"What do you think about skiing?" Jane asked two weeks later as they strolled through a local park, eating ice cream cones. He'd dragged Lisbon out of the house, determined that they explore the city together.

Lisbon shrugged. "I like watching it when the Olympics is on."

"Ever been?"

"Nope." Lisbon finished her ice cream and eyed Jane's. He'd gotten caramel chocolate swirl. It looked really good.

"Really?" he said, disbelieving. "You grew up in Chicago. There wasn't exactly a shortage of snow."

"My family lived in the city," she reminded him. "And it's not like we had a lot of money for stuff like that."

"What about when you moved to California? Tahoe's only two hours from Sacramento."

She'd had a boyfriend once who had invited her to go skiing in Tahoe for a long weekend back when she lived in San Francisco. Her failure to turn up for this romantic getaway in favor of spending the weekend interrogating a child rapist had been one of the first death knells of the relationship. "I guess I never really had time," she hedged, hoping Jane wouldn't divine the story of the ex-boyfriend by the tone of her voice or something. He'd never let it alone if he found out. "What about you?" she said hastily, turning the topic back upon him. "You ever been?"

"No," he said. "I wanted to try it back when I was first making a lot of money as a fake psychic, but Angela wasn't interested."

"Mm," Lisbon said noncommittally. Jane mentioned Angela so rarely, she never knew how to react when he did. She was glad he felt comfortable mentioning a detail like this to her, though.

"So what do you think?" Jane said. "Want to go?"

She glanced at him. "Go where?"

He rolled his eyes. "Go skiing."

She looked at him as though aliens had taken over his body. "You want to go skiing?"

"Sure. Why not?" She watched his tongue dart out to lick his ice cream cone. "I think it'd be fun."

Only with great effort could she imagine Patrick Jane skiing. "Isn't it kind of late in the year for that?" she said dubiously. "I mean, it feels a little odd to think about skiing when we're in the park eating ice cream."

"There's still snow in the mountains," Jane pointed out. "And we're very close to the mountains. It would be easy to drive up there for a weekend getaway."

"You want to go on a weekend getaway?" Lisbon repeated. "We're in a strange town with no friends or family around. We're already away."

"Come on, it would be romantic," Jane wheedled.

"I'll go if you give me the rest of your ice cream," Lisbon said, only half kidding.

He handed her the ice cream.

She looked at the cone in her hand. "You're serious? You really want to do this?"

He rolled his eyes. "Yes, Teresa. I really want to have a romantic weekend away with you. Is that so hard to believe?"

"Yes," she said, licking the ice cream. "I can't imagine you skiing."

"How hard can it be? It can be our thing."

"Our thing?"

"Yeah, you know, an activity we can enjoy together as a couple. Besides catching killers, that is."

"I guess I just figured if we had a thing like that, it would be something sedentary, like going to a jazz club or something," she said. She licked the ice cream cone again. "You know there won't be any couches on the side of the mountain, right?"

He took her hand. "Maybe we can have two things. Crazier things have happened, you know."

To be honest, she couldn't think of anything crazier off hand, but if Jane wanted to try it, she was game. "All right," she conceded. "Let's try it out."

Xxx

When they got back to the house, Montrose was there waiting for them.

"Hey." Lisbon greeted her with a smile. "How are you?"

"Fine," Montrose said curtly. She glanced around. "Let's get inside."

"Nice to see you, too," Jane said, unlocking the door and gesturing for the women to precede him inside.

Montrose waited pointedly until Jane gave up and allowed her to bring up the rear.

The three of them sat down at the dining room table. Montrose took a cookie from the plate Jane had set out. "How's everything going? Getting settled in the new jobs okay?"

"Teresa's going to take down the bureau chief and strike a blow against tyranny everywhere," Jane informed her.

Montrose looked alarmed. "What?"

Lisbon swatted him on the knee. "Don't listen to him. Everything's going fine at the paper. And Patrick's getting to know the kids in his class and hasn't pissed off any of the parents too badly yet."

"I told you, Mrs. Pratt had it coming," Jane protested.

She rolled her eyes. "Anyway," she told Montrose. "Nobody's threatened to fire him, so he hasn't done anything yet that would even register on the Patrick Jane scale of disorder and disturbance."

Montrose blinked. "Oh. Well…good."

"What about you?" Lisbon asked. "Everything going all right?"

"So far so good," Montrose replied.

"And Soren? Where's he today?"

"He's in Albuquerque," Montrose told her. "Spending the weekend with his kids. He's coming back here on Monday."

