Lisbon went to work on Monday in an extraordinarily good mood. She'd had a lovely weekend. She'd had her last full day in court on Friday—she didn't have to go back for another two weeks, and that appointment was only a single hearing, so she wouldn't even have to be there all day. Jane had taken her dancing on Saturday to celebrate her release.

Jane was a really good dancer.

Today, Monday, would be her first full day back in the office since they caught Russo. Lisbon was looking forward to resuming her usual duties. She had some paperwork to catch up on, but she was hopeful that she might actually get to go out into the field that day. After all, the team might catch a case. Not that she was hoping someone would get murdered, or anything. Still, the sun was shining and there was a nice breeze—it was a beautiful day to catch a killer.

Lisbon took a sip of her coffee and sighed in contentment. Jane had handed her a thermos of the stuff on her way out the door to meet Cho for their training session so she would have some to drink when they finished. He still wouldn't let her go back to Marie's, what with the whole history of poisoned beverages thing, and this was his idea of compromise. She pointed out quite reasonably that there was no one there who wanted to poison her anymore, but Jane proved intractable on this point. To make up for it, he had acquired an extremely fancy coffee maker for his new place and promised to keep her well supplied with what he called 'the vile stuff.' By the end of the weekend, he had mastered all its complicated settings and now made coffee to rival that of any barista Lisbon had ever encountered.

The training session had gone well, too. She'd finally mastered a tricky move Cho had been trying to teach her over the course of their past few training sessions and she was feeling good.

She felt amazingly light. Barring the emergence of new evidence implicating additional followers, the Red John case was officially closed. The team had run down every lead it had—everything was in the lawyers' hands now.

Best of all, the fact that she was finally free of the endless court appearances meant the team could resume its regular caseload. Things could finally start getting back to normal.

She took another sip of her coffee as she got off the elevator, noting with pleasure that Jane had remembered to put extra nutmeg in it for her.

"Morning," she greeted the team brightly as she entered the bullpen. They were all there, including Jane, on his couch as usual.

Grace stared at her. "My God. That glow is reaching supernova levels."

Lisbon ignored her. "Everybody have a good weekend?"

"Cho had a good weekend," Rigsby announced.

Lisbon looked at her second in command, whose countenance became even more inscrutable than usual at Rigsby's words. "Yeah?" she said, intrigued.

"Yeah, it was good," Cho answered without expression.

Rigsby smirked. "He had a date."

"Really? With the writer?" Lisbon asked, delighted. Cho had recently told her he'd met a woman at his book club a couple of weeks ago. Frankly, she had been more surprised to learn Cho belonged to a book club than that he'd met someone there. She was pleased for him, but hadn't realized they'd actually gone out already. He hadn't mentioned that he'd seen her over the weekend when they'd been working out that morning. That wasn't unusual, however, since neither of them were big talkers in the morning. Well, Lisbon wasn't a big talker in the morning. Cho was never a big talker.

"Yeah," he affirmed, still expressionless.

Lisbon beamed. "That's great." Cho deserved to find someone.

"So, what has you in such a good mood today, boss?" Van Pelt said slyly.

"She's happy not to be in court anymore," Jane answered for her from the couch. "And she's relieved that I've appeared to stop scheming to move in with her for the time being."

"Oh?" Van Pelt said, startled. Rigsby and Cho exchanged bemused glances. Apparently no one on the team knew quite what to make of that statement.

"Jane got a new apartment last week," Lisbon informed them, blushing a little at Jane's casual reference to this aspect of their personal relationship in front of the rest of the team, but resigned to the fact that among the team, at least, there were no real secrets about their relationship. She didn't mind, exactly. They were a family, after all. She stopped. Wait. What exactly did that mean, he'd appeared to stop scheming to move in with her?

"Seriously?" Van Pelt said, incredulous.

"Yes," Jane replied. "Obviously, I would have preferred to move in with Lisbon, but she wouldn't let me."

"Can't blame her for that," Cho muttered.

"Yeah, he was so heartbroken he decided to move into a sorority house with seven other women instead," Lisbon said, rolling her eyes.

"Dude," Rigsby said, wide-eyed. He looked torn between envy and fear for Jane's safety. Apparently he didn't think it likely Jane would last long before Lisbon decided to take out her wrath on him over the matter.

