did, really. I'm supposed to tell you…if you want."
It was his turn to eye her curiously. He knew she'd coded three times, but also, in the state she'd been in he knew she must have come up with a coping technique, to get through that pain.
He nodded cautiously.
"Your wife, is unbelievably beautiful," she whispered mournfully eyes closed. "She loves you, always will…but she wants you to let her go."
Patrick only listened, anger creeping in but also, the knowledge that the woman before him would never lie to him, a woman that so whole-heartedly believed in after lives and souls…who was he to say she lied now?
"And Charlotte…she's so pretty Jane. She wanted you to know that letting them go, moving on, it isn't forgetting them." She wiped a tear away from his face; he wasn't looking at her now, merely absorbing. "I won't let you forget them Patrick."
He stood suddenly, pulling her up with him, and squeezed her in an embrace so hard she lost her breath and winced in pain. "Thank you," he said, just loud enough for her to hear.
She smiled, burying her damp face into his neck, as he swayed, she captive in his arms, knowing she would not want to be anywhere else.
They must have made for an interesting sight. The topless, scarred woman, almost dancing in the arms of the damaged man.
At least, that's what Van Pelt thought, backing away from the door. This was not a scene she would want to disturb, and she had no business seeing it.
Her guest room, she knew, would be empty and more than likely remain so—and Lisbon clearly did not need a ride home tonight. She already was.
XOX
"Patrick…" Lisbon broke the quiet as they swayed. It was lulling her into a delicious sleep, but she waved it away.
"Yes, Teresa?"
She liked when he spoke her name.
"I love you."
She felt his massive smile against her hair. He held a bit tighter.
"I know Teresa. You forget, my dear, how transparent you can be."
She chuckled lightly. "You forget I can read you like a book, Patrick Jane," she countered nicely.
He sighed. "Yes it seems you've picked that trait up quite well in my absence," he responded, making light of his 'breakdown.'
"What can I say, I learned from the best?" her jovial tone turned serious then. "Don't…don't leave me again, okay?"
It was such a shy, tempered hope; he felt his heart sink again.
He stopped their peaceful swaying, taking a step back. "Teresa, I told you earlier that I owed you nothing less than my life. I meant that. I will never let you go. It would be far too hard to do."
His gaze went to his left hand. The ring. The one he wore for a ghost. He pulled the golden band gently with his right thumb and forefinger until it slid from his finger with a soft pop.
Teresa stood, stunned and rooted to the floor. He took her hand in his, uncurling her fingers before pressing the ring in to her waiting palm.
"Patrick, you don't…"
He held up his hand to stop her speech. "No, Teresa, you're right. All this time I've been wearing it for a ghost, not for a memory, not for my wife. It's time to let her go. I can't make a life with you until I do that."
He moved into her space slowly, closing his hand around the one with the ring hidden inside. "I've loved you, for a long, long time, Teresa Lisbon. All I can give you is my life."
Teresa Lisbon truly looked at him. She knew then, what he was saying, what his intentions were.
It was his odd way of proposing.
Who was she to say no?
"Yes, Patrick."
He cupped her face with his palm, grinning like a teenager, and pressed nothing more than a butterfly kiss to her waiting lips.
"Yes.." he repeated, joy present.
XOX
Two immortal souls watched far away.
They smiled.
They could let go, too.