Thanks for all the reviews for the sixth chapter.

I haven't seen the finale yet, how sad is that? At least I managed to write the next chapter and I think I got a little carried away with it. That's the longest chapter so far, but maybe that will make up for letting you wait for an update so long. Be warned, this chapter is a little straining, at least writing it was. I'm quite happy with the result though. Well, just see for yourself.


Apartment #1

"It's a really nice place, don't you think? Patrick?"

"Are that mice droppings in the corner over there?"

"Looks like ordinary fluffs to me."

"I think it's mice droppings. You don't want our baby getting nightly visits from Mickey Mouse, do you?"

Apartment #2

"Hey, you can see the CBI building from this window."

"I know that you love your work, Teresa, but do you really want to see our workplace from the living room window?"

Apartment #3

"I really like this place. Look, it even has a fireplace! I love fireplaces."

"Who would have thought that the tough Agent Lisbon is such a romantic."

"Well, now you know. Can we just rent this place? Please?"

"It's nice. But those squeaking floorboards really get on my nerves."

"I'm sure this can be fixed."

"Maybe. I doubt it though. Once a squeaker, always a squeaker."

*****

"You still want to move in together, right?" Teresa asks, eying Patrick suspiciously, while they wait for their sandwiches at a little sidewalk cafe near the third apartment.

They both took the day off (a 'coincidence' that most likely didn't go unnoticed by the rest of the team, judging by the glances they exchanged) for apartment hunting and she is perplex that, contrary to her expectation, he and not she is the one to complicate matters.

"Of course, I do. What makes you think I changed my mind?" He asks, feigning innocence.

"Well, excuse me when the fact that you just rejected three perfectly fine apartments makes me a little nervous."

He flashes her an arch smile. "We'll find something else."

"Oh, really?" She asks sardonically. "Those were the only three affordable places with a suitable floor plan."

"Not exactly. There is another one."

"There is?"

"Yes. I found it in a newspaper ad and we can go there after lunch." He announces proudly, producing a key from his pocket.

She should have known that he's up to something the moment he offered his bogus excuse for not liking the first apartment. "What did you do? Flirt with the realtor until she gave you the key instead of meeting us at the apartment?"

"No need to be jealous." It's obvious that he's enjoying himself thoroughly. "It only took some compliments and mentioning that we have a baby on the way and she went all soft. I thought it's better if we can look around on our own. I've already been there briefly yesterday and I think you'll like it."

"Ah, so you only pretended to dislike the other apartments because you already decided for that one?" Unbelievable. And more unbelievable is that she's not mad at him for tricking her like that. "And, for the record, I was not jealous."

"Whatever you say, my dear. If you, against all odds, don't like this place, we can still take apartment #3."

"Having a look at it won't hurt, I guess." She concedes, involuntarily curious about this mysterious apartment he found.

"You will love it. I know, you will."

"We'll see."

An hour later, Teresa's car, with Patrick behind the wheel, enters a quiet side street. She is just contemplating if it's the pregnancy or them getting along so well lately that made her give in so easily to his request to drive, when he asks her to close her eyes.

"Oh, come on, this is stupid." She protests, although knowing that she will surrender eventually.

"Humor me, please. I want to see the look on your face when you first see it and I can't really focus on you while I drive."

"Fine." She sighs and closes her eyes, but pouts for good measure.

The car stops and he walks around to her side to help her out. Supporting her with his arm around her waist, he leads her a few steps forward.

"Now you can open your eyes." He tells her, still holding on to her.

At first she is confused, looking around to check if he maybe means another one than the building they stand in front of. She peers at him, but he only grins and nods.

"It's a house." She finally states incredulously.

"Yes."

"It's not an apartment."

"Nope."

"You want to rent a house?"

"Well, actually, it's not for rent. I want to sell my house and buy this one." He beams with joy.

"You want to sell your house." She repeats, too dumbfounded to form a coherent sentence with her own words.

"Yes. Or better, I already sold my house. I had to turn down two offers of creeps who only wanted it because of the Red John connection, but I now sold it to a law firm which wants to use it as offices. I like the idea of people working, but not living there."