"And… you're okay with that?" Van Pelt asked Lisbon dubiously.

Lisbon shrugged. "They're good kids."

It was Jane's turn to roll his eyes. "She thinks having more people around will be good for my emotional health."

Lisbon, who of course had not shared that opinion with Jane, opened her mouth to defend herself, but was saved from having to answer by Van Pelt's phone ringing just at that moment.

It was dispatch, advising them of a body that had been found along the side of the road along Highway 1, just north of San Franscisco. Lisbon went into her office, smiling a little as she saw the beautiful rose Jane had put in the vase to replace the last one. Focusing on the task at hand, she quickly reviewing the details of the case, then ordered the team to get ready to go.

Fifteen minutes later, they were on the road, with the wind fluttering through their hair. Lisbon was at the wheel, with Cho in the front passenger seat and the rest of the team in the back. Lisbon drummed her fingers on the steering wheel along with the beat of the awful music Rigsby had chosen to play, pleased that the team was all together and back to work as usual.

It was going to be a good day.

xxx

Ten hours later, she was back in her office, steaming mad.

How could he do this? How could he?

The case had started out promisingly enough. Jane had taken one look at the body and surmised that the victim was a "lying, cheating waste of oxygen that nobody will miss and the world will be better off without." Lisbon didn't approve of such sentiments, but she had to admit (to herself, at least, if not to Jane) that the job was easier to take sometimes when the victim wasn't someone who was well-liked by his peers, did charity work on the weekends, and whose death left a string of grief-stricken friends and family in its wake.

Jane had been proven right in his assessment within the space of two witness interviews. The victim was a lawyer, and it was clear after talking to a couple of people at his firm that there was no love lost not only between the victim and his colleagues, but also between the victim and his clients. Interviews with several angry clients revealed that the lawyer had been swindling his clients. By lunchtime, the team had a list of over twenty people who would have had very good reason to kill the unfortunate lawyer.

At this point, Jane decided to take it upon himself to prove that the lawyer was not only a swindler, but also a blackmailer. He came up with the brilliant idea of pretending to be the victim's accomplice in the blackmail effort in order to flush out the killer. Accordingly, he sent out a mass email to everyone in the victim's contact list demanding $100,000 for his continued silence on the topic of the original blackmail requests and another hundred grand not to expose them as the killer.

Of course, he didn't bother to tell Lisbon about his bright idea. As a result of this brilliant scheme, Lisbon wound up with a disaster of epic proportions on her hands without the minor courtesy of being forewarned of the axe above her head.

There was a knock on her door. A familiar hand reached around the edge of the door frame, waving a handkerchief as though it were a white flag of surrender.

Lisbon ground her teeth. He thought he was so damn cute. Well, she wasn't in the mood to deal with Jane and his games right now.

Jane popped his head into her office and made a show of looking around. "Is it safe to approach?"

She scowled. "No."

He came in anyway. "Guess I'll just have to take my chances."

"I'm serious, Jane," Lisbon said. "I don't want to talk to you right now. Go. Away."

He leaned against the doorframe. "Still mad, huh?"

"No wonder people say you're a genius," she said acidly. "What was your first clue?"

"I thought you would have cooled off a little by now," Jane said.

"You thought wrong," she snapped. "Now go away, or I won't be held responsible for my actions."

"Come on, Lisbon, you haven't said a word to me in over three hours," Jane wheedled.

"Yeah, well, I'm gonna need at least another three before I'll even be willing to consider speaking to you again, so get lost."

He crossed the room and plunked himself down on her couch. "So on a scale of one to 'Jane, I'm about to hit you with my chair,' how mad are you?"

She glared. "What part of 'go away' is unclear to you?"

"Lisbon, three more hours? That's an eternity. Don't you think you're being just a tad bit harsh?"

"No," she said flatly.

"It wasn't that big of a deal—" he began.

"Not that big of a deal?" Lisbon exploded. "Jane, your stupid plan resulted in a pregnant woman bursting into the firm's board room with a gun!"

"Meh, she was harmless."

"She threatened to shoot a roomful of innocent people!"

