Firstly, apologies for not responding to all the amazing reviews, comments and support following the last chapter. I have no excuses ... I usually make a point of thanking those who I can message personally. I must be getting lazy.

So thank you one and all. I really appreciate every single word.

This chapter is much shorter than usual. And quite different in style. I found it rather ran away with itself and took off in it's own direction, but it turned out to be something I needed to write. However, I think it fits okay as a short reflective interlude before we get back to the meat of the story. I hope you will agree.

Patrick Jane was dreaming.

Being born with a brain that absorbed facts like a sponge and with a mind that craved knowledge like an addict needs his fix, it was inevitable that he dreamed more than the average human. His mind never stopped; even when he was asleep.

And so his nights were filled with dreams.

The dreams often woke him; it had been that way since the moment he could identify them as such, but he had also been blessed with a deeper wisdom and even as a young boy he had trained his subconscious brain to ride through the nightly overload of information without too much disruption. He still dreamed, but he also managed to sleep.

In very early childhood the dreams had often been glimpses of the mother he had barely known and had left him sobbing as she walked away into a world he could not enter. He never dreamt then about his father.

He quickly learnt the resilience to live without a mother's love and to be a happier boy, soaking in the unusual experiences of life as a carnival sideshow … a star of sorts, way before his time. But his dreams were wild with conflict … circus freaks, noise, drunken fights that he wasn't supposed to see, colourful shows and music, cheering audiences … and the shame of the things his manipulative father made him do.

It was then he taught himself to filter out the worst of these hidden and not so hidden messages and experiences and let them drift into a forgotten past, tucking away the valued ones in his capacious memory palace. And he began to build the protective walls that would stay with him throughout most of his life.

The years of early adulthood with Angela and later, his sweet Charlotte, had been different, so Patrick's sleep had been less troubled, save for the occasional build up of guilt over clients whose demands had necessitated the use of more dishonest behaviour than even he had been comfortable with. Most nights he slept like a baby.

Everything changed with his girls' slaughter at the hands of Red John.

It was inevitable.

For the first few months the bloodstained nightmares were uncontrollable … not that he tried (it was after all exactly what he deserved). Sophie Miller and her drugs helped, but the nightmares drove him to find his own solution.

And so he had landed at the feet of Teresa Lisbon and there began a decade of rehabilitation and revenge which changed the shape of his dreams again. He avoided sleep in favour of hours spent pouring over evidence, catching moments of rest only on worn brown leather or hard wooden planks. Obsession and sleep deprivation proved to be the perfect tool to keep the worst of the nightmares at bay and just occasionally he found he could still dream of sweeter things.

Some kind of freedom had come with Red John's death.

And with that freedom came uncertainty and confusion in his dreams … they seemed reluctant to allow him to look forward, reinforcing old guilts and insisting on adding new ones. With no cases to solve and no agents to annoy it was hard not to allow the dreams to fill his lazy lonely days as well as the hot tropical island nights. But try he did, and he found a degree of peace.

He filled the empty spaces in his head with thoughts of Teresa and with writing letters to smuggle back to her. And he spent long hours beachcombing for the nicest cowrie to remind her of him every time her eyes fell on it. He knew it would find pride of place on her desk. And, with a not too subtle hint from the FBI, the dreams of seeing her again won out over doubt and over those dreams of the past that hung around so stubbornly.

Unfortunately pleasant dreams can often deceive with false promises and flattering images, so coming home to Teresa wasn't as easy as advertised. When, after the initial euphoria had worn off, and the FBI hadn't played ball, she stung him with a harsh dose of reality, the dreams rebelled and plagued him with reminders of the loyalty he still owed, and would always owe, to his beautiful butchered family. What's more they nurtured the self doubt he just couldn't shake. She deserves better than you, they would taunt him. Back off … let her make her own choices, they would advise. Behave yourself … let her come to you, they said.

So he worked cases, tried to fit in. He sat, and watched from afar, and he listened to his dreams and her instructions to let her live her own life, until he could bear it no more. He listened until he saw the tears stream down her face as she sat in seat 12b and until his own tears landed on those old brown shoes; until he defied the traitorous dreams and declared his love for her and she told him to 'say it again'.

He'd hoped it would be plain sailing then; they were in love, they would work things out, do what felt right. But the dreams of longing, banished by their newly discovered love, left space in that overactive mind for dreams of loss and abandonment; painful reminders of what went before. He surrendered to those fear filled dreams … not exactly nightmares now, but agnawing painful reliving of how he'd suffered then.

He'd cracked; knowing he would not survive history repeating itself.

It took a superstition … a three legged mutt … to remind him that he was stronger than the nighttime wanderings of his subconscious mind; that their love could be stronger. That he could fill the voids once occupied by doubts and worries with dreams of evenings sipping good red wine, watching moonlight shimmering across the waters of a lake surrounded by trees. And he could dream now of other combinations of three.

Dreams of three were gently drifting through his mind right now, as he dozed restlessly, fully clothed but jacketless, dirty and exhausted; images of two intertwined bodies sleeping with a smaller little bundle warmly nestled between them.

He had no idea how long he'd been laying there, conscious but not conscious, slipping into sleep and out again; disturbed by a duplicitous body that told him to rest yet woke him with stabbing pains and tortured him with unremitting aching that demanded rearrangement of stiff limbs.

But it was raining and the sharply regular rhythm of glassy droplets on a metal roof was comforting in its familiarity. He'd grown up with it; it had been the soothing accompaniment to his boyhood dreams. It soothed him now.

He lay semi-conscious, unable or perhaps scared to open his eyes, heartbeat synched to the sound of the rain, till he stirred again and sought the comfort of the soft linen on which he lay. His hand automatically slid across the creases, allowing the fabric to crumple under his fingers. The gentle friction released a smell he knew and loved, a smell of clean cotton bedding; not a bed freshly made, but sheets with just a day or two of use … time enough to absorb the scents of its regular occupants.

Enveloped by the reassurance of familiar stimuli, he relaxed. He didn't pick up on the clues, the things he heard and smelt, and didn't open his eyes to see. He simply let his body go and listened to the pitter patter lullaby of autumn rain on a warm tin roof.

It rocked him back into dreaming … dreams of Teresa and Patrick and baby makes three.