A/N: I appreciate all the positive responses to Part 1! Special thanks to LouiseKurylo - your questions about my stories make me think hard in very useful ways. Here's the second installment - I anticipate one more to finish this up, but no promises about when it'll be done. Hope you're all hanging in there through these strange, sad days.
Part 2:
Patrick Jane woke up to an empty bed, but at least it smelled like home and not like industrial detergent. He felt hung over and foggy, and his mouth tasted like death, but he thought things were probably all right. The previous night was disjointed in his mind; some parts that seemed real had obviously been hallucinations, and some parts that seemed like dreams he thought had most likely been real.
But he was definitely not in that place anymore, and Patrick Russell could be packed into a box and never taken out again, so today was already way ahead of yesterday. Besides, he was pretty sure that Teresa kissing him had actually happened, and that meant that all was not lost.
He wanted to go find her and get a proper look at her now that his brain was mostly functional, but he decided his chances of getting her onto his lap while he drank a cup of tea - which was his highest hope for the morning - would be significantly better if he didn't smell so bad, so he detoured to the bathroom instead.
While he brushed his teeth, he eventually noticed his reflection in the mirror. He looked haggard, older than he thought he should, his eyes red-rimmed and a bit wild. It reminded him of how he'd been after his first stint on a locked ward, and he didn't like it: he'd come a long, hard way since then, and it was going to take more than a bad case of a bad case to drag him back.
He spat out his toothpaste and turned on the hot water in the sink. Shaving was a relief. Smooth cheeked, he looked more like Patrick Jane, FBI Consultant. The mind follows the body, he told himself as he turned toward the shower.
He was in the middle of soaping himself before he noticed the string tied around his ring finger. He really was out of it. For a moment he couldn't remember how it had gotten there, and then fragments came back to him: darkness, tooth-gnashing desperation, Teresa kneeling in front of him.
His heart galloped and he felt a sudden urge to do something, but he had no idea what. He had to make an unusual effort to understand what was happening to him. Was it discomfort? Excitement? Anxiety? He rubbed at the string on his finger experimentally, like a child tonguing a loose tooth, trying to decide if it hurt. It felt different, but not bad, he concluded.
He could still, a voice in the back of his mind reminded him, ask Lisbon for his ring back. She wouldn't hold it against him, at least not consciously. But when he imagined sliding that band back over his finger, the feeling that came with it was... dread. He didn't want that. He was, he realized, glad to be rid of it, even if it had taken a drug-induced crisis to make it happen.
He'd tried taking the ring off a few times in the mental hospital during the case, under the covers at night where no one could see. It had started to feel so very heavy. But he'd panicked every time. Was he panicking now? No, that wasn't it.
He flashed again to the image of Teresa in the living room, kneeling with his hand in hers. His poor darling. She'd doubtless been madly trying to repress the symbolism of the scene. But even if she couldn't face it, he could. She had replaced his wedding ring with a token of her own. His body flooded with possessive heat. Regardless of what had gone on in her mind during their separation - and his eagerness to find out about that was only partially mitigated by his knowledge that he was not yet in top form to rebut any qualms about him she may have developed in his absence - she hadn't given up her claim on him.
It was deeply reassuring. It was also, he found, quite a turn on. He remembered that after his wedding, every time he'd noticed the ring on his finger he'd wanted to tear Angie's clothes off. At least he was consistent in his predilections, he supposed.
He wondered if he should try to hide the strength of his reaction from Teresa. On the one hand, he'd promised to be more open with her, and feelings that directly pertained to their relationship seemed high on the list of things she had a right to expect his honesty about. On the other, if he let on what that piece of string was doing to him, she might try to flee the city. He decided that he'd assess her state of mind before determining how to proceed.
And in the mean time, he could do them both a favor by trying not to read more into it than she'd intended. Not that it was inconsequential that a symbol of his grief and guilt had been exchanged for a gesture of care from the woman who - from the woman in his life. He knew she'd been hesitant to label her feelings for him, and it seemed unacceptably presumptuous to do it for her, even within his mind.
Jane turned off the shower, having finished washing while he pondered. After quickly drying off and dressing, he sought out tea and Teresa.
She was sitting at the kitchen table with a mug of coffee, but she rose when she saw him. "I'll just switch the kettle back on," she said, but instead of letting her do so, he caught her in an embrace.
Her arms rose to circle his neck after only a brief hesitation, and he kissed the side of her head. She always smelled so good. He wondered if her scent was this appealing to everyone, or if his brain was uniquely hooked on her body chemistry.
"How are you feeling?" she asked him.
"Mostly human," he said. He put his hands on her shoulders and took a step back from her so he could observe her state. Not great, he decided. There were dark circles under her eyes, and her face was pale and a little puffy. She looked... burdened, uneasy, relieved but not calm. He'd been away from her so long he couldn't easily trace the origins of each emotion, but he could tell they related primarily to him. "How are you doing?" he asked.
She forced a half smile. "Better," she said, her gaze flickering away from his face.
"Better than what?"
She shrugged and broke away from him, going to turn on the kettle and get out the things to make tea. "I was afraid for you," she told him, facing the counter. "I kept imagining the murderer would strike and there wouldn't be enough time to stop it, and I'd just be stuck watching on a screen while you died." Her voice cracked a little at the end.
The scenario she conjured was strikingly similar to the hallucination he'd suffered the night before. He supposed it stood to reason, given each of their pasts, that they both feared helplessness in the face of loss.
He didn't know how to comfort her. He couldn't deny that there had been a risk, though he hadn't felt it was too high (potentially being murdered had seemed, to him, the least of his troubles for most of that time), and in any case it was finished now. But she was clearly upset by how much it had upset her, and they both knew her reaction had been exacerbated by their personal relationship. He was terrified she'd decide she needed to retreat from him now for her own protection, or to maintain her precious professionalism. She hadn't seemed to want distance last night, but that had been in the aftermath of an attempt on his life, with emotions running high. In the cold light of morning it could all seem very different to her. She'd been wary enough of their romantic involvement from the start - he'd really hoped to have longer to show her its benefits before its less pleasant repercussions made themselves known, amplifying all her fears about letting him in.