"Oh, come on. I'd hardly describe that crowd as 'innocent.' They're board members in a prestigious law firm. I'm sure every last one of them has a few skeletons in their closet."

"So they deserved to have their lives threatened?"

"There was never any real danger," Jane protested. "The woman barely knew which end of the gun to point away from herself."

"That's the most dangerous type of person that could possibly be holding a gun. Do you have any idea how many accidental firearm injuries there are in this country every year?"

Jane ignored this. "The point is, the plan worked."

"She wasn't even the killer!"

"Yes, but the killer confessed in order to get her stop waving the gun around, so technically, the plan was responsible for helping us identify the killer."

"And in your mind, the fact that it endangered the lives of at least fifteen people in the process is irrelevant."

"How was I supposed to know she'd go nuts over a simple letter? She didn't at all seem the type."

"You're right," Lisbon said sarcastically. "It's not like people ever turn to violence out of desperation when they're under pressure from little things like threats of blackmail. As a self-proclaimed 'master of human behavior' who works with criminals for a living, there's absolutely no way you could have anticipated that."

"To be fair, how sure can we really be that it was the blackmail that pushed her over the edge? I mean, the woman was forty-one weeks pregnant. That alone was probably enough to push her to the breaking point."

"Based on the fact that she burst into the board room demanding that the blackmailer reveal themselves or she was going to start shooting, I think we can go out on a limb and assume the blackmail had something to do with it."

"She did back down eventually, though," Jane pointed out.

"Because her water broke!"

"Yes, I meant to tell you I thought you handled that situation most admirably, Lisbon," Jane said, chuckling a bit. "You only looked like you were going to pass out for about three seconds. Then you took a deep breath and were just as cool and efficient as always—sending Rigsby for the car, ordering Cho to handle the arrest of the killer and secure the scene while you and Grace helped the woman out to the car."

"It's not funny, Jane!" Lisbon snapped. "I thought Van Pelt was going to have to deliver that baby in the back of the Suburban! We barely made it to the hospital in time."

"Van Pelt? How did she get stuck with that happy duty? No, wait, I know—you were too busy calming down the mother to be, holding her hand and assuring her everything was going to be all right."

"Everything wasn't all right! I thought I was going to have to arrest her the minute after her baby was born."

"But you kept her calm anyway, and you managed to convince the bigwigs at the firm not to press charges, so everything was all right after all."

"No thanks to you and your terrible plan," Lisbon groused. She'd had a hell of a time convincing the law firm that the woman was merely distraught due to the dual pressures of blackmail and impending motherhood and was really no danger to anyone.

"It was a good plan! If we'd gone about it the usual way, it would have taken us days, possibly weeks to identify all the people who wanted the guy dead, let alone find proof incriminating the actual killer. My way was much more efficient."

"Fast isn't always better, Jane! Do you have any idea of the size of the mess you created that I have to clean up now?" Once she'd managed to turn the ire of the bigwigs away from the new mother, they'd honed their anger squarely in on Jane. Some of the biggest of bigwigs had threatened to go to everyone from the attorney general to the governor if she didn't give them Jane's head on a platter. Plus, they were threatening to sue the CBI for damages for everything from the destruction of company property to emotional distress.

Jane studied her intently. "You're really angry," he observed.

"Have you not been paying attention to this entire conversation?"

"No, I mean, you're angrier than usual," he clarified.

"That's because your plan was even crazier and more asinine than usual!"

He shook his head. "No. It was perhaps a tiny bit over the line, but I've done worse stuff before."

"This is your defense? That you've done worse before?"

"I'm merely observing that your reaction is not in proportion to the scale of my misbehavior."

"What the hell, Jane?" she exploded.

"I think I know what's going on here," he announced.

"What's going on is that you're being an even bigger ass than usual." The bastard hadn't even apologized! Just taken it for granted that she would clean up the mess as usual.

"That's the point. I'm being exactly the same size ass as usual, but you're reacting as though I've done something much worse than my normal standards of behavior."

"Because you have," Lisbon said, goaded beyond endurance. "You can't just blackmail people, Jane!"

"You're not mad about the blackmail," he said shrewdly. "You're mad that I didn't tell you about it."

Unbelievable. "I'm mad about both."

He shook his head. "No. You were expecting me to behave differently on the job because of the change in our personal relationship, and you're angry because I behaved exactly the same."

