I know, I know, it's been a very long time, but I do have exams at the moment, and I really should be studying. Nevertheless, this week's episode inspired me. Plus, I already had it written, I just had to edit it. Anyway, please enjoy and I'll try to update as fast as possible. Also, thank you so much to all of the kind people who reviewed - they're really really appreciated on this end.

-Seven x x

A Partnership Broken

Irene Manning, aka Penny Lachney, aka whoever the hell else she had pretended to be in her lifespan, had absolutely no expression. I mean absolutely none. I wondered briefly if she had been injected with enough botox to freeze a rhino, because she did not even blink when I entered. I waited until she had, just to check that she was still alive, before sitting down across from her and speaking.

"My name is Agent Lisbon, do you know why you're here?"

"My client wishes to review the evidence implicating her before proceeding with this interview." The pompous, charcoal grey pant suit lawyer with a degree from Harvard told me, and I was very close to disembowling that pompous, charcoal grey pant suit lawyer with a degree from Harvard, but Rigsby spoke instead.

"We have new evidence against your client." Yeah, circumstantial evidence. "And we are willing to overlook the small matter of your client not having a birth certificate if she cooperates fully with out investigation." I hate making deals with murderers - the only thing that comforted me here was knowing that she would go down for Red John's crimes, no matter what deal she took. Irene Manning was destined to live out her rest in a dingy jail cell with a large lesbianic cellmate called Marge.

"State your evidence." Manning barked, sounding like a drill seargent. Rigsby leaned back, which was my cue to take control, producing pictures from the files which I had brought in with me. They were all of the Red John victims, and a small, barely controllable anger overcame me as Manning watched with calm, as so many people were set down, their entire lives represented as a single piece of paper. All those people, who died because of her.

And still her expression didn't change.

"You have undeniably definitive connections with these six victims of the serial killer Red John."

"Red John has sixteen victims." Manning clipped, in a self important tone. "That's only six, therefore your 'evidence' inconsequential unless I have a connection to the rest of the victims." Oh, she did not just use finger quotes when talking about my evidence.

"Rigsby, does she look like she's cooperating?" I asked, pretending that I was deep in thought, and Rigsby stretched slightly in his chair, flexing his large arms and smirking slightly.

"Nope boss, she don't look like she's cooperating." I nodded, shrugging, and leaning back in my own seat, locking eyes with Manning.

"That's what I thought too-"

"Fine!" Manning leaned forwards, placing her elbows on the pictures, and I felt that anger again at her lack of respect. "What do you want to know? Am I Red John? No."

"I want to know if you killed them." A normal person - an innocent person, would have looked confused. But I knew that she was involved by the unmistakeable 'oh shit' expression which took over her face. There was no innocence there - just someone who was looking to save her own ass.

"I thought that you said Red John killed them." Sure, she was good at this game, but I was better. Leaning forwards, being extremely careful to keep my expression as empty and cool as hers and not to break eye contact, I copied her movements, my own elbows placed between two of the photos which covered the entire interrogation table.

"Red John is two people." I ignored the worried look that Rigsby shot me, but I continued regardless. Jane was always right, whether I liked it or not. Doubting him was a stupid thing to do, especially so late in the game. "And to put it frankly, we think that you're one of them." With every passing second, I becam emore and more convinced that Jane was in fact right, and that I was making the right call.

"Because I used to be in contact with a couple of his victims?" There was a certain uneasiness about her tone, an undercurrent which I nearly missed which told me that I was using all of the right words, and pressing all of the right buttons. Hell, I might not be as psychic as Jane, but I've worked as an agent long enough to know all of the dirty secrets of human behaviour. "You need a little more than that, don't you?"

"Yes, she does." The pompous, charcoal grey pant suit lawyer with a degree from Harvard said, pointedly, and I recieved the distinct feeling that she was not pleased with my probing without evidence. She was getting antsy though - I could tell by the nervous twitch in her knee which she tried so hard to hide that it was more obvious than any movement would have been to start with.

Dear God. Jane really was rubbing off on me.