She looks at him and helplessly shrugs her shoulders. "I don't know what to say."

"I realize that the house has a white fence around the front lawn and the neighborhood might seem a little bourgeois, but I think it's a nice environment to raise a kid. A lot of families with little kids live here and there's a playground and a preschool right around the corner. I know, it's a little scary to buy a house instead of renting a place. It makes our living arrangement much more permanent."

"That's not it."

"No?" He asks, looking her straight in the eye and giving her a tender, knowing smile.

"Okay, maybe a little." She admits. "But what really concerns me is something else. If I agree to buy this house, which I can only decide after I've been inside, I don't want you to pay for it alone. I want to acquire a financial interest."

"You want us to buy the house together?" Now it's his turn to be stunned.

"Yes. I don't want to live in your house, but ours. Makes it much more difficult for you to kick me out when I tease you about whistling musical tunes in the shower."

Being too busy digesting her willingness to buy a house with him, he completely ignores her quip. "You do realize that buying a house together makes parting more difficult if we don't get along?"

"Patrick, we are having a baby together. Joint property really isn't scary at all compared to that." She tells him and grabs the key from his hand to have a look at the interior of their potential new home.

*****

Three weeks later the sales contract is signed, a bed for Patrick and other new furniture to fill the rooms of their new home are bought and delivered and a rental truck for moving their stuff is parked in front of Teresa's house.

She sits down on the rim of her bathtub, the very spot where she awaited the results of her first, second and fourth pregnancy test, taking a couple of minutes off from packing all her belongings in boxes. Wistfully she reminisces about moving in so many years ago. Now she will only spent one more night here before beginning a new life in a new house. And with a new cohabitant.

Patrick was right, she fell in love with the house from the moment she first entered it. The large, light rooms with their homey atmosphere exalted her imagination and, walking through the house, she already imagined all the rooms furnished and decorated. Of course she pretended, just for fun, that she didn't like the house at all, but Patrick didn't fall for it. Pointing out imaginary flaws of the building was apparently not very convincing since her face expressed rapturous delight.

She still can't quite comprehend how perfect the house is. The first floor consists of the generous kitchen, the dining room with a glazed partition to the hallway, a guest bedroom with en suite bathroom, another small room (which could be a study, she thinks) and a sitting room. The latter immediately became her favorite room of the house as it attracts a great deal of natural light and has direct access via sliding doors to the paved terrace and the small, but beautifully natural garden. Upstairs there are three bedrooms, one with an en suite bathroom, and a family bathroom. Teresa is sure she'll feel at home there in no time.

Hearing Patrick curse in her living room when he accidentally stumbles over some books on the floor that he himself piled up there, she can't help smiling. Not because of his mishap, but because she is really glad to have him here. And also because the last weeks were really great. They cooked together, went shopping for clothes and other stuff for the baby and for furniture and also did some more couply things, like watching DVDs or going out for a meal. They discovered that their taste in movies is quite different, but also that they - after some mocking and teasing - are always able to agree on one to watch together.

He spent some nights on her couch, but instinctively felt when she needed time for herself. She noticed some of his bad habits, like leaving his shoes in the middle of the living room at night so she nearly drips over them on her way to the bathroom, but she also learnt that she is able to tolerate them. Occasionally she was on the edge of panic when she thought about giving up her old life to built a family with Patrick, but then he did something utterly sweet and she felt reassured that she was doing the right thing.

At work things went pretty much back to normal once everyone got used to her pregnancy and stopped handling her with kid gloves. Meanwhile she understands that taking down suspects with a pregnant belly isn't very wise, so she mainly settles for briefing the team, questioning witnesses and suspects and paperwork. She found out that flinching and dramatically clutching her belly is a very effective method to make suspects more complaisant during interrogations and she uses this knowledge frequently, causing Patrick to tease her about him having a bad influence on her.

"Here you are hiding." Patrick interrupts her train of thoughts and sits down next to her. "Getting cold feet?"

"Only being a little sentimental." She points at the stained-glass window to their right. "I love this window, I'll miss it."