"That's ridiculous!"

He raised an eyebrow. "Is it?"

"Yes!"

He shrugged. "I'll let you think about that, then."

With that infuriating pronouncement, he left.

Lisbon sat down at her desk, shaking with rage. Of all the smug, arrogant—

How dare he turn this around on her? This was about him and his pathological need to show off, nothing else.

She pulled a complaint form out of her middle drawer and slapped it down onto the desk. She wrenched the cap off her favorite pen and started writing furiously. She stabbed the paper so hard it almost ripped as she filled the page with angry slashes of ink.

She wrote five pages before she started to slow down. She stopped and read over what she'd written. The words 'selfish bastard' and 'insensitive son of a bitch' featured prominently.

She grimaced and fed the report to the shredder, then pulled another form out of her desk so she could start over with the real report. She picked up her pen again without having the first clue how to translate her true anger at Jane into the bland language she usually used to describe his more outrageous stunts in these reports. Usually, no matter how annoyed she was with him, she always managed to fill out the numerous complaint forms over the years with concise, neutral language that laid out the events as they'd occurred without dwelling on the inflammatory remarks offered by the hapless victims of Jane's schemes.

Now, it was different. She couldn't remember a time she'd been more angry with him, and it was clouding her judgment. It was impossible to write neutrally, to stay objective.

Dammit. Was Jane right? Was it true that he was acting just the same as always, and she was the one behaving differently?

She thought about when he'd caused that woman to kill her husband when he'd exposed him as their daughter's killer. Perfect example of Jane not thinking through the consequences of his actions. She'd been pissed as hell when that had happened.

But she hadn't been as angry as this. That scheme of his had resulted in an actual death, but she still hadn't gotten as angry with him then as she was now. Of course, the man who'd been killed was a murderous, incestuous child rapist, so it was hard to argue with Jane when he made the argument that the world was better off without him. Still, a life was a life, and she was in the business of saving lives. She didn't believe it was her right to choose who deserved to die—she was supposed to serve God and preserve justice, not pass judgment. Jane's stunt today paled in comparison to that little escapade, but she'd forgiven him easily enough then. All it had taken was a stupid paper frog and she'd felt herself softening, falling too easily for his charm as well as his tricks.

That was annoying, too. He knew just how to manipulate her into forgiving him once he'd gotten his way and having her on his side was convenient for him again. And it was infuriating that he could still dupe her so easily, after all this time.

That was the trouble, wasn't it? He still felt no compunctions about lying to her, making a fool of her, even after everything they'd been through together. She was an idiot for letting it happen time and time again. That was what stung the worst.

She sighed. Jane was right. She was taking this personally, while to Jane, this was just business as usual.

She slumped in her chair, staring at the stupid complaint form. She couldn't do this. She couldn't pretend that nothing had changed. Everything had changed. And because of that, she was no longer confident she could do her job fairly and effectively.

It was a bitter pill to swallow, but she forced herself to recognize that it was for the best. Something had to give, and apparently, it was going to be her. Again.

She got up and stalked to the door, flinging it open with more force than necessary. Rigsby and Van Pelt immediately cut their eyes away and busied themselves with tasks on their computers, studiously avoiding eye contact. Lisbon scowled. She knew that when she was angry with Jane, the team got caught in the crossfire. Now was a case in point—they hadn't done anything wrong, but they'd all steered clear of her ever since they left the law firm, knowing she was liable to snap at anyone who crossed her path when she was in a mood like this. She was acutely aware it was one of her worst failings as a team leader. No matter what she did, she couldn't seem to cure herself of the fault.

Being reminded of this was not helping her frame of mind. But there was no way today was going to be the day she was somehow going to overcome that particular character flaw, so they would just have to suck it up and deal with it. "Cho," she barked. "My office, now."

Cho said nothing, just got up and followed her into her office, ignoring Rigsby's sympathetic wince on his behalf.

"What's up?" he asked once they were inside and the door was closed again.

Lisbon thrust the complaint form at him. "Congratulations," she said sourly. "You're now chief Jane wrangler."

Only the smallest flicker in his eyes betrayed his surprise. "Okay."

