Firstly, let me say how grateful I am for all these reviews; I'm sorry I couldn't reply to all of you personally, I haven't had time this week. Anyway, this one's set a week after Seph learns that Jane isn't his Dad. I hope you like it!

Disclaimer: Do you think, if I changed my name to Bruno Heller, that'd work?


September 6th (One Week Later)

Grace typed idly on her computer, then adjusted her seat once, twice, pulled her hair into a ponytail, tidied her desk and then, when she had so evidently run out of things to do, stood and reached for her coffee mug, bound for the CBI kitchen. But before she could take so much as a step, Rigsby's gentle hands began to unpick her fingers from the handle and he told her softly, 'No more coffee.'

'But…'

'Grace, if you have any more caffeine you're going to start bouncing off the walls.' She pouted at him for a moment and then sighed, letting him take the mug and set it back down on her desk. When he turned back to her, there were undertones of sadness sweeping across her face and he stated simply, 'you miss them already.'

'A little,' she said and when he raised his eyebrow she admitted, 'a lot. They're my babies, Wayne, of course I miss them.' Grace had returned to work that morning, her maternity leave over and the twins settling in with their new nanny.

'Hey,' Rigsby squeezed her hand comfortingly, 'they're mine too, remember?'

'Yeah, but you weren't with them all day every day for ten months…' she took a deep breath. 'It's just weird, that's all, not having them here with me. I feel a bit incomplete.' Her eyes met his and he must have spied a certain fragility in them because he pulled her to him then, resting his chin on the top of her head.

'It'll be fine,' he told her. 'This is just an adjustment period you're going through, it'll get better.'

'I know,' she sighed again, and they were unmoving for a few seconds before she pulled back, just far enough to be able to kiss him lightly on the lips.

'Watch it, Grace,' Lisbon warned from the doorway, all too aware that they had to be so very careful of what they did at work. A dominant part of the agreement they'd fought so hard for, the one that kept them working together, was the promise that there would be absolutely no intimacy in the workplace like there was now.

'Sorry, Boss,' Grace smiled sheepishly, and she might once have stalked off with a warning on her face Lisbon now smiled back. She really didn't expect them to stand here in the bullpen and act like strangers. Love didn't let you do that. After all, she'd been secretly watching their exchange for several minutes (Jane would scold her if he saw her; she really shouldn't be standing up for any length of time, since Emma was only a week away) and could have stopped it at any point but was too busy enviously wondering what it would be like to be part of such a family, one with no rough edges or dark secrets to speak of. Normalcy, simplicity. Happiness. She sighed, and was about to turn away from the bullpen when she felt her cell phone vibrate against her leg, and pulled it from her pocket.

'Lisbon,' she answered.

'Teresa, hi, it's Alana.' And when no chords were struck in her mind, the voice added, 'Seph's school principal?'

'Oh, right,' Lisbon said quickly, 'of course.' And as Alana-Mrs Howard, she remembered-kept talking, she heard footsteps behind her and Jane traipsed past, absentmindedly stirring his tea. But his eyes then latched onto hers, and his expression darkened in accordance with her own as she listened.

'Okay,' she said eventually, because she could think of nothing better to say. 'I'll be there soon.' Hanging up, she slowly returned the phone to her pocket, then met Jane's eye. 'Seph was in a fight,' she announced dazedly. 'He broke a boy's nose. The school's suspended him for the rest of today and tomorrow.'

'What?' Jane asked, but it wasn't a question so much as evidence of his disbelief, an emotion that currently ran through her as well. Despite having law enforcement officers for parents, she'd never once seen Seph become physically violent. He'd never been that type of kid, and it hurt her to think that he might be turning into one.

'I'll be back in twenty minutes,' she announced, 'I have to go get him.'