"I have it though." I took out the crime scene photos of the victims, and set them beneath their other photos, as a grim reminder of how they died. There was overlap, because the entire table was taken up. "You don't seem too affected by these images." Which possibly meant that she felt no remorse about her actions, unless she was really good at hiding it. That, or she had seen them before.

"I've seen worse." Manning said, staring straight at me as if staring into my brain with her ice cold stare. "I watch crime programmes on tv." She explained, with a tiny self confident smirk plastered on her face, as if there was some inside joke she knew that I wouldn't get.

"These six victims died differently than the others. There were small details which could only be described as personal. It won't just be coincidence that you knew these six people. Or that quite soon after they died, you disappeared, or moved away. You've changed your name five times, Penny, but we have the paper trails, and I can tell you that they will stand up in court." Visibly discouraged, Manning leaned back on the back two legs of her chair, and dragged a defiant, rebellious smirk onto her face.

"So what's your theory then?" She leered, trying to look tough. But she was slipping. There was a reason that Zelphino was the genius in the outfit - she was just the muscle. If that wasn't an advert for woman's rights in sport, I don't know what is. "I killed those people and John killed the rest?"

"No." I tried to keep my expression unreadable, though I wanted to leap with joy. "We think that you do the killing, and John does the planning and coverup." The pronounced way I said 'John' made her eyes flit down slightly, as she remembered with horror what I had tricked her into admitting.

"Yes, Red John." She bluffed, regaining her composure fast. "But you're wrong-"

"No, I'm not wrong." I contradicted, forcefully, and she fell silent, visibly cursing herself. "I'm right and we have enough evidence to pin the whole thing down on you." I only half lied, ignoring her lawyer. I could sense that my statement made Rigsby nervous, but he remained silent all the same. He was merely here for physical intimidation - something which five foot four myself could not achieve on my own.

Manning stared at the table, thinking, though I knew that she would take the deal I had basically just offered her. Not that it was much of a deal. She would pin as much down as she could on Zelphino, but she was still going away for a very long time. Unless she did something stupid and pleaded insanity.

"I want to make a deal." Oh, here we go. Pompous, charcoal grey pant suit lawyer with a degree from Harvard eyed her client nervously.

"State your terms." I said, coldly, ignoring the protest from Jane in my ear.

"I'll give you evidence implicating John Zelphino if I am charged only for the fraud." Did she seriously think that I was going to go for that? I smiled, graciously, lulling her into a false sense of security.

"No deal." I had what I wanted now anyway. The now not so pompous, charcoal grey pant suit lawyer with a degree from Harvard looked like she was about to thud her head off of the tabletop. Was it not covered with pictures of massacurred bodies. Jane fell silent in my earpiece, realising what I had been doing, and Rigsby started to clear the pictures of Red John's victims off of the table, calmly as ever. We were winning for the moment. "But," I continued. "if you don't give me the evidence implicating John Zelphino, you will be charged with the murders and the fraud." And whatever the hell else we can find on you.

"I have no evidence-"

"You just said that you did." Manning glared at me, and if looks could kill, there would be a Lisbon shaped pile of dust on my seat.

"I'll give you the damn proof." She growled, knowing that she had been defeated. "But I want protection." She was very serious when she looked at me in that moment, and I understood exactly why. John Zelphino scared her - a lot. Enough to brave the system to be safe from him.

If that was enough.

"I can get you protection. But if your evidence is solid enough, Zelphino will be under out control. He won't be able to hurt anyone." If that wasn't incentive to give us some damn solid evidence, I don't know what is.

"I will give my testimony, every single bank transaction between us and the clients, and my plans." She said quietly. It clearly hurt her to do this, and I realised that she believed in Zelphino. He was her mentor, her lover and her role model. And now, after how well he had taken care of her, a teenage with a criminal record on the streets of Sacremento, she was selling him out to the cops.

"Plans of what?" I almost pitied her.

