AN: Thanks again for sticking with this story and for the amazing response to last chapter. I'm glad you guys seemed to enjoy it as much as I did! Hopefully you like this second half of the story just as much. I'm still working on responding to reviews, so I'll get to those ASAP.
Disclaimer: I don't own The Mentalist.
Chapter 6: I Want to Be
"This isn't working."
"It'll come, Lisbon," said Jane gently. "To be honest, I would have been extremely surprised had you been able to do it the first time."
They sat facing each other, cross-legged, in the sand after yet another day of beach clean-up. They'd found time to multitask—while picking up the debris from the tsunami, Jane began lesson three.
Hypnosis.
Though Lisbon had told Jane that his lessons had more than served their original purpose—building her trust in him—and that he shouldn't feel obligated to share any more of his specialized skillset with her, she was secretly glad that he'd wanted to continue their lessons. They'd come to an unspoken agreement after the events of the previous day: though the lessons would continue, their content would focus more on useful tricks Jane had picked up over the years rather than techniques he could teach her to read him.
Thus, her current predicament with hypnosis.
Jane had explained the theory to her throughout the course of the day. She had been disabused of her misconception that weak-minded individuals were the most susceptible to hypnosis—Jane had patiently explained to her that rather than having a weak mind, it was a person's ability to concentrate which made them an ideal candidate for hypnosis. After walking her through several ways to determine how susceptible someone was, Jane had then gone on to describe multiple ways to approach putting them into a hypnotic state. Later, he'd explained in great detail how to extract the information needed from a person under hypnosis and then how to snap them out of it.
Then, at the end of the day, he'd suggested she try it out on him.
And she had tried. Multiple times. But no matter the approach she used, Jane remained very much aware of her and their surroundings.
She supposed she should be grateful that he was being honest about her limitations as a hypnotist. After all, he probably could have hypnotized himself all the while convincing her that she was the one responsible.
Lisbon sighed.
"It's been a long day," said Jane. "And it's a lot to take in. Really, Lisbon, don't be so hard on yourself. You've been picking up everything else so quickly—we were bound to find something eventually that you weren't so natural at."
She nodded tightly.
"I had to try on seven different people at the carnival before I figured it out," said Jane.
Lisbon snickered, imagining a teenaged Jane trying—and failing—to hypnotize his carnie friends. She pulled her mind back to the present and took in the Jane before her—khaki shorts, barefoot, island shirt rolled up to the elbows, and hair becoming more and more sun-bleached by the day. She smiled and leaned in to bridge the distance between them.
Instead of meeting her halfway, Jane rolled backward, so that his spine rested on the sand, and his hands went to Lisbon's ribcage, pulling her down on top of him. She held herself up on her elbows, her dark hair falling on either side of his face and cutting them off from the rest of the world.
"When you hypnotized me all those years ago," she said playfully, her hands running through his hair, "were you tempted to ask me things you knew I wouldn't tell you about under normal circumstances?"
Jane smiled up at her, and his thumbs drew steady motions on her ribs. "Are you getting ideas, love?" he asked in a similar tone. Lisbon breathed in deeply at the term of endearment, still not entirely used to it, and she knew Jane's clever hands had noticed her reaction. "You know, you don't have to put me under hypnosis to ask me things."
She shook her head. "I know that," she said. "Now, at least. But back then, we weren't as close. If I was in your place, I would have been very tempted."
To her amazement, a fleeting look of embarrassment crossed Jane's face. "If you must know, I did ask you something that wasn't strictly case related. Two somethings, in fact."
"What exactly did you ask me? If you recall, I don't remember any part of the conversation we had when I was under."
Jane grinned. "I asked if you danced to your Spice Girls CD," he said.
Lisbon rolled her eyes. "You probably knew the answer to that anyway."
His smile became wider. "I wanted to hear you say it," he explained before continuing. "I also asked for elaboration when you mentioned that the new mail guy was hot."
"What did I say?" she nearly squeaked, her eyes widening. When she met his gaze, she ducked her head, embarrassed.
Jane moved a hand from her ribs to her chin to lift her face back to his. "I admit, I was intrigued. At the time, I didn't understand why I was so interested in who you were attracted to, but with hindsight being twenty-twenty…"
"You were jealous," said Lisbon delightedly. "Patrick Jane, you were jealous!"
"Okay," he began, shrugging. "Maybe I was a tiny bit jealous—"
"You're an idiot," said Lisbon, and she leaned down to kiss him.
Over the course of the next few days, the clean-up efforts succeeded in restoring the majority of the island's beachfront. The main marina and all of the essential beaches near residential areas had been cleared, and by the end of the week, children began to return to school while their parents reopened their shops. That Friday, a small group of volunteers, Jane and Lisbon among them, set out to clear the sole beach on the far side of the island. Due to its location beyond the foothills, it was the last of the beaches on the island set to be restored.
The group was once again spearheaded by Jane and Lisbon's neighbor Christian, who shuttled the workers to the distant side of the island in his motorboat. Lisbon was relieved upon her first glance of the beach: it was smaller than she had pictured in her mind and didn't appear to be as affected by the tsunami as the other beaches on the island. Sharp rocky cliffs enclosed it on either side. A cloud moved lazily in front of the sun as the group unloaded from the boat, casting shadows over the beach and threatening afternoon rain.
As they worked, Jane remained mostly silent, and Lisbon was grateful for the break from their third lesson. Despite further attempts on her part to hypnotize Jane, she had yet to pull him under, and her frustration was building. Instead, they quizzed each other sporadically on conjugations of irregular Spanish verbs.