'You shouldn't be driving, Reese,' he told her. But the understanding and acceptance between them was clear, as clear as if one of them had said it out loud for all the world to hear. If he pulled up at the school instead of her, Seph would not get in the car. The boy hadn't uttered a single word to him all week, hadn't once glanced in his direction or mentioned him in conversations with Lisbon: it was almost as if Jane no longer existed. And it broke her heart each and every time Jane looked at his son, his son, and couldn't get a response or even acknowledgement. It was worse than anger, a thousand times worse, and the sadness that Jane was permanently draped in radiated from his eyes now, following her as she headed slowly to her office for her keys.

Ten minutes later, she'd finally managed to shake off the last of his misery as she pulled up out the front of the school. Seph was already sitting out on the steps, his head buried in his knees, his backpack beside him and a middle-aged woman waiting with him who Lisbon faintly remembered to be Alana Howard. The woman heard the sound of her car door, glanced up and tapped Seph gently on the shoulder: wordlessly, he reached for his backpack and trudged darkly to the car.

'I'm so sorry for all this,' she offered pathetically, closing the passenger door for him and then crossing her arms. 'Is the other boy okay?'

'Alex is at the hospital as we speak,' Alana answered, 'but it's nothing too serious. It's a real shame, though; today's his birthday. His Dad brought in a cake and everything.'

And Lisbon's stomach lurched in realisation as Seph's uncharacteristic violence fell into perfect clarity, into reasons of jealousy and sadness that she understood very well. It was never fair or clear, why the world gave some people perfect lives and others only glimpses at such, and she didn't expect Seph to comprehend or accept it just yet. God knew it had taken her a very long time to do so. 'Okay, thanks,' she managed to smile, and as Alana turned and retreated back up the steps Lisbon braced herself for the coldness that would certainly choke her the moment she opened her door.

Seph stared ahead with nothing in his eyes, no reaction at all as the engine crackled into life and the radio flickered on, if only for a moment before she decided against it. They sat in a silence ten minutes long in theory, but in reality ten years, and made even more unbearable by the balance of Lisbon's need to speak against her fear of getting angry at him. In her mind she saw Jane, his life emptied of light within the space of a week, but to her right she saw her son, who no longer saw any light at all either. Who to blame? They should never have lied to him in the first place. There shouldn't have been any lie to begin with. She shouldn't have been raped.

Red John turned out to be a very easy person to blame, so she did that.

But when she parked in the CBI parking lot and glanced over, she suddenly couldn't find such accusations in her anymore, couldn't see any point in holding someone responsible for the pain ravaging the two people she cared about most. She didn't care whose fault it was. She just wanted it all to stop.

'Seph, honey,' she began, trying to be gentle, 'I know why you hit Alex, I do, but you can't just go around hitting all the boys who have Dads.'

'Why not?' His question was quiet and brimming with restrained anger, but Lisbon was only surprised that she'd got a reaction at all.

'Because they don't deserve it. They've done nothing wrong.' He didn't reply, only sank back down into his dark silence, and suddenly all of Lisbon's fury came rushing back to meet her. It was an emotion she tried desperately to keep out of her voice. 'Look, I know you're only six and you've been through a lot, but I have to talk to you like you're a grown-up because there isn't any other way to say it. Do you have any idea how much you're hurting your Dad by not talking to him?'

'He's not my…'

'Yes, he is. He's more your Dad than anyone else in the whole world, and you have no idea how much he's given up for you. How much he's done.'

'What's he done, then, Mom?' Seph shouted, his eyes ablaze with more hatred than a six-year-old should ever possess. 'What's he given up?'

And she told him.


Six Years Ago.

'You bastard, don't you dare touch him!' she shrieked, lunging forward, but her tied hands and ankles rendered her only sideways on the floor.

'No, no, Teresa,' Red John told her calmly. 'You have it all wrong. Of the two of us, I believe it's actually Joseph here who's the bastard. Besides,' he smiled, 'doesn't every man have the right to hold his son?'

