Disclaimer: last time I checked, I didn't own the Mentalist. too bad. I hoped to get them for Christmas, but, instead, I got a 10 days vacancy in Rome later this winter...

Anyway-these stories are based on prompt by The Mentalist Prompt on LJ, but, incase you'd like to commision me something, I'd not mind. I've always been of the idea that a story is made in 95% of hard work, and 5%inspiration. So, all I need is YOU to inspire me with a word or a quote, the title of a song or of a movie, and I'll be glad to work on it, because inspiration is going away slolwy, and prompts on mentalist promts aren't inifite, you know..

INNOCENCE

You've never been an innocent. You've never known what innocence is, what it feels like.

You laid and manipulated, tricked your way into people's lives. That's who and what you were, always had been.

Until she entered in your lives, Charlotte, your greatest joy, and, finally, you understood what being an innocent may mean, and what innocence may be how it may feel like.

Charlotte was an innocent, and she deserved to have time to understand what innocence was and how it felt like.

And she deserved to have everything you and Angela didn't got to have because of your families (a home, puppies, an education, decent food, clean and new clothes, toys and everything she could want); so, for her own good (or at least that's what you kept repeating to yourself and to Angela) you kept lying and manipulating, tricking your way into people's lives. After all, it made good money, money that you used to make your daughter happy (it was for a good reason, sure).

And since she was an innocent, you didn't allow seeing who you really were and what you did. (You no longer even knew if you wore the mask of the good father and there was the fraud behind it, or vice versa.) You didn't want to grow up as you did, becoming what you did, like your father before your time. (Yes, you absolutely did it for a good reason….)

But, then, you lost her, the most precious thing in your life, and along with her you lost the shadow of innocence that she had implanted inside your dark heart. Sometimes you think you may remember how you used to feel those days, but it's just that, a memory, you are unable to feel again, anything at all. You can only feel empty, because your innocence is gone.

What was left of innocent in you is gone because of Red John, because he has taken away the only innocent and pure and beautiful thing in your life. That's why you'll never stop hunting him down, that's why you'll never stop until he'll be dead, killed by you, because, after all, you are no longer an innocent.