"It was a good plan," he reminded her, wanting to prompt a further reaction. "Grace and Wayne were there all along. I wasn't alone."
She turned around to face him. "What if I don't want you to take assignments like that anymore?" Her voice was both defiant and deeply uncertain. It was, he could tell, a genuine question, possibly one she was asking both of them.
"Like what?"
She shrugged. "Where we're separated and you're in danger." A shadow crossed her face. "Or ones that make you hurt yourself."
He knew she didn't mean physically, and he couldn't say she was wrong. The case had hurt. He felt a long way from happily lovestruck man he'd been before turning himself into a withered husk, and he didn't know how to reverse the change. He still had a powerful depressant in his system, but that was far from all that was amiss.
He could admit that he'd miscalculated when they came up with the plan. He'd spent most of the past decade in spitting distance of a mental health crisis, after all - how hard could it be to call that back up on demand? But he'd radically underestimated how far he'd come since McAllister's death. When he'd begun to prepare himself for his role, he'd thought he could just lock up his feelings for Lisbon and hers for him, the way he had before he'd unpacked a dark corner of his memory palace and discovered his love for her. But he'd found he couldn't unring that particular bell.
If he'd only had to pass for another patient, he could have faked a breakdown easily enough. But he'd been meant to draw the attention of a killer who was attuned to pain. That meant he needed to be the most hopeless case in the mental hospital. So he'd drawn on the only scenario that could destroy his will to live enough to fit the bill: he'd made himself believe he'd lost Lisbon entirely. Heaven knew he'd given her enough reason, over the years, to wash her hands of him. It was easy enough to imagine he'd pushed her just a little too far and crossed the point of no return. At first it hadn't been so hard to remember that it was a game he was playing, especially when he could hear the concern in her voice every night when he checked in. But as the days went by, it became increasingly clear she was keeping something from him, and he knew she'd never forgive him for pressing her about it on a recorded channel. And given what he spent his days telling himself… well, his imagination was only too ready to fill in what she might not be saying.
But he had to focus on her words now, not on his fears. And what she'd told him was that she wanted to mitigate the risk of being with him by reducing the level of external threat he faced. Which he liked much better than her trying to mitigate the risk by removing herself from him instead. It was, in fact, a sentiment he could very much sympathize with. But how far could he push her in making that point? Well, if she could ask questions, so could he.
"What if I don't want you taking that kind of assignment either?" he asked.
Her brow creased. "I'm the one with the gun," she reminded him. "I'm trained to handle dangerous situations."
He refrained from rolling his eyes. "What do you think the past decade or so has been for me if not training in how to handle dangerous situations? And believe me, none of your training makes what's going to happen when a bullet meets your skull any different than what happens when it meets mine."
She crossed her arms over her chest. "I know that," she said. "I just…"
He walked over to her and rubbed her shoulders. "You were just scared," he said. "I know, darling. I get scared for you too. I wasn't trying to say no to you, by the way. I just want you to understand it goes both ways. Our jobs are dangerous. But that doesn't mean there can't be a limit on the amount of risk we're willing to tolerate."
She stared up at him with those big, pained eyes of hers. "I know you worry," she said. "Sometimes I think you'd be much better off with someone who had a nice safe office job instead."
He scowled at her. "There's no one for me but you, so get that ridiculous notion out of your head. You'll just have to live with the fact that whenever you're tackling a gun-toting suspect to defend the innocent, you're putting my heart in the line of fire along with your own." He shrugged. "Besides, you're very good at what you do. I imagine before too much longer you'll get promoted to a supervisory position where you aren't in the field so much."
"I barely even have a job at this point," she groused, giving him a suspicious look and clearly trying to gauge whether he was planning on manipulating her career trajectory to suit himself.
He had in fact entertained thoughts to that effect, but he wasn't about to own up to it. It wasn't as if he would do anything until he knew what she actually wanted. This was, in fact, the main reason he'd pushed her to take this last case and overriden her doubts about his involvement. As the leader of a team that had caught not one but two California serial killers in a single year, he was certain they could land her any position she liked, whether it was getting fully onboard at the FBI or having a hand in building whatever new institution was in the works to replace the CBI, or even becoming a sought-after independent consultant.
The tea kettle whistled before she could interrogate him further. Seeing that she wanted to fuss over him, he sat down at the table while she brewed the tea and refilled her coffee mug.
Patrick lapsed into thought, pondering what sort of job would be best suited to Lisbon's interests and skills that wouldn't involve what he considered an unacceptable chance of premature death.
He was jarred from his reverie when she put a cup of tea and a plate of buttered toast down in front of him. He looked up at her, only to find her staring at his hands with a frown on her face. He realized he was toying with the string on his finger.
She took a deep breath. "You can tell me if you want your ring back," she said, studiously avoiding his gaze. "It's fine if you don't want to… Last night you weren't in a state of mind to be making permanent decisions. I wouldn't…"
He took pity on her and cut off her floundering. "Thank you, Teresa, but I don't want it back." She did look at him then, and he tried to smile at her reassuringly. "I'm not a married man. I may as well stop playing the part." He considered how to say what he wanted to without coming on too strong. "If I wear a ring on that finger again, it won't be Angela's."
She looked surprised at that, but she didn't panic, which he considered a win. She just nodded and picked up her coffee again.
"So what's the plan for today?" he asked, thinking they could both use a lighter topic of conversation.
"You just take it easy and get more rest," she told him sternly. "I can take your statement here, and write up my own. I'm hoping I can stay home today, but it'll depend on what I hear from the team."
"Mm," he agreed, eating a bite of toast.
They finished their breakfast peacefully, then settled onto the couch in the living room, Lisbon lying with her computer on her legs and her feet on Jane's lap. After he finished dictating his statement, he watched TV with the volume on low while she worked on her own paperwork and texted with their colleagues.
After lunch, she got a phone call from Van Pelt that she didn't like, which was obvious from the line between her eyes and her increasingly terse tone of voice, though Patrick couldn't glean the exact nature of the issue from her half of the conversation. But from the way she glanced at him a couple of times, he suspected it had to do with his role in the case.
