Thought Police

Disclaimer: If you recognize it, it's not mine. This story is on an AU track.

Chapter 7: Night Respite

"I didn't expect you home."

Alex smiled, a teasing glint lighting her eyes. "Is that any way to greet your fiancee?"

Bobby laughed, pulling her into his arms and laying a kiss on her lips. "Don't get me wrong, it's a wonderful surprise. But it is a surprise, all the same."

"It's going to be a short night and a very early morning," she admitted. "But I didn't want to start off leading this group with a possible expectation of working all night. Most of the team are from out of town and still fighting jet-lag, and Zach and Serena are both the only parent at home for their respective kids."

"Hey," he said gently, "you don't have to explain yourself to me, remember?"

"I know." She sighed, slumping down on the couch. "I just - rationally, I know that there's nothing more to be done tonight. But I can't help the feeling that every minute I'm not working on this case is a lost opportunity. That even if I had a reason to send everyone else home or to their hotel, I should've stayed. I would've stayed," she added, "but one of the other agents said that if I was going to insist that everyone else needed a break, I ought to take my own advice."

"I agree with this other agent," he said as he sat down next to her, pulling her head to rest on his shoulder. "Between worrying about Carolyn and getting up with Sarah, you've probably had less sleep this past week than anyone on your team."

As if on cue, a wail floated down from the hall containing the bedrooms. Alex started to rise instinctively, but Bobby laid a gentle hand on her shoulder to stop her. "You're tired. Sit. I'll get her."

True to his word, Bobby was gone only a moment before he returned, their infant cradled in his arms, expertly handing her off to Alex. The blonde gently traced her daughter's face with a finger, marveling for the hundredth time at seeing her eyes in the little face, seeing her fiance's curls adorning the baby's head. She looked up just in time to see Bobby smiling warmly at her. "What?"

"It's just nice to see you like this. You're so much more relaxed than you were when you walked through the door."

"Yeah, well -" she smiled back, gently tickling Sarah's stomach and making her laugh in delight, "maybe I just needed some baby therapy."

He wrapped his arm around her, kissing the top of her head. "No better kind," he agreed.

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"Hello, you've reached Don and Robin, we're not available right now, please leave a message."

The agent cringed slightly at the sound of his own recorded message on the answering machine. Not the voice I wanted to hear at all. "Robin, it's Don," he began, trying to keep the tremor out of his voice. "I just...I just want to talk. Call me back, baby. Please. I love you."

"She could be working late," Charlie suggested weakly as his brother stowed his cell phone.

"Right. Working late and not answering her cell. Or checking her messages, because God knows she's got dozens she hasn't answered. Come on, Charlie, try living in the real world for a change."

"'Snap out of my precious bubble', right?" he retorted bitterly.

Don winced, hearing his own words from years earlier thrown back in his face. "That's not what I meant -"

"No? Maybe you didn't mean to use those exact words, but you've only been giving me variations on that lecture for my entire adult life. Only right now, the only thing I'm doing is trying to help! Maybe this time, you're the one who needs to snap out of it!"

"Snap out of...what, exactly? Unlike some people in this room, I don't check out of the world when things get tough! Yeah, maybe I've had a shitty month, but I'm still getting done what I need to get done! I'm not locked in a garage somewhere looking for a solution that doesn't exist!"

To Don's surprise, Charlie didn't yell back. Silence reigned for a moment, and when the younger man spoke, it was in a calm, controlled tone. "No, you're right. Look, you said once that I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't then, but I think - I think I do now. I was trying to escape."

"Yeah, well, good for you. You finally figured it out."

"The thing is, I don't think you know what you're doing right now. You're angry at the world, but there's nowhere to aim all that anger, so instead you're taking it out on me." He reached over and gave his brother's shoulder a gentle squeeze. "Don, if I thought for a second that yelling at me was going to help, I'd stand here and be a target, all night if I had to. But this...this is no more useful than P vs NP. It's just another way of trying to avoid the pain."

A sound escaped Don's throat that might have been a chuckle, and he turned to look at his brother. "Since when did you become my shrink?"

