Red Silences

Thanks to Jisbon4ever, lucy, Anna, allanon9, BelleLee, Frogster and Frozen Bacon for the reviews, and thanks to the alerters and readers as well.

I think this qualifies as another cliffhanger? :)

Chapter Twenty-One

Take Me Away

"It's sad isn't it?" Avery mocked the dying man before him on the floor, who was bleeding from his fresh wounds. "It takes being under a deep hypnosis to finally get what you want, but then again—I suppose that it was the same for your fellow coworkers." Jane's chest rose and fell in a ragged pattern. "How does it feel now that you've got it, and the price of death to follow?" Avery chuckled, as he slid onto the ruined bed to stare down at the broken man. "You see, tomorrow night she'll be my wife like she should have been in the very beginning…" Avery reflected on the thought, with a slight smirk. He had been watching Teresa for twenty straight months, waiting for the perfect moment to strike up a conversation with her but…something or rather someone had always interrupted his perfect idea.

Patrick Jane had been a constant thorn in Avery Duane's side from day one—the man had always been closer to Teresa, always able to make the move to ask her out but he never did and Avery wondered why.
Sure, Patrick Jane had lost his wife and daughter to a serial killer but that didn't mean that he couldn't still grieve and date, he obviously had dated that psychic woman but he wouldn't even cast his eyes toward the most beautiful woman in the world.

For that reason alone, Avery was annoyed.

It was then, shortly after the whole incident at the CBI with the older man and his team being murdered that Avery had decided to learn hypnotism; he had learned it and mastered it within a number of months, and then he went through the process of transforming his life from the worthless man he had been to the powerful man he was now. He had managed to use his hypnotism skills indirectly, and had managed to swindle money from rich women who had no idea what exactly he was doing, as they fell directly into his hands and into his bidding. From there, it had been self-explanatory.
He had bought his huge mansion, changed his name and had placed his plan into action to seduce Teresa into falling in love with him.

That plan however, had fallen through the very moment Jane had been kidnapped and met the serial killer who had killed his wife and child—Jane needed Teresa, and he understood that but slowly, the two began to spend more time around each other and it burned him up; he had allowed Teresa to comfort him and this was how they paid him back? Playing hot and cold using sexual arousal and the gifts of caring? It made him beyond sick, so the night of Jane's attempted suicide…Avery had managed to sneak into Jane's apartment while he was cutting himself and someone had knocked on the door while Jane had turned to clean up after himself only to find Avery Duane.

Avery panicked, and stabbed him before he hid in the shower only to hear Lisbon's voice, and after Jane had managed to leave the hospital, the reason for him not telling Lisbon about the stranger in his apartment had been the cunning plan of replacing Jane's anti-depressant with just enough medication to make him forget, and to make him think that he had tried to commit suicide due to his encounter with Red John.

Jane, in theory had quit the CBI due to his repressed feelings for Lisbon but it also had to do with the paranoia from the medicine and after Jane had quit, Avery waltzed right in and had picked the man up from one of the classier bars.

"You look like you're having a rough day," Avery had said, as he sat down next to Jane who was staring deeply into his own drink. Jane didn't respond for a moment or two, and had turned his head for a millisecond to check something when Avery's hand had fallen on Jane's shoulder to cause some panic but before Jane could panic, Avery had him right where he needed to be and the soothing words that Jane had tried on Rigsby, and had tried on Lisbon had an even deeper effect on Jane.
Avery, at that time hadn't realized that the medicine that had been the reason for the medical hallucinations and the hypnotism together, had robbed Jane of any type of will to do right or wrong, instead it left him an empty shell of nothing to work with and reprogram.

Rhys and Alyson, on the other hand had been the perfect scapegoats—Rhys had been Lisbon's boyfriend which gave him motive to murder Jane, especially if he knew that Jane was trying to move in on his girlfriend and as for Alyson, Avery had needed someone to practice his seduction skills on as he also needed someone to become both the flower girl and the bridesmaid at the wedding between himself and Teresa. It also didn't help that Avery had noticed that Rhys and Alyson held the same dynamics of a relationship that his Teresa and Jane had—the play on sexual arousal and the gifts of caring.

Alyson, who should never amount to anything but a whore in his opinion, continued to throw herself at the ignorant Rhys, who continued to throw her aside in favor of the other women he continued to court.
"I wanted you at the wedding too…" Avery chuckled, slightly disappointed. "You could have led the woman you loved down the isle to wed another man." Jane twitched slightly, before his eyes closed and Avery called Rhys into the room. "Take him down; fix him up as much as you can." Rhys nodded, and grabbed the older man to drag him to the hole the three remained in, in the basement of the four floored mansion; the last thing he was going to do was allow Jane to die before seeing the woman of his dreams marry another man willingly and after tonight, Lisbon would probably never be able to sit in the same room as Jane again.

Avery shrugged, staring down at the scarlet stained carpet—he'd allow Jane to speak with Lisbon as himself tomorrow before the wedding, after all what harm could it do besides reaffirm her even more into why she was marrying him in the first place.