"It's a beautiful window." He softly replies, gently nudging her arm with his elbow. "If you want, I'll demount it and instal it at the new house. Your landlord won't like it, but I'll hazard the consequences if it makes you happy."

One of the things she loves about him is that he can cheer her up without even having to try very hard. "No, that's okay. Mr. Fisher is quite violent-tempered and I think I might still need you in the future."

They smile at each other for a while, quietly enjoying each other's company.

Patrick is the first to speak again. "Hey, look what I found. I knew you'd look good with short hair. How old were you there?"

She stares at the black and white photo in his hand. "Where did you get this?"

"It fell out of a book when I wanted to put it in a box. Something wrong?"

"That's not me. That's my mother." She finally tells him after a moment of silence, looking away.

"Really?" He examines the picture more closely. "You're the spitting image of her."

"I know. She had brown eyes, but other than that I see her face when I look into the mirror. I learned to appreciate that since this is the only picture I've got of her."

"How's that?" As so often, he finds the answer to his question in her eyes. "Oh. Your father?"

She nods. "One day, when I came home from school, he had made a huge bonfire in the backyard with all things that reminded him of my mother. He nearly set the house on fire, too. I was so angry with him that I didn't speak with him for a whole month. Not that he really noticed anyway. Over a year later, when I looked for a poem for a homework, I found the book. It was my mother's. Inside was this picture of her as a teenager, I think she used it as a bookmark. That was my happiest day since my mother died. I hid the book with the picture under my mattress until I went to college, always afraid my dad would find them and take them from me."

"And you still hide the picture now?" He cautiously inquires.

She shrugs, tears dwelling in her eyes. "It seemed the right thing to do. You know, I really miss my mother lately. I mean, I always do, but now especially. I'm thinking about her and my childhood a lot. As kids, my brothers and I were never home on time. For us a curfew at 6 meant that we'd begin to walk home at 6. My mom was so worried, even when we were only a couple of minutes late, but we only teased her about it. Each time she said 'Wait till you have kids yourself, then you'll understand.' It's just so damn unfair that she'll never be able to see that she was right."

He takes her hand in his, tenderly unclenching the fist she is making, and intertwines his fingers with hers. "I think we should find a frame for this picture and give it a place of honor in the new house."

Still holding her hand, he brushes her knuckles with his lips and she lets him, tentatively nodding in response to his suggestion. He is right, it's time to stop hiding her past.

"Teresa? Would you do me a favor?" He asks with a very serious expression.

Without hesitation, she agrees, wondering what he wants her to do.

"When we're done here, will you go with me to my house?"

"Didn't you say you're already done with packing your stuff?"

"I am, mostly. But I need you there for one final thing."

"Sure." Denying his request is not an option for her. If he needs her, she will go there with him. But still, the thought of entering his house for the first time without even knowing what he plans to do there, makes her a little uneasy.

"Thank you. I promise to make this quick." He squeezes her hand before letting go. "Wanna help me with those books? You can have an eye on the piles on the floor to make sure that I don't break any bones. I swear, they secretly move to another spot whenever I turn my back on them."

She is amazed how quickly he switches from seriousness to bantering, but she doesn't mind. Being with Patrick never becomes stale due to his versatility.

"I've got your back. Maybe I should get my gun, those lexica over there are loose cannons." She teases him and takes delight in the smirk she provokes. Looking through one of the piles on the floor, she finally spots what she was hoping to find.

"By the way, this is how I looked as a teenager." She tells him, holding a yearbook out to him. "I'll be in the kitchen to make us a snack for lunch."

She hears him gasp when she leaves the room. "Teresa, is that a nose ring?" He yells after her. "Do you still own those fishnet stockings and this leather mini?"

Teresa laughs, realizing that opening up to others and sharing things that lie in her past with them isn't as bad as she thought it would be. She knows that Patrick will look through the whole yearbook and will have a blast teasing her about her appearance and her nerdy boyfriend Vernon.

"Hey, I really hope you don't plan to name our son Vernon." He exclaims, right on cue.

Still, she trusts him to keep certain things private and knowing that she is finally able to confide in someone again makes her happy.