Charlie shook his head. "Not a shrink. Just a Don Eppes expert."

"What's the difference?"

Charlie laughed lightly, but it didn't last. "Don, if you want to talk..."

"What's to talk about? My life's nearly in ruins, my wife's refusing to return my phone calls - just another day in the life of Don Eppes."

"Right." Charlie sighed, sitting back down on the hotel bed. "If you change your mind, you know where to find me."

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"And how are you holding up?"

Lisbon smiled as she laid back against the pillows, immediately aware of the reason for her husband's unusual emphasis on that one word. "We're doing just fine. Although," she admitted, "we may need to get some new pants when we get back to Austin. Baby Jane's taking up more room every day." A shocked, almost pained look crossed his face, alarming her. "What? What did I say?"

"Baby Jane," he whispered. "That's what Angela called Charlotte before we knew she was going to be a girl."

"I'm sorry," she whispered back. "I'll think of something else."

"No," he contradicted. "Don't. I'm not unhappy about it, I just -" he swallowed hard. "After I lost them, I thought I'd lost my one chance at happiness. This - laying here, next to my wife, talking about our child inside her - I would've said it was impossible. At first because I couldn't imagine falling in love again. Then because I fell for a woman I was sure could never love me back." He ran his fingers through her dark hair, cupping her cheek in the process. "What I didn't tell you on the plane was just how long I've loved you for."

"How long?"

"I don't know, exactly," he admitted. "I think - I think I started to feel it when I saw you with the father of that teenage girl who was drowned, the one who I could tell reminded you of you. But I knew it for sure when that sheriff, Hardy, pointed the gun at you. Just minutes earlier, I'd admitted for the world to hear that catching Red John meant more to me than my own life, and I meant it. But in that moment, when Hardy was going to kill you, I realized that catching Red John meant less to me than your life." He pressed a long, lingering kiss to her lips. "I'd lost one woman I loved to him, I couldn't lose another."

She gently pulled him down on the bed beside her. "Why didn't you ever say anything?"

"Where do you want me to start? I didn't think you could ever love me back. I didn't think I deserved happiness, not after my own selfishness caused so much pain. I didn't want to commit to anyone new until I'd avenged my first family. What does it matter? I didn't, and then I did."

"Your timing could've been a little better."

"I thought it was just about perfect."

She lightly cuffed the back of his head before pulling him against her. "Come here, you goofball."

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"What's eating you?"

Liz gave a soft chuckle which turned into a sigh, sitting down on the bed. "That obvious, huh?"

Nikki smiled. "Girl, please. I think I know by now when you're brooding."

"It's Don. I'm worried about him."

"Y'know," Nikki teased, "for an ex -"

"Don't say it," Liz groaned. "And you know what I mean."

"Yeah, I know what you mean," she relented. "You're worried he's gonna go all obsessive again."

"We've seen it before. He did it on the Duryea case, he did it on the Buck Winters case. And this was before your time, but when we thought Colby was a traitor, he sat in the media room watching the interrogation over and over for hours on end. If he had actually been guilty, I'm not sure Don ever would've gotten over it."

"He doesn't seem to be doing that, though," the junior agent remarked.

"Yet. But this case has all of the pieces that lead him down that road. A personal connection, specifically of a type that could make him feel responsible -"

"Like the missing people being members of a team he led."

"Exactly. Add to that a case with no easy answer and major stress in his personal life, and you get the perfect recipe for one of Don's obsessions."

"Except," Nikki pointed out, "he's not leading the team this time. He and the other team leader decided to put Lieutenant Eames in charge."

"True," Liz admitted. "You think she'll keep him out of his head?"

"That's my sense of it, anyway. I mean, you know him better than I do, but from what I've seen, the best way to get him out of that funk is to give him something to do. In the past, it's been circumstance that gave him that, but in this case, I think being assigned a specific task would serve the same purpose. And the Lieutenant is more than capable of that; look how she handled all twelve of us without missing a step."