"Problem come up?" he asked neutrally, when she didn't offer an explanation after ending the call.
She sighed. "Nurse Edward won't confess to anything but what he did to you."
"He's not an idiot," Patrick said. "And he's not motivated by ego. He's a true believer in his own cause. He's probably figured out that if we can't convict him of actual murder, in a few years he could be out of prison and doing his thing again."
Teresa scowled unhappily. "Van Pelt says that even though he understands you were an undercover agent, he refuses to believe that you aren't actually massively depressed. He's still claiming he was saving you from a life of misery. She thinks if we brought you in to confront him and you convinced him you were perfectly happy, you could break his confidence in his worldview."
"It's not a bad idea."
She studied his face. "I don't think it should happen today. You're still recovering. We have plenty to hold him on already. Maybe a few days to think things through in jail before seeing you wouldn't hurt either."
He considered this. "Seeing me sooner rather than later might provide more of a shock." He smiled humorlessly. "If you put off the big reveal for too long, the drama diminishes. But it wouldn't work now. I don't think I'm up to faking it yet."
"Faking it?"
He shrugged, feeling unpleasantly exposed. "Do I look perfectly happy to you right now?"
He could feel the weight of her worried gaze. "How can I help?"
He squeezed her feet. He didn't want to tell her. He didn't want to burden her. He didn't want to pressure her. But they had to be able to talk to each other, even when they might not like the answers to their questions. "I told you what I pretended, to play my part in there. Eventually, it got… harder to remember what was real and what wasn't."
He glanced at her. Her face was drawn with unhappiness. He saw that she didn't know what to say. And he found, despite all his hesitation, that he was ready to know where they stood. He could at least make it simple for her. "Did your feelings or what you want from me change while I was away?"
"No," she said without hesitation.
He picked up her computer and put it on the coffee table, then gathered her onto his lap. "Nothing's changed for me either," he told her as she wrapped her arms around his neck, returning his embrace. "But I don't know how to make it feel real again. Can you tell me something happy?" He didn't want to push her into saying anything she wasn't ready to, but he needed something to hold onto. Something to bring back the feeling of their first kiss, the first night he spent holding her, when he could see their whole future spread out ahead of them like the view from a mountaintop, vast and beautiful.
For a while she just clung to him, and he waited, rubbing circles on her back while she nuzzled into his neck. He knew she needed time to think sometimes. She didn't just blurt out the first thing that came into her head as he was apt to do.
Finally she pulled back far enough to see his face. "I think we should buy a house," she told him.
He blinked. This was not what he'd expected. "You do?"
She nodded, toying with his hair. "Maybe not right away, but I think we should think about it. A house with a garden, somewhere you could sit outside and drink your tea. We could get a new couch - I know you don't like mine very much."
"But it won't just be my house," he pointed out. "What will the house have for you?"
"Mm," she said, her lips twisting as she thought for a moment. "A shower big enough for two?"
"That sounds like something for both of us."
"A fireplace," she said. "I want a fireplace. I know you don't need one here, but we had one when I was a kid, and I always loved making s'mores at home and then just sitting and watching the flames all the way until they died down into a few last flickering embers."
He couldn't keep himself from kissing her then, so he didn't try. He sighed when her mouth opened to let him in, sinking into her like an ocean. She kissed him back like she meant it, like she'd missed him, like she wanted to pour herself into him as well.
She pulled back sometime after his hands slipped inside her shirt (her skin felt so good, so warm, he hadn't realized how much he'd missed it until he felt her again). "You look happy," she said tenderly, her own eyes bright.
He evaluated himself. It felt like she'd lit a lantern inside of him. He closed his eyes to stow the moment away in his memory palace. "I am happy," he told her when he was finished. "Let's go crack a killer!"
In the car on the way to the FBI building, Jane leaned his head against the passenger side window and watched the city go by. They were going to have a house of their own. It was ridiculous and backwards and perfect, just like everything else about their relationship. She hadn't said that she loved him, they hadn't even had sex yet (he'd been waiting to have a stretch of uninterrupted time for them to explore each other properly), and they'd been together romantically for well under a month, most of which they'd spent separated.
But he thought he understood why Teresa had suggested it. Uncomfortable with emotional declarations, she preferred to express her affection in concrete ways - primarily through nurturing and protecting. And her greatest fear regarding their relationship was that he might leave her (again). A house was a commitment she could ask him for without frightening herself, a tangible way of tying him to a future with her. It was also something she wanted to give him, a way to make him happy.
He thought about the plants in her apartment. One day a couple of months after McAllister's death, when he'd still been trailing around after her in a distracted haze, sifting through the past and trying to make sense of his life, she'd come home late after work with four houseplants in the back of her car. She'd informed him that if he planned to continue staying with her, he'd have to start making himself useful, and he could do it by keeping her plants alive. She'd shoved a newly acquired watering can into his hands and demanded to know if he had any questions.
He had accepted this responsibility with a kind of baffled bemusement. He had no idea what had gotten into her, but if watering a few plants was going to keep him from being turfed out of her apartment, it seemed a small price to pay. It had, in fact, been reassuring - if she was bothering to assign him chores, it probably meant she viewed his unilateral invasion of her living space as an at least temporarily viable arrangement. He'd been attempting to make himself an inoffensive houseguest, but he knew she valued her privacy.
After a couple of weeks, he'd found he liked taking care of Lisbon's plants. He liked the smell of the potting soil when he tested its moisture level with a finger, and seeing new leaves bud and unfurl, and he liked the green watering can decorated with cheerful red ladybugs.
It took even longer for him, in his foggy condition, to make sense of where she'd put the plants. He'd watched her carefully position each one that first day, though they weren't in what seemed like obvious places where they might get the most sun or fill an empty corner of a room. Instead, she had, he eventually realized, located them where they'd be directly in his line of sight from his chair at the table or his end of the couch. He concluded that she'd actually gotten the plants for him to begin with, even if she'd never admit it. He still wasn't quite sure what had possessed her to do so, other than that she'd been worried about him and thought they might help. And maybe they had.
