Chapter 8:

A/N: I hope everyone had an awesome holiday! I was sick and achy during most of mine, first with back issues, then with a cold and then with stomach flu (bummer!) but hey… Life is life. Beggars can't be choosers. Ha!

Thank you to reviewers Jisbon4ever, Kourion, Jbon and Anna for reviewing chapter 7! As well as everyone who followed and favorited my story- many, many thanks!

To Jisbon4ever- Yes! lol, Jane is very self-absorbed so it's only fitting that he'd feel personally attacked. Well, Brad of course is only apologizing because of his own appearance- in fact, someone actually did apologize like that to a close family member of mine, "I have more class than that!" yeah right!

Kourion- Thank you for reviewing for the first time! I'm glad you enjoyed the story so far! That really makes me happy to have you say that! I do actually have a pretty good and definite ending for this story—so stay tuned!

To Jbon and Anna- Your continued support is much appreciated! Thank you so much for reading!

OK… Here we go… And in advance: Happy 2011!


Two weeks had passed and Jane had not reappeared from his thinking room upstairs in the attic. Mysteriously, food would disappear from the kitchen though, which meant that he was still eating. Teresa Lisbon was hard at work inside her office. Her couch had been rather forlorn and lonesome sitting in the corner against the wall as it was. She contemplated getting something to place on it to replace the odd void that it left. Teresa hated the fact that Patrick Jane was still on her mind, even when he wasn't even around. What was it with that jerk? At the same time that she couldn't stand him and his stupid antics, she had some sort of sick affection for him. Teresa sighed. Maybe it was the result of her childhood that had made her cling onto these unhealthy influences in her life… At least that's what her therapist had told her.

Lisbon's phone rang and she smiled as she saw the name "Bradley" pop up on the little LCD screen. She opened it. "Hello Brad." She said sweetly.

"Hello Honey-cakes."

"Hey, what's up?"

"Uh…Listen… I'm really sorry Teresa, but the court date for the Meyers' case I told you about last week was extended, and I have to go over my testimony for insanity with the lawyers-"

"Are you breaking off our lunch date?" Lisbon interrupted, her heart sinking slightly in disappointment.

There was a silence on the other end. "Yeah, yes I am." Brad said. "Unfortunately." He added.

There was another pause. "I hope you're not mad."

Lisbon smiled devilishly. "Just a little bit." She teased.

"I'll make it up to you." Brad replied. "I promise."

"I'm going to hold you to that promise!"

Brad laughed. "Are you going to come over tonight?"

This caught her off-guard, and she felt her stomach contract. Brad had been subtly pressuring her to come over to his house. Teresa couldn't help but feel a bit burdened and bothered every time it was mentioned. "Oh-um… I-I don't know…" As Brad began saying something in reply, Lisbon saw her three team members approaching her office through the window.

"Oh-oh, Brad, I have to go, I'm sorry." She quickly hung up the phone as the team filed in to her office. She quickly grabbed some of the papers in front of her to make it appear as if she were busy. It was best to obtain a professional look in front of her team, after-all, if they saw her slacking, they would be more inclined to slack off themselves and Lisbon couldn't afford the trouble that would come with that. She had already gotten enough flack as it was, with Agent Hightower coming in the past year and making a lot of changes. Though she had relaxed somewhat since her arrival, Lisbon was walking on eggshells from the many times her job had been in peril.

The team stood, shifting their weight, glancing at one another as if trying to decide who should talk first. Lisbon looked up slowly at them. Rigs was nervously jiggling his hand in his jacket pocket, Grace was biting her lower lip, and Cho's jaw was noticeably more clenched. Lisbon shrugged. She hadn't called them into her office. "Is there something you want?"

The three agents appeared to be silently communicating with one another to speak first.

"Well, don't all talk at once." Lisbon said with a bemused smile.

Grace finally cleared her throat. "Um… Well, it's… It's about… Jane." She said delicately.

Rigsby's eyes darted to his shoes and a muscle tensed on Cho's forehead.

Lisbon resisted rolling her eyes. She suspected just as much. She took a deep breath, "What about him?"

"Well… We all just happened to notice that he… that he hasn't really come down from that room upstairs and we're all just a little bit concerned about him." Grace said looking around for support.

Lisbon shook her head, putting the papers aside so that she could put her elbow on her desk. "He's fine I'm sure. You know Jane; he's probably just doing this so that someone will go begging to him to come downstairs." Grace and the two guys both exchanged looks. Lisbon sat back in her chair, "Oh, what? If you're concerned about him, why come to me? Why not just go up there yourself?"

"We've tried." Cho said.

"Yeah, we went up there and knocked on the door- but he didn't answer." Rigsby offered.

Lisbon sighed skeptically. "Well, what do you want me to do about it?" She asked with a shrug.

"Well, we were thinking..." Grace looked around again for support.

"Jane's only up there because he thinks that you're mad at him and that you don't want him around." Cho said.

"Yeah, and maybe if you talked to him-" Rigsby started.

Lisbon held up her hand, "Okay... wait... You want me to...what? Go apologize?"

The team stared at her wide-eyed, as if frightened to say yes.