Liz grinned at her friend and, for the moment, roommate. "You admire her."

"Damn straight. She's a kick-ass woman who gets the job done, and still manages to do it without trampling people. When I get my own team, that's the kind of boss I want to be."

"When?" Liz teased, feeling the knot of anxiety around her stomach loosen the more they talked. "Please. With your track record it's more like if; and a big if, at that."

Nikki threw a pillow at her. "Shut up."

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"Are you okay?"

Zach looked down into the face of the little girl who had so captured his heart the year before. "I'm okay," he assured her.

She bit her lip, considering. "You don't look okay," she said after a moment. "You look sad."

That drew a smile from him. My little profiler. "I guess I am a little bit, but it's nothing for you to worry about."

"Daaaad," she protested, drawing out the word. "I'm not a baby. You don't have to hide things from me."

Despite the lightness of her statement, he felt tears well up behind his eyes. No, she's not. And not just because of her age. She's not even ten, and she's seen more than anyone should. Out loud, he said only, "I saw a friend today that I haven't seen in a long time."

She considered this. "But shouldn't that make you happy?"

"Perceptive as always." He hugged her. "And yes, it does. But I haven't seen him since - since before you were born, little girl," he said, tousling her hair affectionately. "It makes me realize how much I've missed. Huge things happened in his life, and until today I didn't know about any of it. And I'm sure he'd say the same for me."

There was more, but he couldn't say it, even to Andrea. Bringing up his own older brother would only hurt her. Thankfully, she didn't press. He changed the subject before she could pick up on the fact he was hiding something. "And how are you doing?"

She leaned her head against his shoulder, burrowing deeper into his arms. "I'm okay now. I'm sorry."

"Don't, Andrea. It's not your fault." He rubbed her back gently.

"I just don't understand," she said after a moment. "I thought I was allowed to go out of the lunchroom if I need to. Why did the teacher stop me?"

"Because -" he struggled for an explanation that would make sense to her, and one that didn't point fingers as he was so tempted to do. "Because not everyone understands that you have special rules," he said finally. "Teachers are used to having one set of rules for everybody. Sometimes it takes them awhile to get used to the idea that that's not always how it works."

He kept his voice calm, but underneath he was seething. He could've easily predicted that being blocked from leaving a room, especially one she was trying to leave in the first place because she was overstimulated, would trigger the lingering effects of the horror she'd suffered. He had anticipated it, in fact, which was why he'd made sure that it was in her plan that exactly that should never happen. But still, he seemed to get a call every few weeks telling him that she'd had a problem, invariably related to something that wasn't supposed to have happened. "Listen," he continued, "I'll schedule a meeting to talk to your principal and the guidance counselor as soon as possible, okay? Will you be all right until then?"

"I'll be okay."

He shifted her in his arms so he could look her in the eyes. "Andrea, listen to me. If you ever don't feel like it's okay, if you don't feel safe, you can always call for someone to come get you, okay? Always."

"Okay," she agreed. "I love you, Dad."

And no matter how many times he heard it, that never failed to melt his heart into a puddle. "I love you too."

A little heavier on the fluff and lighter on the plot than some of the other chapters, but some of this will be important to the story to some degree, and I liked the idea of getting a "status check" on the characters.

For those who don't know The Mentalist, a huge piece of the premise of the series is that Jane's first wife and daughter were slaughtered by a serial killer (what led him to start working with the police). The issue between Don and his wife Robin, however, is my own creation and is deliberately ambiguous - it'll piece together in due time.

The cases that Liz mentions where Don went into obsessive mode are (in order of mention) Angels and Devils, Arrow of Time, and Trust Metric. For those trying to keep up, in the latter episode, Colby deliberately tricked everyone including the team into believing he was a traitor in order to flush out a real one.

The situation with Andrea is something that is unfortunately common for children with special needs in public schools; having to struggle to obtain accommodations only to have them ignored anyway. I put Andrea (who would likely have some form of PTSD after the events of Little Girl Lost) into that narrative in order to set up a piece of the story, but it is very much based in real life.

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