So now she wanted to give him a whole garden. He had no doubt that he'd be the one responsible for maintaining it as well, but he found he rather liked the idea. In Malibu they'd had gardeners take care of everything, but it might be nice to plant some seeds and watch them grow. He could put in a few herbs and vegetables, maybe some aromatic flowers - jasmine bushes, honeysuckle, lavender. He wondered what sort of flowers Teresa liked best.
He was still lost in landscape design daydreams when they pulled into the FBI parking lot. He unbuckled his seatbelt, but Lisbon caught his arm before he could get out. He saw at once that she was concerned.
"I don't think this is a good idea," she said. "You shouldn't talk to Edward today. Why don't you just come in and nap on the couch while I work for a couple hours, and then we can go home again."
"I'll be fine." He flashed her a smile. "Come on, you cheered me up for this, let's get it over with."
"I did not cheer you up for this, you unmitigated idiot," she snapped, glaring daggers at him, "I cheered you up for you."
"In either case, I am cheered up," he pointed out, "so we may as well go in there and get a confession."
"And what if facing Edward brings you back to where you were before instead? The man tried to kill you last night, he's going to try to persuade you you'd be better off dead."
"Well, he's not going to succeed, and if the interrogation does get me down for some reason, you can just cheer me up again afterward." He grinned at her. "I have great confidence in your capacity to improve my mood."
"That's not the point!" She blew out a frustrated breath. "I thought you were getting better. I thought things were different now."
Now he was frustrated too. He really couldn't see what he'd done wrong lately. He hadn't run off or tricked her or deviated even slightly from the agreed-upon plan. And it wasn't like this was the first time he'd be interrogating someone who'd wanted to kill him in the past. "Just what is it you think is the matter with me?"
"You're reckless with yourself! Ever since I've known you, you just hurl yourself into explosive situations and start poking them with a stick," she accused. "You have no sense of self-preservation! And I understood why, back then, you were careless of your life and your wellbeing. I thought that had changed, though. But here you are again, jumping into things without caring whether there's anywhere safe to land."
Patrick thought she was overreacting, but knew better than to say so. It was, he reminded himself, sweet that she cared so much about his welfare. Her concern had kept him alive for years, even when it felt like an unwanted constraint. Maybe especially then. "That's not what this is," he said, attempting patience. "We're talking about a supervised interrogation in FBI headquarters, not some half-baked gambit I cooked up behind your back. I haven't done anything at all reckless during the course of this case." He took her hands. "Teresa, I know this was harder on both of us than we thought it would be, but that's not because I've been careless."
She stared at him for a long moment, her jaw tense, her eyes suspiciously glossy. "I'm afraid you don't have limits," she said finally. "I think you're in the habit of just doubling down whenever things get dicey, regardless of the consequences, instead of backing off and trying something different. I need you to believe that your welfare is more important than solving a case. Than solving any case."
"You put yourself at risk or run yourself into the ground to solve cases all the time," he pointed out. "We all do, it's part of the job." He cut her off before she could interrupt. "But I do have limits. I promise you, I don't want to die, and I'm not out to punish myself further." He wondered, briefly, if that was really true. If he did have a different risk-assessment criteria for himself than he had not just for Lisbon but for anyone else on the team as well. "I won't tell you not to worry about me. I worry about you too. But these aren't all or nothing issues. We're just going to have to keep wading through them time after time. And this time, right now, it's all right. Seeing Edward isn't going to ruin my mental health, and I think you know that. You've just had a lot of concern for me built up over past week or two with no outlet for it, so it's all coming out now."
She studied him, frown back in full force. "You don't see it," she said at last. "You don't even know what I'm talking about, do you?" She squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them again. "Look, I believe that you have some limits now, all right? But they're not in the right place. If they were, you would never have taken this assignment. You should have said no, but you practically insisted on doing it instead."
He blinked in surprise. When they'd been making the plan, she'd talked to him about whether going undercover would be too hard for him, whether it would bring back memories of his last stay in such an institution, whether he should at least have a cover story a bit further from the truth, but after he'd assured her it wouldn't be a problem, he hadn't seen any indication she was uncomfortable with going forward. Had she wanted him to call it off from the start? Ah. No. She'd trusted him and now felt she'd been wrong. "I admit I miscalculated," he said. "I wasn't thinking very clearly before the case, and it turned out to be harder than I anticipated."
He'd barely been thinking at all, had been the truth. He'd been giddy and on top of the world and, wrapped up in her sudden affections, had felt untouchable, like nothing could stop him. He'd wanted another feather in Lisbon's professional cap, and he'd liked the challenge of catching a serial killer who even half the FBI still didn't believe was the real deal, and he'd come up with a plan to do it. It had seemed very simple at the time.
Her eyes narrowed. "And when exactly did you figure out it was going to be much worse than you thought?"
He considered lying, but decided she wouldn't believe him anyway. "About six hours before I went in."
"And at that point, did you even think about calling it off? Or telling me that it was going to be utter misery for you?"
He wished, sometimes, that she wasn't quite so good at her job. Or that she wasn't quite so good at him. He thought that even a few years ago, he would have been able to weasel his way past her on this. But this was, he supposed, the price of actually being close to someone again. "No."
Everything had already been in motion, and he hadn't wanted to worry her. Besides, he'd felt getting her the big win and stopping the killer would be worth it. The local FBI brass hadn't been taking the case seriously based on one confirmed murder and some suspicious statistics - if their team didn't step in, possibly no one would until there were more victims, and it wasn't as if Rigsby would be able to persuade anyone he was suicidal. So Jane had accepted that he was going to have a lousy time and stuck to the plan. He still wasn't convinced it had been the wrong decision. The past week wouldn't even make it into his Top 40 All Time Worst list, and they'd caught Edward. That had to count for something.
But maybe watching it would have been easier for her if he'd given her some advance warning. He hadn't wanted to run the chance of her stopping him, though.
Maybe she was trying to tell him that now he owed her that chance. He considered how he would have felt if their roles were reversed. Maybe she had a point.