It was Lisbon's turn to blink. "Oh—but… I'm sorry—what about you? Do you live here in Salt Lake?"

Montrose shook her head. "No, I live in Albuquerque, too."

Lisbon tilted her head to the side. "But you're just up here for the weekend?"

"No, I'm staying up here until this assignment's over."

Lisbon stared. "But—you don't know when that will be. It could be months…" she trailed off, belatedly realizing that Montrose had essentially put her life on hold to protect her for the foreseeable future.

Montrose shrugged. "Part of the job."

Lisbon looked at her, distressed. "But don't you—I thought marshals usually just checked in on their assignees on a periodic basis. Don't you have other cases?"

"Not right now," Montrose said. "This is an important assignment. Soren and I talked it over and we agreed we should keep the circle tight on this one. It's just the two of us unless we need backup for something. I take the weekend shifts so he can spend time with his family, and he'll relieve me on Monday. If I need to go back to Albuquerque for a day or two, I would go then, but we thought it would be better for both of us to be up here together as much as possible, so I don't plan to make many trips back unless they can't be avoided."

Lisbon was horrified. "Doesn't it get lonely?" she blurted out. "Being up here away from everyone you know?"

Montrose shrugged. "It's fine. I'm in touch with HQ every day. And me and Soren get along. It's worth the effort to keep you safe from Scalzi's goons."

"Well, you must come over for dinner sometime," Jane broke in. "You and Soren both. You can be our old college friends or something."

"Yes," Lisbon said, seizing on the idea with relief. It was the least they could do, for the sacrifices Montrose and Soren were making for their sakes. And it would be good for her and Jane to have people to talk to besides each other once in a while, too. "Patrick's an excellent cook."

Jane raised an eyebrow. "Unless that's against some ridiculous bureaucratic protector/protectee regulation or another?"

Montrose smiled. "No, that would be fine. It's not a bad idea, actually, to establish a cover so we have an excuse to check in with you more frequently."

"Excellent," Jane said, satisfied. "I'll take charge of working out the details, if you don't mind. I don't think much of the federal apparatus's ability to concoct an interesting cover."

"Suit yourself," Montrose said, amused. "Am I going to have an exotic pet like Jacinta the flamingo?"

Jane grinned. "I'll see what I can come up with."

"Any news on the case?" Lisbon asked. "Have they set a date for the trial yet?"

Montrose shook her head. "Not yet. They're keeping everything pretty close to the vest. I'll keep you posted as we find out more."

"Thanks."

"I do have something for you, though," Montrose said, reaching into her breast pocket.

"What's that?"

Montrose drew out a wad of envelopes rubber banded together and placed them on the table in front of Lisbon. "Letters from your brothers and your team."

"Really?" Lisbon seized the wad of letters and began pulling off the rubber band. "Oh, sorry—" she said, belatedly realizing she was being rather rude. She held up the handful of letters and looked at Montrose. "Do you mind?"

"Of course not," Montrose said, smiling faintly. "Please, go ahead."

Lisbon didn't need further encouragement. She tore open the first envelope and greedily read the first page—a letter from her brother James, complete with photos of his three kids. She read the one from Stan next, then one from Tommy with an enclosure from Annie. She had one from each member of the team, too. Rigsby's was mostly about Ben. She smiled over his anecdotes as well as the photo he'd included. Van Pelt's was newsy, reporting information about the lives of agents in the other units as well as their own, and an update on her family and a new Ashtanga yoga class she was taking. Cho's letter mainly summarized the status of the team's open cases and indicated he'd finished One Hundred Years of Solitude and had started reading East of Eden. Each of them told her to greet Jane for them. None of them mentioned Lorelei or Red John.

She looked up when she was finished. "The team says hi," she said to Jane, handing the letters from the team over to him so he could read them for himself.

"Excellent," Jane said, pleased. "Can I see the photos of your nieces and nephews, too?"

In the end, she gave him the letters from her brothers to read as well, consciously overriding her reflexive habit of concealing information about her family from Jane. He could use some connection with the outside world, too, she reasoned. Besides, things were different now. And Jane might consider this a positive step forward in terms of her own emotional openness towards him, an element of her behavior of which he was (probably justifiably) critical. Oh, crap, she realized. She was going to have to tell them about Jane when she wrote back. Well, about Jane and her. Or…did she, though? Rigsby, Van Pelt, and Cho had been at their wedding. She grimaced. The fake wedding. That everyone treated as real. Hell. She really hadn't explained anything properly to her brothers, either. They'd gotten the whole story from Montrose and Soren. She wondered if Soren had told them about the flamingo.