"You'll understand what went down better than we thought anyone would." She admitted, and I wondered if she was intentionally evading my question, in effort to procrastinate. "John made the plans, then I followed them to the letter. Like with the Kolinsky man - he gave me a plan, and preknotted ropes, and exact instructions, so it would look like a woman couldn't hoist him up in the air like I did. I kept all of the plans which I'd carried out, and those which were cancelled, or changed." As souvenirs, like all serial killers did.

My momentary sympathy for her dissapated as quickly as it had manifested.

"Where are they?" Rigsby was reading with his pen and notepad, though it was unlikely we were going to forget this location anytime soon.

"I have a part-time job at a hospital - St. Alvarea. The nurse staff lockers are on the third floor. I keep the plans in locker 261." Reaching into her shirt, she withdrew a silver chain, which had an old, battered looking key linked into it. "This is the key."

I reached over and took the key, wordlessly. Manning was a broken woman now - there was nothing more to worry about. She would tell us anything we asked because she had betrayed the man she loved and believed in. She had nothing left to believe in because she had never learned to believe in herself.

The whole department helped to go over the plans of the Red John murders. Everything that they depicted was identical to the case files. Both disgusted and intrigued, my team pored over the designs, along with a couple of other people from other departments, Joe among them. Since I felt bad for how I'd been treating him, I gave him a pat on the back and a smile, to show him that we really did appreciate his work. Ends up that a pretty face does come in useful sometimes.

I glanced down to some of the plans, littering the table, encased in their evidence bags. What had already been identified as Manning's fingerprints were smudged on the papers, sometimes even in blood. Zelphino's, in ink.

Jane was on his couch, staring through the clear evidence bag at a set of plans. Which ones, I knew before I even sat down beside him.

"Hey Jane." I said, quietly, but he didn't reply. "Listen, I'm sorry about what I said earlier. I'm sorry about pretty much everything that I've said to you in the last few days." He still did not reply. "And I was wondering if you wanted to be there when I tell Zelphino that he's officially fucked." Jane raised his eyebrows in my direction: his first response in the entire exchange.

"You'll willingly let me in the same room as him?" He sounded doubtful.

"Oh, there's a code." I assured him. "You stay in your seat. You don't antagonise, or wind up the suspect and you most certainly do not speak unless spoken to." I laid out. And this was just part of the code.

"Lisbon, Lisbon, Lisbon..." He sighed, giving me a tiny inch of what was usually a brilliant smile. "You know that I've never been that good with rules." I had to smile at his charm, as I always did. "But you don't have to do this because you feel sorry for me." Jane siad, turning his gaze back to the plan in his hands.

"Jane, I'm not doing this because I feel sorry for you." I snapped, and I obviously convinced him that I was telling the truth, because the gaze that he shot me was both surprised and guilty. "I am doing this because there are plans for five more murders that we have no intelligence on. These are the plans that have been carried out. We don't have the entire story, but we'll get it. And since you're the best at wheedling confessions out of people, I thought that maybe you'd come in useful." Jane sighed.

"I suppose I am." From the looks of it, he took no joy from that anymore. I smiled a little in reassurance.

"We should go now." I began to stand up, but he grabbed my arm and pulled me back down.

"Do you love me?"

"Pardon?" It's fair to say that I wasn't expecting that.

"Do you love me?" Slower and clearer, he asked again. "Don't worry, no one is listening." He added, as I subconsciously glanced around to see if there was anyone else nearby. I opened my mouth, then closed it again.

"Jane..." He stared at me intently, and cocked his head to the side like a curious Golden Retriever puppy. "I don't know." I admitted, and with truth. "I just don't know right now. I mean, I couldn't bear if..." I broke eye contact, knowing that he understood what I meant.

He understood that I couldn't love a murderer.

"We'll talk about it later, okay?" Nodding slowly in agreement with me, he turned his gaze back to the paper in his hands, before clearly making a decision, and steeling himself as he stood, stretching in an almost normal Jane fashion.

"Yeah." He agreed, shooting me one of those brilliant smiles which I was beginning to miss. "Now we need to go tell Zelphino that he's officially fucked."