She took his hand.
"Patrick," she began, instantly commanding his full attention. He couldn't think if she'd ever used his first name like that before. He looked up at her and fell right into her fathomless eyes. "I need you to tell me when something's going to hurt you next time. Right away. Can you do that for me?"
He nodded. If she said his name and looked at him that way, he would promise her anything she wanted.
"Thank you. Now, as God is my witness, I need you to tell me how you're feeling right now."
He frowned and tried to take an inventory of himself. "I'm all right. Tired, a little worse for the wear, not quite myself yet, but getting there. Very happy to be here with you again." He shot her a grin. "Looking forward to finding a good realtor."
She gave him a searching look. "And do you think facing Edward is going to make you feel worse?"
"No," he said. Edward was just a misguided murderer. Edward had never been the problem, other than how he'd precipitated the need to go undercover in the first place. "Really," he insisted when she looked at him skeptically.
"Fine then," she said grumpily. "Let's go get this over with. But I'll be watching the whole time, and if you have a nervous breakdown I'm keeping you locked up at home for a month."
He waggled his eyebrows at her, his mood taking a sudden upward swing. "You're not giving me much of an incentive to stay sane there, sweetheart."
She just glared at him and climbed out of the car.
He jogged to catch up with her, formulating a plan. "Why don't we make this interesting," he suggested brightly. "I will bet you that you'll feel better about my psychological health at the end of the interrogation than you do right now."
She gave him a sidelong glance. "What do you get if you win?"
"You request three full days off for both of us as soon as this case is wrapped up, so I can demonstrate my zest for life to your complete satisfaction."
"And if you lose?"
"You request two full days off for both of us as soon as this case is wrapped up, so you can tend to my wounded psyche."
"I'm sensing a bit of a theme here," she commented wryly.
"Come on, Lisbon," he cajoled. "We've both been working for two weeks straight, we deserve a break. Besides which, you've just been very eloquently arguing that I need to take better care of myself. I think a little time off work would be highly beneficial for me."
"Fine," she said, fighting a smile.
"Shake on it," he insisted.
Rolling her eyes, she stopped walking for a moment and held out her hand. He took it, gave her a gentle pump, then lifted her hand and kissed the back of it, not allowing himself to linger.
She gave him a disapproving look but otherwise let him get away with the gesture, which told him she was still concerned. Maybe he should kiss Van Pelt's hand too, just to prove this behavior was within his standard bounds of eccentricity. She probably deserved it for saving him from a murderer. His lips weren't going near any actual Federal employee though. He wasn't going to turn himself into some hand-kissing hussy just to prove he hadn't been breaking Lisbon's no-inappropriate-displays-of-affection-at-work rule. She was simply going to have to accept that "inappropriate" was a term with a certain amount of subjective flexibility built into it.
By the time he'd finished that train of thought, they'd made it into the building, and he was distracted by the sudden change in her expression.
He followed her icy glare. "You hate Snyder much more than you used to," he observed.
Her jaw tightened. "She endangered your life yesterday."
"Really?" He immediately began to speculate about just what she'd done. He'd known she didn't much care for him or Lisbon, but he hadn't imagined she'd go so far as to let it impact her job performance.
Teresa grabbed his arm, pulling him around to face her frighteningly intense expression. "You are never going to go out in the field with that woman. Under any circumstances. Do you understand?"
He nodded, making a mental note to do something untraceably unpleasant to Agent Snyder sometime soon. No one should get away with making Lisbon that unhappy. Even if she was maddeningly attractive when she was angrily trying to control him for his own good.
His moods had been in rapid flux all day, swinging up and down with unaccustomed vigor. He wasn't sure how much of it was the aftereffects of being drugged, how much was being reunited with Teresa, and how much was a reaction to his role in the case. The most unexpected aspect was the intrusive resurgence of his libido. He'd been attracted to Lisbon in an abstract - and sometimes not so abstract - way since he'd met her. Since their first kiss, his desire for her had been a constant hum in his veins, but lust had taken a back seat to savoring the unfolding of their emotional connection. Until today. Suddenly the seemingly endless fuse of his longing for her was burning down to nothing. He supposed it made psychological sense - the life drive struggling to reassert itself after he'd squashed it down to almost nothing undercover - but it left him off-balance, unsure of himself after consigning himself to a monkish existence for so many years.
Well, he certainly couldn't do anything about it surrounded by their coworkers, so for the moment he had to get some distance from her and focus on the task at hand. "Yes ma'am," he told her with dry irony. "Now why don't you check in with the others and get everything in order for the interrogation. Edward's already used to stonewalling Van Pelt, so I'll take Rigsby in with me."
Her mouth twisted unhappily. "Why don't I-"
"You can't go in there," he interrupted. "I can't have someone worried about me sitting next to me."
"Fine," she snapped, and stalked off toward her desk, casting one last anxious look behind her, as if she wasn't sure it was safe to take her eyes off of him.
Jane headed to the break room and used the pod machine to brew himself a cup of dark, vile coffee. He doctored it liberally with milk and sugar and threw it back in a few gulps, needing the hit of caffeine - droopiness would ruin his act. Then he took a seat at one of the tables and closed his eyes to get himself into the right headspace. He pictured himself in front of a fireplace with Teresa, their arms around each other as they watched the flames, sharing a gentle silence. The two of them eating dinner at an outdoor table under a trellis garlanded with clematis vines on a summer evening. He imagined them older, more lines around their eyes, making excellent use of a spacious shower stall. Older yet, him infuriating her at the breakfast table by making the fork disappear off her plate every time she looked away, until she kicked him viciously and made a show of eating her pancakes with her hands, then wiping her syrup-sticky fingers off on his hair while she distracted him with a kiss.
She wanted all that, he told himself, she wanted it too. And nothing and no one would stop them having it, least of all a piddling little self-deceiving killer like Edward.
He stood up from the table. He was ready for the show.
Nurse Edward was already in the interrogation room when he strode in a few minutes later and took his seat beside Rigsby.