After a few hours, the beach itself had been restored to its earlier, pristine condition. Some debris remained on the dark, rocky cliffs that surrounded the beach, and the group split up in pairs to begin clearing the rocks.
Jane and Lisbon continued their impromptu quiz session as they walked together to the rocks.
"Tener," said Jane, referring to the verb for to have. "Future tense."
Lisbon made to answer, but she spotted a piece of scratch metal, its brilliant red a stark contrast against the dull brown of the rocks. She felt Jane follow her line of vision, his gaze tilting up until he, too, saw the piece of metal situated above a boulder that was nearly as tall as he was.
Lisbon quickly rattled off the different versions of the verb, stumbling only on the plural second person, and Jane offered her a leg up to help her climb the rock. She placed one hand on the enormous boulder beside her and the other on Jane's shoulder to steady herself, then used Jane's interlocked hands as a step and allowed him to lift her upwards. She pulled herself up and over the rock, hoisting her body on top of it, and looked down at Jane, who grinned back up at her.
"Volver, imperfect tense," she said, and Jane recited the conjugated forms of the verb back at her, his pronunciation horrendous but the words otherwise correct. Lisbon straightened up, intending to reach for the piece of metal to hand back down to Jane, but her attention was caught by the new view afforded to her in the direction opposite from the route they had taken to arrive at the beach.
Another cloud passed in front of the sun, and Lisbon squinted into the distance.
"Querer, present tense," Jane said from below her, his tone prompting, but Lisbon ignored him.
The treacherous rocks continued on for as long as she could see and seemed to disappear around the curve of the island. Her heart nearly sank when she saw the more red scrap metal littered across their surface.
Her heart nearly stopped when she saw the source of the scrap metal.
At the base of the rocks, perhaps 100 yards from her, lay the remains of a small cargo ship. It rested on its side, hoisted a foot above the water by the jagged rocks supporting its weight, and Lisbon had a sudden vision of a monstrous wave flinging the small boat onto the tooth-like rocks.
Perhaps not all the inhabitants of the island had made it to the safety of the foothills when the tsunami had hit, she realized.
"'Querer' is not even a difficult one, Lisbon," said Jane teasingly. His demeanor changed when he noticed the tense set of her shoulders. "Teresa?" he asked, his voice tight.
"Get the others," she responded quietly, and Jane backed away from the boulder slowly at first, keeping an eye on her, then turned and raced across the beach to locate Christian. A minute later, she heard five pairs of feet racing through the sand.
Lisbon quickly grabbed the piece of metal, taking care not to cut herself on its sharp edges, and handed it down to Christian. She spoke urgently to him in English, knowing that his knowledge of her language was better than her knowledge of his.
"There's a capsized boat on the rocks."
In her peripheral vision, she could make out Jane staring intensely at her. He held his hands in front of his torso, tapping them against each other as he did when trying to work something out in his mind.
Christian nearly dropped the chunk of metal. His face paled with the realization of her words, and she knew he was thinking about the deadly rocks that enclosed the beach from either side.
"Capsized?" he repeated.
"On its side, lying on the rocks," Lisbon clarified.
Jane spoke for the first time in minutes. "Lisbon, do you have your phone?"
She touched a hand to her pocket and pulled out her iPhone, understanding what he'd wanted her to do. She snapped a few pictures of her view of the wreck and handed the phone to Jane, who held the phone so the others could see and swiped through the pictures. Christian took the phone from him, his eyes widening, and Lisbon knelt down and moved toward the edge of the rock, where Jane held out his arms for her. She fell into him.
Jane sat her down beside him as Christian examined the photos and the other group members—three young adult males—looked over his shoulders. Christian's face hardened, and he spoke to the others behind him in rapid Spanish that neither Jane nor Lisbon could follow. The three young men headed towards Christian's boat, which had been tied up further down the beach, and Christian turned to Jane and Lisbon.
"I do not think it is likely that whoever was on that boat survived," he said. "However, we must check in the unlikely event that they did."
Ten minutes later, Christian maneuvered his boat between the sharp peaks of the rocks as they approached the capsized ship. A light drizzle had begun to fall, making navigation slightly more difficult, and the outline of the shipwreck gradually became more clear.
The metal sides of the ship were scuffed and scratched beyond repair, and a gaping hole had been ripped through the front part of the hull by a particularly gruesome rock. Pieces of metal torn from the ship littered the seaside.
Christian called out, searching for a response Lisbon knew would not come—if the tsunami had not killed the crew of this ship, a week without food or water would have.
Jane echoed Christian's words in English, his tone far from hopeful.
One of the young men pointed suddenly to their left, and Christian cut the motor, unable to risk getting any closer. Jane and Lisbon turned simultaneously to follow his gaze and spotted a long tear in the cargo hold, wide enough to allow them a look inside.
At first, Lisbon thought the hold was filled with fur coats, and she wondered idly what exactly the cargo ship was doing in such a hot, tropical region of the world. Then, as the drizzle ceased for a minute and her vision became clearer, she realized what exactly she was looking at.
Animal pelts.
Hundreds of them.
All looking very exotic—and very illegal.
She felt Jane stiffen beside her, and she knew he'd come to the same conclusion. "Smuggling ship?" he asked her quietly, and she nodded in agreement. "Good riddance," he added, and she nodded again.
The rain started once more, and a forceful wave shifted Christian's boat, allowing them to see a different angle of the wreck. One of the younger men in front of Lisbon swore loudly in Spanish.
Off to the side of the cargo hold, lying prone on top of some of the smuggled furs, was a human foot, bloated and swollen from decomposition.
AN: Thanks for reading! The next update will come quicker than this one. After my week-long hiatus, I really began to miss these characters and this world!