"No. No, I'm not doing it." Lisbon said shaking her head. That was just want Jane wanted.

"I'm not going to go up there begging him to come down and inflating his ego anymore than it is by going to him first. He's going to have to step up and start being mature about this and admit that he was wrong. Sometimes He acts like he's five years old and I'm not going to encourage this behavior anymore! It's unprofessional and frankly, when he does act like that, I don't want him around me."

"But Boss-"

Lisbon shook her head, her hair gently cascading around her face. "No! There's no way. If he wants to act infantile, he can go ahead and be that way- honestly, I don't even know how he was ever married. He's irresponsible and reckless- a very bad combination. You mix that with his childish behavior and you get a disaster waiting to happen."

"But-"

"That's all I have to say about it guys. I think you three better quit gossiping and go back to work. That's what you're getting paid to do- not worry about Jane."

"But we need him!" Rigsby whined. The other two nodded in agreement.

Lisbon straightened herself up in her seat, quite disgusted by their helplessness and reliance on Jane. "We don't need him. We're a perfectly good team. Yes, sure, Jane might be able to help us out with our cases; but that is not all there is to our work. We are officers of the law, and we should be committed to putting in those extra hours and giving that much more of ourselves to protect the citizens. You all should be ashamed of yourselves- you've all become lazy, because you're used to making Jane do your work for you! You all need to push yourselves more and start picking up the slack!" Lisbon griped. The three team members glanced at each other, looking defeated.

"Rigsby, Cho- I want you both to start filing these papers. Van Pelt, you need to start doing more research on the case we're working on right now. What are you waiting for? Go on!" The team hesitated and then left in haste. Teresa watched them leave, and clicked her tongue, resting back into her chair with a sigh; rubbing her temple with her right hand as she felt a tension headache coming on. Extremely frustrated, Lisbon began straightening her desk items to allow herself some more breathing room. At least if she couldn't have order within her team, she would have an orderly desk.


Lunch time had come, and it was the time when the sunshine streamed through the window most. The light washed over Patrick Jane's sleeping form, making him look golden, lying there with his hand resting on his stomach that was slowly rising and falling. He was disheveled in appearance. A short, scruffy beard had formed on his chin, and his curls were knotted and loosely hanging around his face. A wrinkled jacket lay crumpled up on the chair by the dirty window and a broken glass jug he had been using for water lay on the floor amidst the mess.

Opening his eyes, Patrick Jane was momentarily lost as he had been dreaming he was else-where. He sat up with a groan as he realized where he was, feeling a tad disoriented. Patrick wasn't sure what time it was, having no watch, but he guessed it was around eleven in the morning. He stretched, and yawned loudly, his eyes working their way over his "work".

Unpleasant memory flooded back to him.

Day and night for the past two weeks, he'd been immersed in Red John. Fabrications, suspicions, tangled plots all were etched into his mind like the scribbles on his notebook paper. It appeared as if someone crazy had written half of the pages that little black book now contained. There were discarded plates lying on some of the unused boxes in the corner that concealed the piece of floor where he had hidden his hand gun- a gift from Mr. Winters from the case he had done- he had gotten revenge on his wife's murderer and had given the gun to Jane as a thank you present for getting the facts to get him less than a prison sentence for committing a crime that had already taken place.

The question had been on Jane's mind since he started this quest to hunt down the serial killer… What would Jane do when he faced Red John for real? Would he actually be able to kill this man? This strange man who at the same time, taken away his will to live and given him something to live for? What would killing Red John mean? Would it give him peace or just emptiness? Would it make anything better? Would it actually change anything? Jane's whole life was so miserable and disgraceful that Patrick had to convince himself that there was another reason for him to live beside from avenging the man who had led to his family's death. Maybe he was just as bad as Red John was… Tyger, Tyger…

Patrick Jane rubbed his face with his hands. How had he gotten trapped in this exquisite trap, this web that Red John had cleverly woven? How would he ever solve the case? Red John had the upper-hand, he always had the upper-hand, and yet Jane was foolish enough to believe at one time that he hadn't. Red John had the power of anonymity, where as Jane had long ago sold his image away to the media, and this was his downfall.

Tyger, Tyger, Burning Bright, in the forests of the night…

What Immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?

The words had been resonating in Jane's mind since he had heard them. Was there anything to be taken away from it, with the exception that Red John had pointed him out to be his equal? Was what he was doing a form of love? Red John had saved him once. What did it all mean? Had he unknowingly met Red John in his past? Jane racked his brains, but alas, there came no answer to his question. Red John could be anyone. Jane pushed himself up, feeling extremely anxious. He began at once pacing.

Jane's control was slowly escaping him and it looked like it was not going to be returned to him. Red John was cleverly controlling him. Who was he to deny that he was completely powerless to his traps- one wrong move could mean the downfall of every last thing that he cared about. Jane had been powerless and vulnerable once, and he vowed to himself never to be powerless again, and yet now he found himself trapped as if in a check mate in a game of chess.

Crunch.