From where she'd fallen, the words hit her back and her mind launched into overdrive, frantic, desperate, searching for some sort of plan. It was a search that failed miserably yet again, the terror pulsing through her leaving her blind to any sort of logic, and she could find the composure only to pull herself into a sitting position. But the poise only held for a moment before she looked up and saw her tiny, innocent newborn in the hands of a murderer, and her apartment blurred as her vision whitened in rage.

'He's got your eyes, you know,' Red John commented, brushing his finger idly over Seph's brow, making her want to vomit. 'And you do have such beautiful eyes: as a matter of fact, Teresa, you're a very striking woman in general. It seems a shame that little Joseph has to have any of me in him at all.'

'You're Goddamn right,' she snarled but he didn't hear her, still caught on the path of his own thoughts.

'And yet he does,' he continued. 'He has my DNA. Quite the useful tool in tracking down criminals these days, isn't it? Very dangerous, for a, shall we say, delinquent like myself to leave such a trail behind. Which is why, regretfully, I cannot.' The flick of his knife gleamed against the light, only a millisecond before Lisbon began to scream: no, no, he couldn't do this, couldn't take away Seph…couldn't rip from her the most perfect thing she had in the world…

'You so much as draw blood and I will kill you where you stand.' The voice was coated in so much coldness that it was at first unrecognisable, but then the familiarity of its pitch struck a chord and she turned her head toward the sound, trying to blink her way through her tears, eventually glimpsing the shape of a figure standing in front of her. She couldn't see him clearly but his presence felt, to her, heroic, and his words so brave that she knew it couldn't be anyone but Jane.

Red John sighed, and as her tears slowly dried up she saw him look mildly irritated by the interruption, lowering the knife, and her heart started beating again. She hadn't the courage to glance up at Jane but saw the glint from his knife, shining in a silence dented only by Seph's high cries, a sound which stained her shirt with the aching breast milk seeping through. 'I suppose I'll have to deal with you first then, Mr Jane,' he announced, and gently lowered Seph to the kitchen table. Lisbon cried out in relief and the sound was weak, strangled. 'How unfortunate for you, however that you brought along a knife: if you'd had a gun I might very well be dead already. Now I guess you'll have to come over here to kill me, and how awful would it be if, whilst you were doing that, my hand just…slipped.' The hand grasping his knife hovered over Seph's throat, and she screamed again. 'So I suppose…you have a choice to make. And a very important one, might I add.'

Despite her fear and rage and numbness, Lisbon saw clearly the decision wavering before Jane. If he chose his revenge, there was a chance Seph could be killed (and violent panic reared its head at the thought) but if he didn't leap on this chance at retribution then he might never again get the same chance. It was a crossroad she had never wanted him to face, and now that he was at it she drooped her head in heartbroken acceptance, knowing deep down that he would always choose his old family over his new, adopted one. And so her nails dug into the rope binding her wrists at her back and she sawed with all the strength she had; maybe, if she could get herself free, she could snatch Seph away before either man could make his move, and then she'd run. It was a foolish plan, but it was her-their-only hope.

Or so she thought.

Until suddenly, rather than move forward like his dark, vindictive prophecy dictated, Jane took a measured step backward until his leg was only an inch or so from the side of her head. In slow, numb disbelief, she leant against him as if making sure he was really there, and his raging warmth took all of a second to become her lifeline. If he didn't know what to do in such a situation, then no-one did, and this one thought calmed her enough to realise the reasoning in his decision. Of course there'd be another chance to get his revenge, a scene without a week-old-baby at risk, just them and their hatred. But there would never be another Seph.

Red John sighed again, this time not in annoyance but almost repentance. 'That's too bad,' he said. 'Now I have to kill all of you.'

The gunshot was so sudden and so unexpected that it took a moment to even register, and another moment after that to link the sound to the action. It wasn't until Red John's knife clattered to the floor, and his body not long after, that she allowed herself to believe that it had happened, and she glanced up in insensibility as Cho stepped calmly from the shadows of her apartment, his gun still raised. And then Jane was kneeling down in front of her, taking her face in his shaking hands, asking her something she didn't hear, and she was crying again, the sobs this time uncontrollable, and waves of dizzying relief racking her entire body. He reached around her to untie her wrists, her face pressing into his shoulder: the moment she was free, her arms locked around his neck and he pulled her up strongly onto unreliable legs. Step by step, she learnt to walk again and almost threw herself at the table, taking a bawling Seph into her arms, murmuring things she didn't even understand, kissing him everywhere there was skin.