*****

It is afternoon when they arrive at Patrick's house. Teresa uncomfortably shifts in her seat, looking at the exterior of the building. That's as close to the house as she got before, waiting inside her car for him. She only knows the interior through crime scene photos, images of the tragic, bloody end of two lives. Of two people who the man at her side loved.

"Ready?" Patrick asks, nervous tension evident in his voice.

She nods, even though she is far from being sure that she is ready for this.

"You don't have to worry, the place looks nothing like that crime scene photos anymore." He tells her, as if reading her thoughts. "The house is pretty much empty. And I painted the walls. I also got finally rid of that smiley face."

"Finally?"

"I kept it for years." He admits. "I painted it over after Red John's end. Not right afterwards, but after spending the second night with you."

He studies her face and even though she is tempted to avoid his scrutinizing look, she senses that averting her eyes would hurt him. After a while he continues. "It was then that I realized I need to stop allowing Red John to control my life."

"And then I pushed you away." She mournfully remarks.

"That was a setback, but after making so much progress I decided to not give up yet." He looks down, playing with his wedding band. "Does it really bother you that I still wear the ring?" He asks in reference to the fight they had.

"I shouldn't have said that. I understand why you still wear it." She hurries to respond.

"I'll take it off when I need the finger for another ring." He smiles lightly and she crumbles when she looks into his blue eyes. One day, she thinks, she'll give him a reason to take it off.

They finally leave the car and he leads her into the house, granting her a glimpse at his past. The sound of their footsteps reverberates through the rooms and Teresa is taken aback by the overall emptiness. He told her that he already packed his stuff and she also knows that he doesn't want to take any furniture and already got rid of it. Still, it makes her strangely sad that all of Patrick's life - or better the part of his old life that he wants to take along - fits into five medium-sized boxes.

He walks up the stairs and she follows him, glancing through the open doors into the rooms they pass on the way. Teresa feels a little guilty for being relieved that on the surface nothing reminds of the horrible things that happened in this house. Upstairs they enter a room left of the staircase, with its parquet floor, white walls and big windows at first glance indistinguishable from all the others. Then she notices two boxes in one corner of the room and even though their contents are safely hidden under brown cardboard, she is suddenly sure that they are standing in the room of Patrick's daughter.

"This was Anna's... room." He confirms her suspicion, his voice breaking when he says his kid's name for the first time in years. "And this is all that's left of her." He adds, pointing at the boxes.

"Oh." Teresa breathes, her mouth suddenly feeling very dry. She squeezes his hand, a weak attempt to comfort him.

"What do you want me to do, Patrick?" She softly asks.

"I kept some of the stuff from her room after she..." He trails off, appearing more fragile than she ever saw him before. "I put the boxes in the attic and never opened them again in all those years. But now that I have to clear out the whole house I need to decide what to do with them. I don't want to... no, I can't just get rid of them without at least having one last look at her things. I am just too afraid to open the boxes."

His shaken state makes her helpless, but she knows that she now has to be strong for both of them. "We can open them together."

It is obvious that it costs him quite an effort to make himself nod, but he follows her over to the boxes nonetheless.

"Which one first?" She asks, anxious to not proceed faster than he is ready for.

He picks the bigger one and she cautiously opens it. Patrick sits down next to the box and helps her to find a comfortable posture when she joins him on the floor. For a while they only look into the box at all the things inside, Patrick's facial expression constantly alternating between joyful recognition and poignant grief. Hesitantly he finally chooses one item to take out.

"Mr. Bear." He tells her with a faint smile, tracing the teddy's ears with his thumb.

"Patrick?" His eyes are tearful when he looks up to meet hers. "Tell me about Anna. I mean, you don't have to...."

"I want to." He interrupts her and Teresa remains silent to give him time to gather himself.