She'd ask Jane for advice, she decided. He'd probably advocate for himself adding a breezy postscript announcing the whole thing in the most embarrassing terms possible. Maybe that would be for the best, though. It would no doubt be humiliating, but at least she wouldn't have to agonize over exactly what to say about the matter, she thought wryly.

She watched Jane smile over something Annie had written. The letters had all been addressed to her, she realized with a frown. He hadn't received a single letter of his own. Even the ones from the team had included merely 'hellos' to Jane rather than just directing the letters to both of them.

"Don't fret, Teresa," Jane said without looking up from the letter he was reading. "I don't feel neglected, if that's what you're worrying about."

"I wasn't worried," she denied reflexively.

Jane smiled affectionately. "Liar."

"Okay, fine, I was a little worried," she admitted, acutely conscious of Montrose's presence.

"You needn't fret," Jane repeated. "The team still hasn't entirely forgiven me for the Vegas thing. I consider it very encouraging that they included me in their letters to you at all. Definitely a sign of a warming period."

"Of course they were going to include you," Lisbon said indignantly. "You're their friend."

"Yes. But I hurt them. And I hurt you, which to them is an even more grievous offense. Besides, they're more comfortable talking to you. I imagine they'd feel a little uncertain about what to include in a letter to me."

"You mean because you might mock their turn of phrase? Classify any remotely normal piece of information as 'tedious and unimaginative?' Parse each sentence for hidden meaning so a story about a trip to the dry cleaner ends up revealing some secret truth about their inner lives?" Lisbon said sarcastically.

"Well…yes, in essence," Jane admitted. "But not to worry. When you write back, I'll include several specific questions to each of them so they'll have an idea of what to say to me. You'll see. Once I do that, they'll start addressing the letters to both of us, and you won't have to worry anymore."

"All right," Lisbon said, though she still had misgivings. The thought that Jane didn't have anyone of his own to write to troubled her deeply.

"Of course, if you and I were separated, that would be a different story entirely," Jane went on.

She frowned. "How so?"

"I'd be so heartsick and lonely that I'd feel the need to pour out endless pages of sentimental drivel so you could properly appreciate the depth of my pining for you," Jane said matter of factly.

She scowled. That was rich, considering their recent history. "We were separated for six months and you didn't write me a single word."

"That was a miserable experience I plan never to repeat," Jane said firmly. He handed the letters back to her. "Hopefully, I'll never have to be separated from you again, but if I am, you should prepare yourself for an onslaught of epistolary affection."

"Hmph," Lisbon sniffed, torn between annoyance at the still galling fact of his silence during his six month absence and a confusing mix of alarm and reassurance derived from his casual statement that he never planned to be separated from her again.

"I'd be happy to wait if you want to write any replies for me to pass along," Montrose offered.

"Thank you," Lisbon said gratefully. "That's very kind."

Accordingly, she wrote out replies to each member of her family and her team, turning them over to Jane to add his own greetings to the end of each as he saw fit. When they were finished, Lisbon handed the replies over to Montrose.

"I'll make sure they get them," Montrose assured her.

"Thanks," Lisbon said, running her fingers over the comforting texture of the letters linking her back to her real life and everyone in it. Her mind drifted over the photos of the kids, who were all getting so big. A stab of pain lanced her chest. How much bigger would they all be when she finally saw them again? She recalled herself to the conversation with Montrose with some effort. Remembering her manners, she said, "Are you sure you don't want to stay for dinner?"

"Another time." Montrose stood to leave. "Thank you, though."

She moved to collect the original letters from the table. Lisbon instinctively tightened her grip, not wanting to let them go.

"I'm sorry," Montrose said apologetically. "I have to take them back with me. We can't have any evidence in the house that ties you to your true identities."

"Right," Lisbon said, shamefaced. "Of course." She reluctantly handed the letters over to Montrose.

Montrose tucked them into her inside jacket pocket. "Don't worry. I'll keep them safe," she promised.

After she left, though, Lisbon was inclined to feel melancholy. Jane drew her into his arms and pressed a sweet kiss behind her ear. "Don't be sad, my dear. Just think—in your next round of letters, you'll be able to tell them all about our adventures in skiing."

She shook her head, smiling despite herself. "We'll have to get someone to take a photo of us. I think they'll have to see it to believe it." But his words had the intended effect. Imagining the look on Rigsby, Cho, and Van Pelt's faces if they ever saw evidence of Jane attempting to ski definitely put a smile back on her face.