"You'll be responsible for handling any complaints that come in about him," Lisbon went on. "I'll help you deal with the people he's pissed off, but you're going to have to deal with Jane himself from now on."

He looked at the complaint form. "I can do that."

"I'm sorry to have to do this to you," Lisbon said grimly. "But now that Jane and I are in a personal relationship, it's not appropriate for me to handle complaints against him anymore."

"I understand."

"I'll review any reports you submit and sign off on your recommendations."

He nodded. "Fine."

"I feel terrible about this," Lisbon said, insides squirming with guilt. "I'll see what I can do about getting you a title bump or something in exchange for taking on the additional responsibility. I'm not sure how much I can do about salary, but I'll look into it, okay?" She sighed. "You probably deserve hazard pay, at the very least."

Cho looked at her. "What are you going to tell Bertram?"

"The truth," Lisbon said, grimacing. "That given the change in our personal situation, it won't look good for the bureau if I continue to be the one to evaluate his performance." That conversation should be about as fun as a root canal.

"Okay."

"Maybe I should have him work with you primarily from now on," Lisbon said, thinking out loud. "I was thinking removing myself from the administrative side of dealing with him would be enough, but maybe I'm too emotionally compromised to interact with him in the field, too."

Cho shook his head. "Won't work. You're the only one he listens to."

"The fact that he never listens to me is the whole reason we are having this conversation in the first place," Lisbon pointed out.

"No," Cho said. "Sometimes he ignores it if he doesn't agree with what you've said, but he always listens to you."

"Doesn't feel like that from where I'm sitting," Lisbon said dubiously.

"Trust me. He considers every word you've ever said when he's coming up with his crazy ideas."

"Yeah, right," Lisbon snorted.

"I'm serious. He factors it all into his calculations. He weighs every element carefully to figure out exactly how much he can get away with without alienating you completely."

"Hm." She wasn't sure she agreed with this interpretation. "Well, I'd give you some advice about how to deal with him if I had any, but I don't, so I'll just wish you good luck. Do you have any questions?"

"No. I've got this."

"He's going to try to make your life hell, you know," Lisbon warned. "Especially at the beginning."

"Don't worry. I have an idea about how to handle him."

"Really?" Lisbon said, surprised. "Can you share it with me? I could use some tips."

He shook his head. "You won't like it."

The way he said it made her think that the management techniques he had in mind weren't exactly something one would find in the employee handbook. She decided maybe it would be better if she didn't know. "I really am sorry about this."

"Don't worry about it."

She looked him in the eye. "I will never hold you responsible for his actions." She'd been on the wrong end of that situation too many times to knowingly inflict it on someone else.

"I know."

"Okay. Do you want to tell him, or should I?"

"I'll do it." He picked up the complaint form and stood. "I know you're pissed at him right now, but don't get caught up too much in the bureaucratic stuff, okay? You guys are a great team. You do good work together. That's all that really matters."

"Thanks Cho," she said with a sigh. "I'll try to keep that in mind."

"Cho?"

"Yeah?"

"Thanks."

Xxx

Jane popped his head in again an hour later. "Hey. Want to grab tacos from Juarez's on the way home tonight?"

Lisbon looked at him, incredulous. "Seriously?"

He sighed. "Come on, Lisbon. It's late. You need to eat."

"I'll grab something later," Lisbon said dismissively.

"Let me take you home, at least," he tried.

"I'll take myself home," she said harshly.

He blinked. "You're planning to go home without me?"

"Yes. I'm still mad at you, remember?"

"That's no reason we can't spend the evening together."

"Yes, it is!"

"Come on, I'll make you dinner as an apology."

"I don't want you to make me dinner."

"At least let me come over so we can talk about this."

"I don't want to talk about it right now."

"It's going to be hard to resolve our differences if we don't talk about them," Jane pointed out.

"We can talk about it tomorrow."

"Please, Lisbon."

"I said no, okay!"

Jane was getting visibly agitated. "Angela and I had a pact we would never go to bed angry with each other."

Lisbon recoiled as though she'd been struck.

I'm not Angela.

She didn't say the words aloud. She didn't need to. Jane heard them loud and clear. He faltered, eyes wide, as though he couldn't believe his own misstep. He looked as though he would have given anything in the world to unsay the words.