"My little girl was a whirlwind, always brimming over with life." He finally begins. "She was born almost a month premature and was always a little smaller than other kids her age, but she made up for that with personality. She always wanted to take part in everything. I painted a wall and she wouldn't stop begging until I gave her a brush and let her help me. She was most of the time running instead of walking and when I took her by the hand and dared to stop for a while, she impatiently hopped up and down. The only occasions when she was able to sit still was when her mother let her tinkle on the piano or when I read to her. She liked to hear stories about cats and about princesses. She loved to eat strawberries, but hated strawberry-flavored toothpaste. By the age of four she developed an irrational passion for flinging things from her shelves to the floor and then putting them back where they belonged. She loved to get up very early in the morning and walk around the house until we woke up and then she crawled into bed with us. She stunned me with a shockingly early mastery of sarcasm, sometimes making me speechless with her precocious remarks. She couldn't fall asleep without Mr. Bear in her arms, until she out of the blue dislodged him to spend the nights on the rack above her bed. I never got a chance to find out what Mr. Bear did to deserve a demotion like that."

Teresa slowly inches closer to his body and tenderly puts an arm around him. "And you miss her every single day." She whispers, her fingers soothingly stroking his neck.

His eyes are bleary when he looks up and nods.

"Were you happy about the baby right away?" He asks, confusing her with his sudden change of topic.

"After the initial shock, yes. I wasn't able though to really enjoy the pregnancy until you knew and didn't freak out about it."

"Believe me, I did freak out." His laugh sounds constrained. "I was only wise enough to not let it show in front of you."

"Were you scared to betray Anna?"

"When I first suspected that you're pregnant, I wanted nothing more than to be the father of this baby. When you confirmed it, I was over the moon that you weren't involved with someone else, but when I left your office I panicked. I never really considered the possibility to have another kid, not consciously anyway. Even though my daughter was gone, I still felt like her father. It scared me how much I wanted this baby. And you. Because if I hadn't lost my family, I wouldn't need a new one. So this yearning for a new start just couldn't be right."

"You deserve a second chance. You deserve to be happy, Patrick. I know I don't make it easy for you, but I want you to be happy." She tells him resolutely, now tearing up as well.

"I know that. Now I know that. It took some time but I know now that I'm not replacing Anna with the new baby, I only want a chance to raise another child. On the day you confirmed the pregnancy I went for a walk and I ended up on a bench at a playground. I watched parents with their kids and remembered Anna's shouts of glee when I pushed her higher and higher on the swing. I realized that I wouldn't mind to push another kid on a swing. I'll be more scared than before that the kid will fall down and get hurt, but I want to be there to hear the delighted shrieks or to put a band-aid on a grazed knee."

"I'm glad you feel that way. I got worried about you for a moment." She smiles at him through her veil of tears. "You know, if you want to take those boxes to the new house, I don't mind."

"No, I think I'll give all the stuff to an orphanage. I don't need it to remember her."

"Okay." She notices him glancing at the second box and then watches him open it. He seems to be so lost in his inspection of all the toys that she feels like an intruder. Maybe she should allow him a little more privacy to say goodbye. "Patrick? Do you maybe need a moment alone?"

"Maybe a minute, if that's okay. I won't be long." He takes her hands in his to help her up. When they are standing face to face, Teresa gives in to the urge to stroke his cheek. For a moment he closes his eyes, leaning into her palm, before covering her hand with his own and bringing it up to his lips to place two feathery kiss on her fingertips.

"I'll be outside, take your time." She smiles at him when she leaves the room.

The sunlight dazzles her when she exits the house. Standing on the door steps, she enjoys the bracing warmth on her face. After a while she retreats to an abandoned garden swing, whose coat of paint has sure seen better days once. Her feet are too swollen and the baby in her stomach is too lively for her to care about flaking paint and she settles down, soon dozing off.

She only notices that Patrick joins her when he puts a moon-shaped plush toy on her belly and the first beats of 'All the Pretty Little Horses' break the silence. "This was Anna's favorite toy. She never wanted to sleep before she at least heard the song twice, even though she exclaimed often during the day that she's much too old for a lullaby. I think our baby should have a reminder of his big sister."

"That's a wonderful idea. One day you should tell our kid about Anna." She encourages him, meaning every word of it.

"Come on, let's drive. I already put my stuff in the truck." He holds out his hand for her and she takes it, not letting go until they reach the car.