'He's dead,' Cho announced, drawing his fingers back from the wrist which had once held a knife, standing to avoid the rapidly pooling blood. 'Red John is dead.' The sentence carried such a definite weight with it that it almost forced her gaze to Jane, aware of how long he had been waiting for that sentence but on more self-serving terms. And his expression was lined with many things, thousands of undefinable layers, but two emotions which she didn't glimpse were the frustration and the rage that she would expect to be almost routine in a result like this: after all, there had been a death but no vengeance. And then it hit her, brutally, leaving her breathless. Jane had brought Cho with him. He'd known from the very first moment that he wouldn't be the one to kill Red John.

'You…you gave it up for us.' He turned wearily toward her and she met his gaze in astonishment. Slowly, she said, 'You chose us over your revenge.'

He smiled.


Present Day.

As Lisbon's words dwindled away, a brief silence settled in and she watched Seph's face as the anger, slowly but surely, evaporated. Like Jane had, she'd skimmed over the more violent details and yet some part of her wondered bleakly how much more her poor little son could absorb before it was all too much. It wasn't fair, it really wasn't.

'Do you see now, honey?' Her voice was strangely serene. 'Your Dad might not be your real father, but that doesn't mean he's not your Dad. Because there's a big difference.'

'Kay,' he muttered, looking almost deflated beneath his seatbelt, but there was no hint of protest and she took that as a good sign. She opened her car door and moment later Seph did the same, leaving his backpack in the car, his face filled with many things but it wasn't until they were standing in the elevator that he said, 'Mom?'

'Yeah, Seph.'

'Sorry I hit Alex.'

'That's alright. Just don't do it again, okay? School is no place for violence.'

'What if I join the CBI like you and Dad and we have to chase a man through a school, can I use violence then?'

'That depends; what did he do?'

'He killed three people. No, four. And they were lawyers.'

'Well, then, I think you're going to have to be violent with him.' Seph grinned in triumph and Lisbon inwardly chided herself for not stamping out the aggression entirely from his mind. But she didn't miss his returning to calling Jane 'Dad' or the smile she hadn't seen for a week, and so couldn't quite find it in her to be strict, only relieved.

Jane was lying on his couch with his eyes closed, but Lisbon knew all too well that he wasn't asleep; after all, the nights weren't half as dark for him anymore and he slept then. She placed a hand gently at Seph's back and he gazed up at her, nervous; she smiled in comfort, and he slowly made his way to the couch. Jane noticed him after a moment and sat up, his face covered in surprise. They shared a conversation so private and quiet that Lisbon could only hear murmurings, but she didn't creep closer, knowing whatever they were saying was to be kept by them only; at her desk almost in front of her Grace watched the proceedings too with a gentle smile. A moment later, Seph stepped forward and Jane wrapped his arms gently around him, the little boy's arms snaking around his neck, and as Jane met her gaze through watery eyes he mouthed, 'thank you.' She smiled, overcome by a rush of overwhelming pride and affection for the two on the couch.

But then, all of a sudden, she felt something snap inside her and a second later moisture made its slow way down her thigh; her legs wobbly-so wobbly-with the weight of her stomach, she reached for the top of Grace's chair to steady herself, and the redhead glanced at her.

'You okay, Boss?' she asked, concerned. But Lisbon's eyes searched only for Jane's, and the happiness on his face faded to immediate anticipation. Seph disentangled himself, turned, then said, 'Mom, what's wrong?'

'As nice as all this is,' she announced shakily, 'I think…I think my water just broke.'


Thanks for reading, please review!

TAJ :)