"I didn't mean that the way it sounded," he said slowly, trying to walk it back.

She brushed it off. "It's fine, Jane."

"I just meant—lots of couples have that rule," he said desperately. "Hell, practically everyone I've ever met who is in a successful relationship says it—never go to bed angry."

Lisbon's mouth tightened. "I guess we're going to have to figure out our own rules."

"But I believe that," he persisted. "We shouldn't go to bed angry. We need to talk through this."

"Well, I can't talk through it right now. I need time to think."

"Why can't you just yell at me some more?" Jane pleaded. "Then I can figure out a way to make it up to you and we can still be together."

"Not happening, Jane. I need space right now."

"I could sit quietly in the corner the whole time," he said stubbornly. "You wouldn't even notice I was there."

"You are not listening," Lisbon said, fed up. She yanked her bag out of her desk drawer, stood, and slung it over her shoulder. "I'm going home. Just in case I have not made this perfectly clear, do not call me. Do not text me. Do not stop by unannounced."

"Lisbon—"

She left.

Xxx

When she got home, she realized she was starving. Apparently, sustaining a towering rage over a period of several hours burned a lot of energy. Besides, she hadn't eaten anything since ten am that morning, when she'd had half a muffin that Jane had brought her before the whole blackmail debacle had gone down. She shoved the thought of his sweet gesture out of her mind and headed to the fridge.

She opened it and stared at its contents. Thanks to Jane assigning himself the role of official grocery shopper for the Lisbon household, it was full of organic produce—he'd declared it his mission to make sure she ate more balanced meals. Lisbon ignored the leftover salad and chicken marsala he'd made her the night before and looked in the freezer, determined to eat something outrageously unhealthy just to spite him.

The only things in the freezer were a pound of organic, grass-fed ground beef and three pints of ridiculously expensive ice cream. The bastard had purged the thing of the frozen dinners she used to eat when she got home late from a case.

In the end, her dinner consisted of half a bag of microwave popcorn and three quarters of a pint of double chocolate fudge ice cream. She sat on the couch and watched some ridiculous TV show she knew Jane would have zero interest in while she ate the half-melted ice cream. Finally, some peace and quiet. No one trying to get into her head because he couldn't stand not knowing every stray thought that crossed her mind.

She stewed about the case a while, mentally running through all the things she was going to have to do the next day to clean up the mess Jane had left her. She'd have to soothe the ruffled feathers of the board members who had been involved in the incident with the gun, not to mention all the other victims of Jane's little blackmail trick. She'd probably have to meet with the CBI's staff attorney to make sure she was prepared in the event that any of them threatened to sue. She'd also have to go see Bertram—he was furious. He'd received half a dozen angry phone calls already and was threatening to let the whole lot of the blackmail victims come after Jane with torches and pitchforks. Plus, she needed to explain to him that sleeping with her consultant had so thoroughly addled her priorities that she couldn't be trusted to do her job like a professional. So, yeah, that was going to be fun.

She still had to figure out what to do about Jane. She thought about what Cho had said, that they were a good team. It was true, they'd done good work together in the past. Lisbon had always thought her by the book nature and Jane's 'never met a rule he didn't break' attitude balanced each other out, their respective strengths complementing each other and offsetting the weaknesses of the other. If today was any indication, though, expecting their old dynamic to continue to work the same way now that their personal relationship had changed was a recipe for disaster.

Just hell. She set the ice cream down on the coffee table and slumped back against the couch cushions. All she wanted was to not have to think about this horrible day anymore. She would figure out how to deal with Jane tomorrow.

She distracted herself with mindless TV for a while, then gave up and got ready for bed. She read in bed for a little while, a crime novel by an author whose writing Jane denounced as a horribly trite and unfailingly predictable, but that she rather liked. She got through two chapters, then set the book down on the nightstand and turned off the light.

She stared up at the ceiling, trying to clear a nice white space in her brain so she could go to sleep. Instead, Jane's words appeared in her mind's eye as clearly as though they were stamped on her ceiling in black ink.

Angela and I had a pact we would never go to bed angry with each other.

Angela and I had a pact.

Angela and I…

She closed her eyes and rolled over, determinedly not thinking about the cold, empty side of the bed next to her.