Jane removed his foot to look down at what he had trodden upon. A shard of glass lay on the ground at Jane's feet from the broken jug. He stopped, staring at the glass for several moments, before bending down and taking it up in his hands, turning it around and around, fascinated by its sharp edges.

Jane began thinking about how simple it would be to pierce his own hand with the glass…the blood would roll down his wrists with a gasp of pain, gently and silently with his quick inhale of breath, dripping to the floor… Jane had experienced this feeling before, the odd sense of pleasure he received by harming himself. He had first begun this practice in his teen years- when his father had forced him into the life of con business. So absorbed in money and gambling as his father was, that when he had offered Jane the hundred dollars, he hadn't even noticed the bandage on Jane's left hand. It gave him a perverse satisfaction to think of the pain… The relief it had given him… the control of his own pain-but it was only a temporary release, an addiction to solve his troubled thoughts. He had worked through it with Angela's help. But after he didn't have self masochism to rely on anymore, he shifted his addiction to sadist methods of trickery and deceit. In effect, He had become his father. The father who had created his own self-loathing and guilt that had caused him to punish himself.

After his family died and he had been placed into the institution, he had begun cutting again. While the orderly wasn't looking, he would swipe the razor used to shave the patients. He would wait until that cart rattled off down the hall before placing the blade in his hand and squeezing his fist close. He then proceeded to draw the face on the wall with his own blood; he was as good as Red John wasn't he? He had caused the death of his family because of his trickery and that was why he did it- to punish himself and to remind himself that he was still human. He felt nothing, he felt dead… but pain… and pain meant that you were alive…

There was a tapping on the door, and Jane started, snapping out of his bizarre thoughts and into reality. He stared at the glass in his hands…What was he thinking?

"Jane?" Lisbon's voice rang out distantly behind the door. Jane's eyes were still on the glass shard, staring at his own green eyes reflected back at him.

"Jane?" She said louder.

Bang, bang, bang!

"I know you're in there!"

Distracted, Jane moved to the table, setting the glass piece down slowly and delicately as if it were some sacred object. As soon as he released the glass, the entrancing spell it had over him was instantly broken and he moved back from it as if frightened of it and its odd possession over him.

Bang, bang, bang, bang!

"Open the door Jane, I swear to god, if you-"

Jane then quickly moved over to the door and opened it. Lisbon's mouth was open and her words trailed away. "It was open." Jane said absently as he turned to go back into his room and sit down on his makeshift bed.

Teresa Lisbon closed her mouth and put her extended hand she'd been pounding the door with in her pant pocket. She walked inside the room, looking around at the mess. Jane glanced up at her critical expression, his mentalism tricks of observing her facial movements and body language coming back to him automatically from continued practice over the years. Jane smiled to himself, suddenly thinking of his wife who had been so irritated by his constant 'psychic readings'. She would roll her eyes and flick her head so, that her auburn locks would fall back and out of her eyes, where it would cascade often. She would look at him with a mixture of annoyance and adoration, and ask, "Can't you turn it off?" Jane would give her a devious smile, and a smile would slowly creep onto her face; the small dimples appearing as she'd tilt her head so slightly examining him in a mysterious way. She would then raise an eyebrow and shake her head, giving him an expectant look as she extended her hand out toward his…

"Are you alright?" Lisbon asked awkwardly.

Angela's face vanished, replaced by the dusty, sun-filled room. Lisbon's figure stood before him, her hip out, feet planted firmly beneath her as she looked at him from under her bangs a worried glimmer in her eyes.

Jane realized he had been day-dreaming and he must have looked quite spaced out. "Oh- uh… Yeah." He clasped his hands in front of him.

Lisbon looked furious with herself for even coming up to the attic room and Jane sat there, watching her, waiting for her to state her business. He wasn't about to make her feel comfortable after their last exchange of words. Jane thought to himself that if she was there to apologize than she ought to get to it. It was only a matter of time before she came crawling back asking for his help. The silence was deafening and the floor creaked as Lisbon shifted her weight uncomfortably. Jane said nothing but merely watched her closely as millions of small dust mites danced in the sunlight around her, that beamed in through the window covering her like a spot light.

Lisbon tossed her head rather like a subtle version of a frustrated horse. "You know, there's probably black mold up here or something- it's not healthy for you to be up here all the time."

Jane cracked a slight smile, suddenly amused by her and her ways to break the serious silence. "Black mold? Really? That's how you're going to try to get me to come downstairs and help you out with your cases? To act as if you're concerned about my health- that's a pretty weak alibi… for a cop."

Lisbon looked as if she was trying to fight smiling or laughing, one or the other, and not succeeding. "Damn it Jane, you're such a pain-in-the-ass. Have I ever told you that?" She exclaimed. "I don't even know why I'm up here."

"I do." Jane replied. "Because you need me."

Lisbon rolled her large eyes in her usual fashion. "Alright, so I'll admit that you do add a certain aspect to the team that-" Using her hand she carved the air, elaborating her meaning.

Jane raised his eyebrows. "Aspect?"

"Yes, aspect."

"I think you mean asset."

"No, I mean ass."

"But you still need me."

"Shut up Jane. Just…shut up. And come downstairs."


A/N:

TBC?

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