"We haven't been properly introduced," he said, not exactly friendly but radiating contented wellbeing - a sun lamp shining in any direction but his would-be murderer's. "I'm Patrick Jane, I consult for the FBI. This is my colleague, Agent Rigsby, whom I believe you're familiar with - if you ever wondered why he didn't make the beds as crisply as some of the other orderlies, now you know why."
Edward was staring at him like he'd sprouted horns.
"Now, to get the ball rolling," Jane continued, "why don't we start with you explaining why you tried to kill me last night."
"I was ending your suffering," he replied as if by rote.
Jane tilted his head and grinned. "Well, I guess it worked - I'm cured! Funny what not having to pretend you're suicidally depressed anymore will do for a fellow."
"I know you weren't pretending."
"You're too kind." He gave a faux-modest shrug. "I admit it was quite a performance. Among my best."
"No one who hasn't felt true despair could be like that," Edward insisted.
"Oh, I've had my share of dark times," he admitted easily. "Like any actor, I drew on past experience to perform my role convincingly. But that was all long, long ago. I assure you, I'm quite a happy man these days."
Edward shook his head. "People like you don't get better."
Jane tsk-tsked him. "The funny thing about people, Edward, is that it turns out they're all different. There isn't anyone just like me. What you meant is that the persona I put on reminded you of someone who didn't get better. Someone you cared about a great deal, I believe. Your friend from college?"
"Mateo," Edward supplied. "He tried to get better. He saw doctors. He took pills. He went to the hospital five times. And nothing worked."
"You saved his life once, didn't you?"
"The second time he tried it," Edward agreed, wiping his eyes. "He had a gun. I got it away from him and got him to a doctor. It didn't help though. The fourth time he really did it. By then I don't know if I would have stopped him even if I was there."
"But you thought there was something else that might have helped, still," Jane told him, watching his face keenly. "Some treatment, some facility, some doctor who could have saved him. That's why you became a psychiatric nurse. You wanted to find the secret and use it to help other people like Mateo."
Edward nodded.
"And for a while you thought maybe you could. But then there was a special patient. One who reminded you of Mateo. Who was that?"
"His name was Peter. He was schizophrenic. When he took his meds, he didn't hear voices anymore, but he still couldn't stand living."
"He killed himself too?"
"I was the one who found him."
"And that changed your mind?"
"After that I knew there was no helping some people. That giving them treatment or trying to stop their suicides was just torture, forcing them to live through unnecessary suffering when the future held nothing for them but more pain."
"But some people do get better - surely you've seen patients who left treatment and went on to lead happy, productive lives."
"So?" Edward asked.
"So how can you tell which are which?"
"I just know."
"Like you knew about me?"
"Yeah."
"And yet you were wrong about me. I wasn't even a real patient."
"Or you're faking now," he pointed out.
Jane spread his hands. "Do I look like I'm faking?"
Edward just shrugged.
"Since this seems like a sticking point for you, I'll tell you my story. Over a decade ago, I lost my family. A sudden tragedy. I was miserable, I didn't want to live without them, yadda yadda yadda. But a funny thing happened. I did go on living. I got a new job, working with law enforcement, which I found surprisingly fulfilling. And that job forced me to be around people, even when I didn't feel like company. They were good people, and as time went on I made friends with them. Years went by, and they stuck by me even when things got rough and I was a royal pain. And one day I noticed that I didn't mind being alive anymore. There were things I looked forward to again. There were things I enjoyed and wanted to keep enjoying. It turns out that the secret to a happy life is a rewarding job and having people you care about, who would have guessed, right?"
"I coulda told you that on day one, man," Rigsby put in.
"Rigsby's the smart one," Jane said confidingly.
"But how do I know any of that's true?" Edward demanded.
Jane leaned forward toward him. "Here's the thing, though - how can you know it isn't? And if there's even a small chance that it is true, what right did you have to try to take my life and my future away from me?"
Edward just stared at him.
"I have absolutely no desire to die," Jane said, looking him straight in the eyes. "I didn't yesterday either. So maybe there are people who won't ever recover from depression, I don't know for sure. But I am completely certain of two things: some people do get better, and you, Edward, can't tell which ones they are."
It was a true pleasure to watch Edward's face collapse in on itself as the trap closed around him.
Jane let him sit with the truth for a full minute before he spoke again. "What about the last person you killed, Vicky Brown?"
He turned to Rigsby. "Remind me what her mother told us?"
"That Vicky was planning to go back to school when she came home. She wanted to study urban planning."
"Just think," Jane told Edward, "if she was still alive, right now she might be sitting in a classroom. Maybe she'd be feeling a little better about herself because she actually finished all the reading she was assigned, and she thinks maybe today she'll raise her hand for once. Maybe she'll ask to borrow a pen from the woman next to her at the seminar table, and at the end of the class that woman will ask if she wants to study together, and they'll strike up a friendship. Maybe a year from now, that woman will be Vicky's new best friend, a person who finally truly sees who she is, scars and all, and loves her anyway. Maybe in a few more years she'll be starting a new job that sparks some excitement in her, and she'll feel like she's finally on the right path, doing something in the world that reflects what's inside her in a way she feels proud of instead of ashamed about. And maybe in a decade her depression will be nothing more than a bad memory that feels like it belongs to a whole other person. Except none of that's going to happen, is it? Because you stole that possibility from her."
"That wasn't going to happen," Edward said, a little desperate. "She wasn't fixable."
"Now we'll never find out, will we? But I do know one thing about her. Have you wondered yet why we caught you after all this time? It was because of Vicky's autopsy. Her death was ruled a murder because she had defensive wounds. She tried to fight you off when you slit her wrists for her. At that moment, when you were snuffing out her future, she wanted to live."
"That's just animal instinct - it doesn't mean anything."
"It means you were wrong. You were wrong about me and you were wrong about her. How many others do you think you were wrong about too?"
A tear slid down Edward's face.
"It's too late to help them now, but they aren't the only ones you hurt. You stole what wasn't yours to take, not just from your victims but from their families. Vicky's mother cried with relief when we told her what really happened. She was glad that her daughter hadn't abandoned her on purpose, that she hadn't truly given up. You can give that same comfort to the other families you've robbed. So a little boy doesn't grow up thinking his father didn't love him enough to keep breathing. So a wife doesn't think her husband would rather lie in the ground than in her arms. It's the least you can do."
He nodded at Rigsby, who produced a list of all the patients who had died since Edward was hired by the facility. "Mark off which of these people you murdered."
Edward stared at him for a long moment, then sagged and accepted the pen.
Jane waited until he'd finished and signed at the bottom of the page before he stood up. "My colleagues will be in shortly to take a detailed statement."
Edward looked up at him, a plea in his face. "Patrick - wait. Is it really true? Are you happy now?"
"Yes."
"Then why couldn't I save Mateo? What did I do wrong?"
Jane's face went blank. "How should I know? I never met the man." With that, he turned and left the room.
He made his way back to the couch and pretended to nap, in no mood to deal with the other agents. Van Pelt came by a few minutes later and pulled over a chair, wanting to thank him for coming in and getting the confession, and to check on his health. He accepted her pleasantries with as much patience as he could muster and sent her on her way. He did not kiss her hand.
After that came blessed peace. He was still too wired from the coffee to really rest, and too tired to really think, so he just listened to the sounds of the office, and waited, and intermittently tried and failed to determine what he was feeling.
Eventually Lisbon's footfalls approached, and he felt himself relax even before she sat down next to his legs.
"Did I win?" he asked her, lips curving into a smile, eyes still closed.
A familiar sigh. "Sure," she said, game even if not wholly convinced.
His smile widened. "Really, or do you just want the extra day off too?"
"Careful, you might talk me out of it," she warned.
"Heaven forfend," he murmured. "You need to be here long?"
"An hour or two?" It was more of a real question than he'd expected. He realized that his favorite workaholic would actually take the rest of the day off if he asked her to, and it warmed him.
"All right."
She shifted slightly, but didn't get up right away. She was fighting the impulse to touch him, he understood, and he almost opened his eyes to see it, but decided seeing her face would only make him more impatient to get home.
After another moment she rose and walked over to her desk, and soon the familiar clicks and clacks of her work were underway.
He allowed himself to drift. This wasn't where he wanted to be - he wasn't touching her, there were far too many people around - but it wasn't bad, either. It wasn't, for example, a psychiatric ward that smelled of ammonia cleaner and air freshener and fear. He'd thought his previous hospitalization was buried far enough in the past that it wouldn't trouble him any further, but like all his other assumptions about this case, that had been wrong too.
He'd let go of the shame of it, at least. That had never been some nonsense about disdaining those who needed such help. He'd just known, for a long time, that if anyone found out where he'd been, they'd immediately and irrevocably wonder why he wasn't still there. Admitting how broken he'd been seemed indistinguishable from showing how broken he still was. Lisbon hadn't thought that, of course, which had been one of her many gifts to him. But he knew that most others would.
That didn't bother him anymore. He knew he was different now, so it no longer mattered what anyone else thought. So he'd concluded he was over it. But the physical realities of the place had distressed him. The confinement, the intrusive staff, the rigid schedules - it seemed an environment as likely to induce madness as to cure it. And there had been too many reminders of who he'd been, the last time around. Changed or not, the person he'd used to be was still inside him - all those failings, those weaknesses, those fault lines. And he'd since added many more sins to his tally, no matter what else he'd done as well. Even if he wasn't so broken these days, had he changed enough to avoid sabotaging this new chance he'd been given? Or was he still building traps for himself without even seeing it until he'd already fallen into them?
After the first hour, Lisbon dropped a cup of tea off for him - a white tea with notes of peach and jasmine. It was nicer than anything typically stocked by the FBI and he wondered where she'd gotten it. Once it was gone, he lay back down and actually fell asleep.
When Teresa gently shook him awake, evening had fallen. "I'm sorry it took so long," she said, bending over him, "but I thought since you were really out I'd just stay and finish my paperwork. So surprise - we're done for the week!"
He smiled up at her. "Really?"
Her dimples made an appearance. "I know how to hold up my end of a bargain."
"I never doubted you." It was Tuesday - assuming they didn't catch a case over the weekend, that meant five whole days off. It seemed an incredible luxury.
"Come on," she said. "Let's get out of here."
She'd already called ahead for takeout from the good Sichuan place. They ate in the living room, half-watching TV, then cuddled on the couch.
He had a hand tangled in her hair and her head was nestled against him, but she felt too far away.
"What weren't you telling me during the case?" he asked without quite deciding to.
She tilted her neck to look up at him. "What do you mean?"
"When we talked on the radio. I could hear there was something you were keeping from me. But I didn't know what. Can you tell me now?"
She pulled away from him, and for a moment he thought it might be something really awful. Then he got a look at her face and saw that whatever she was wrestling with had more to do with her than with him. She dropped her head, hiding behind her hair, and fidgeted with the cuffs of her sleeves.
"I wasn't doing so well while you were undercover," she admitted stiffly, uncomfortable as ever with any display of weakness. "I didn't want you to find out and do something stupidly dangerous to hurry things along."
"What do you mean, you weren't doing well?" he asked as gently as he could.
"I wasn't sleeping much. There were - nightmares. I couldn't stand watching what you were doing to yourself in there. It was like you were slipping away from me and I didn't know if you were going to come back. If you'd be able to. I felt like I'd made you go through losing your family all over again because I trusted you when you said it would be okay, and I shouldn't have. I knew it was a bad idea but I let you talk me into it because -"
She broke off, but he knew what she'd been going to say. She'd trusted him against her better judgment because he'd promised he'd be more honest with her. And at the first test of that, he'd let her down. His own motives suddenly seemed petty and inadequate.
"I'm sorry," he said.
She shot him a look of mingled hurt, shame, and accusation. "For what? Do you even - do you actually get that your suffering hurts me too? How would you have felt if I'd gone undercover living with an abusive alcoholic, and you had to watch me taking it and not fighting back for twelve days?"
He caught his breath as her words struck home. He could never have endured that. He would have - he would have stormed in and ruined the case. He'd never been as strong as her. "No one was hitting me in there," he said weakly.
She scoffed. "I've seen a dozen people punch you, and it's never hurt you a fraction as much as this case did. When my father beat me, what happened to my body wasn't as bad as the fact that it was him who was doing it. You and I both know that physical pain isn't the worst kind."
"You're right," he said hoarsely. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have put you through that. I should have told you when I knew going undercover would be worse than I thought." He'd promised to make her happy, and less than a week later he'd done this to her. He truly was an undeserving wretch. Maybe he'd been wrong to think he could be what she needed.
He risked a look at her. No. He'd failed her, but he could do better. He had to. The alternative was unthinkable.
He heard a sniffle and realized she was crying. He gathered her in his arms and pulled her against his chest, his own eyes stinging.
"I need you to believe that you matter," she choked out. "Or at least find a way to act like it."
Everything she'd said to him in the FBI parking lot came back to him, and he thought this time he understood it. "I don't know if I do believe it," he confessed, voice cracking, "but I believe I matter to you. And you are all that matters to me. So maybe - maybe I can take more care with myself for your sake. Because you were right before. I fixate on a goal and I find a way to get there that probably won't get anyone killed, and I rush into it without thinking very hard about the collateral damage, to me or anyone else. Not even to you most of the time. I just figure we'll be able to manage the consequences once they crop up. I'm blinded by my arrogance and my taste for chaos and my - my nihilism, I guess you'd call it. And it works enough of the time I forget what happens when it doesn't. That's why I need you. Because you can slow me down and make me think properly. When I'm honest with you. But I wasn't this time. Can you give me another chance?"
Her arms tightened around him, and he clutched her back.
She pulled back and shook her head at him, a rueful smile tugging at her lips. "You really think that after everything we've been through, this is gonna be the last straw?"
He shrugged, looking at her without a mask, letting her see how afraid he was. "Things are different now. I told you that I'd be different." He knew that whether she was aware of it or not, she wouldn't be able to put up with what she once had anymore. The more of herself she gave to him, the more careful he had to be not to hurt her more than she could stand. He would have liked to think he wouldn't hurt her again at all, but that fantasy had already been shattered.
"You also warned me you'd screw up sometimes. You don't have to get it right all time. You just have to keep trying." She gave him a slow, wicked smile and glanced down at where she was seated on his lap. "Some things are definitely different."
She wriggled a little, and the friction lit his body like lightning. He wanted to touch her in ways she wouldn't allow with the living room blinds wide open. He shot her a look that left no doubt of his intentions and maneuvered them both off the couch. Taking her hand, he led her to their bedroom.
As soon as he let go of her to close the door, she stepped past him, stopping halfway to the bed with her back to him. He could tell by the movement of her arms she was unbuttoning her blouse. He stopped a pace behind her and watched, transfixed, as she finished her work and the garment dropped to the floor between them. His throat thick with emotion, raw desire flooding his veins, he stepped toward her, close enough for her to feel the heat of his proximity, the brush of his breath across her shoulder. Standing in her stocking feet, the difference in their heights had never seemed so vivid, and it made him want to shelter her with his body, to cover every piece of her with himself.
Instead, he raised a single hand, trembling badly, and traced her petal-soft skin with his fingertips, following the line of her arm, then her spine. He swept her dark hair over her shoulder and pressed a slow kiss to the base of her neck, drunk on the way her body responded to him, the pink flush spreading across her flesh, the slight catch in her breath, the fine hairs rising on her forearms.
He couldn't remember feeling this close to another person. He couldn't remember feeling this much at all. Suddenly desperate to feel her against him, he tore the top buttons of his shirt open and pulled it over his head, then wrapped his arms around her and pulled her flush against him, her back to his chest, one arm splayed across her stomach and the other clasping her shoulder. Her hands rose to grip his wrists. He dropped his head to rest it against hers, the scent of her hair on every ragged breath he drew.
He didn't know how long they stood like that, sharing the heat of their skin. His arousal had shifted gear, urgency giving way to a tenderness that threatened to undo him. If this was what a simple embrace reduced him to, he had no idea how he was going to survive making love to her.
"I love you," he said, voice low and aching, "I love you, I love you so much." Her grip on him tightened. He wanted to fall on his knees before her, he wanted to pull the moon from the sky and give it to her on a silver chain. He couldn't believe he'd gone without her for twelve days.
"Tell me what you want," he whispered in her ear.
She tugged at his wrists to loosen his hold on her and turned around to face him, still caught in his arms. She tilted her head up and said, "Kiss me."
He did as she asked. The lace of her brassiere scraped against his chest as he pulled her up against him with one hand, burying the other in her hair. Lips met and then tongues, slow at first, then with rising intensity. She took control of the kiss, turning them and forcing him back and back again until his legs met the bed.
She broke their kiss and pushed at his chest. He took the hint and sprawled back on the mattress. Once he'd gotten far enough onto it, she climbed on top of him, straddling him as she reached behind her back to unhook her bra.
He watched reverently as she revealed herself to him, then gazed up at her eyes, reading her playfulness and affection, her trust and her desire. She lay a delicate hand against his face, rubbing her thumb along his cheekbone.
Her eyelids lowered as she surveyed him. "You're mine," she said, and smiled when he hardened further beneath her.
He raised a hand to her breast and caressed her, eyes riveted to catch her every flicker of response. "All yours," he agreed, "always." And she was his as well, even if she wasn't ready for either of them to say it yet. All his life he'd detested authority in every form. But power was something different. It could be taken - with a gun, a linoleum knife, a plausible threat - or it could be exchanged, a smile for a joke, a shoulder for a tear, a heart for a heart. This was the dance he and Teresa had been doing from the beginning. He'd accepted her lead because she was willing to following his in turn. And over the years that waltz of theirs had traveled further than either of them would have imagined. Now, he would gladly follow her into hell itself. But he suspected that night's destination would be far more pleasant.
He circled her nipple with a finger, lips parting as he watched it tighten. "So what do you want to do with me?"
Her eyes darkened.
"Everything," she said.