Title: Charlotte's Web (Chapter 40)
Rating: M for graphic violence and language
Fandom: The Mentalist
Summary: Patrick Jane has lived his life obsessed with the capture of Red John ever since finding his beloved wife and daughter slain by the maniac's hand. Now, 10 years to the day after that horrific night, a young woman appears in Patrick's life, someone who threatens to destroy everything his life has become in the interim... if not his sanity, itself.
Author's Note: Thanks for the reviews, loyal readers. It's been a very exhausting road and we've got maybe 20% of this story left. Thanks so much for all the constructive criticism and feedback. Hope you enjoy this latest installment... Charlotte is down, but not out.
"There is, in every event, whether lived or told, always a hole or a gap, often more than one. If we allow ourselves to get caught in it, we find it opening onto a void that, once we have slipped into it, we can never escape." - Brian Evenson, Fugue State
"Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways." - Sigmund Freud
"Always keep your foes confused. If they are never certain who you are or what you want, they can not know what you are likely to do next." - George R.R. Martin, A Storm of Swords
Monday, November 6th, 2013 6:13 p.m. PST
Lisbon woke up slowly. She knew she had been asleep a long while, much more than 8 hours. She could hear the hum of the refrigerator and knew, instantly, where she was. Jane's Malibu beach home. They had slept the entire day away. Lisbon got off the couch Jane had brought downstairs, rubbed at her eyes. She still felt tired, knew she could probably go back under and sleep away another 8 hours with ease, but she wanted to check on Jane.
What had Jane said that morning, while they both stared at each other in exhaustion?
Right, that was right. He was going to sleep in Charlotte's room on an inflatable air mattress. Someone had to stay near Charlotte, just in case...
Lisbon wandered into the kitchen, felt along the wall for the light switch. Found it. True to their word, the electricity people had reconnected them. Lisbon looked around the hardwood kitchen. Looked in the cupboards. There were two teacups on one of the shelves, a selection of boxed teas, no other dishes. No food, of course. Lisbon pulled one of the teacups down and filled it with water from the kitchen sink. She drank water, slowly oriented herself, slowly allowed her foggy brain to wake up and fill in the blanks.
She'd been so exhausted by the time Jane had made up the couch for her that she'd been out like a light within seconds. She now felt more or less human again.
Lisbon put the teacup in the sink and walked out of the kitchen, through the hall, stopping at the foot of the stairs. She looked up, considered the rise above her. Was Jane still asleep? Was Charlie?
Lisbon cocked her head and listened. She couldn't hear anything. Slowly, she ascended the stairs. She wandered down the hallway to the room she knew belonged to Charlotte and opened the door.
Jane was still asleep on the air mattress, dead to the world. He had crashed, and he had crashed hard. Lisbon looked over at the makeshift bed. Charlotte was awake, her eyes unfocused and staring at the ceiling. Something about the teen seemed different from the way she had presented the day before. She still seemed out of it, but not quite so blank. The light from the little battery powered lantern was still on and she looked much younger than 16 in its glow. Jane had left it on while he slept, no doubt using it as an impromptu nightlight.
"Hey, Charlotte," Lisbon said gently, stopping at the door. She wasn't sure what she expected. Charlotte blinked as if trying to clear her vision. Slowly, the girl's eyes turned to find Lisbon standing there and staring at her. Lisbon smiled at the teenager. Got a slow blink back for her effort. Charlotte seemed to be seeing people, now, as opposed to looking through them. Her pretty face was pale and bruised- but also soft, quaintly innocent. She looked more confused than anything. Not yet back to her "old" self, but not completely withdrawn either.
The movement and the talking, however soft, woke Jane then. He yawned, sat up, and rubbed at his eyes, groaning. Finally he blinked up at Lisbon, much like his daughter had.
"Good morning, Lisbon," he said in a sleep-clogged voice, and smiled at her. Stared towards the window and seemed to process something. "Or good evening, I guess. What time is it?"
"Jane," Lisbon said, and nodded towards Charlotte. Charlotte's eyes were on Jane now. Jane nodded and followed Lisbon's glance. Saw his daughter looking at him. Not through him, but at him.
She was seeing him, processing his presence in real time. Jane grinned at her, clearly delighted by her partial return from la-la land. She wasn't all the way back, but something in her eyes was aware, now, versus the vacant marble look they'd had the day before.
"Hey," Jane said happily, sitting fully up on the air mattress, letting out a low groan as he stretched. "Hey, Charlie. You feeling better?" His voice still sounded gravelly and exhausted, but he looked better. Jane rubbed at his eyes, ran a hand through his golden hair, blinked to clear the fog of sleep.
Charlotte looked around her room slowly, taking it all in. Her gaze went up to the IV bag hanging above her head, then traced the IV line down to her mangled, livid hand. She looked at her fingers, broken and bruised, and an expression of fear crossed her face. She looked back at her father questioningly.
"Charlie?" Jane said concernedly. He got up and went over to her. Sat beside her bed. It didn't take a mentalist to see that she was confused and unnerved. "What's the matter?"
She didn't speak for a long while, and then she did. Her voice was soft and forlorn, much younger sounding than sixteen.
"Look at the fingers," she said, and Lisbon wasn't sure what to call the emotion behind those words. Fear? Dismay? Confusion? Jane nodded slowly, trying to gather as much information about what was going on as he could. Obediently, to show he was paying attention, he looked down at his daughter's mangled hand. Nodded sadly.
"Yes, your fingers are very swollen. Do they hurt?" He was using his most soothing voice, prodding her mind, her awareness, ever so gently. To Lisbon he reminded her of a pediatrician palpating a child's abdomen, except what he was palpating was Charlotte's psyche and he was using words instead of fingers to find out where the problem was. Charlotte blinked again, as if trying to clear her vision. She kept looking at her battered hand, expression somewhere between fear and disbelief. Jane watched her carefully, eyes scanning her face for possible nonverbal cues.
"What happened to the fingers?" Charlotte said, glaring down at them now, brow furrowing. For his part, Jane looked completely calm, but Lisbon knew he had caught that little slip. Charlotte had used the word "the" instead of "my". She wasn't allowing herself to identify with her own body. Too much had happened.
Her body was a liability, it was a cage that housed her consciousness. When she was present in "the" body she could be tortured and abused. So she was distancing herself from it. It was a healthier defense mechanism than a lot of people realized, a way to retain sanity.
"What do you remember happening to your fingers?" Jane asked gently, still looking at his daughter's face closely, then down at her hand, before looking up at her face again. He was still sitting down near her bed, cross-legged, looking up at her. His body language and position was carefully subservient and non-threatening.
Charlotte flexed her hand and tried to move the splinted fingers. Slowly, some of the unbroken fingers moved. The splinted fingers bent slighty, just a little, but not much. The girl shook her head, a small furrow forming between her eyebrows again, but she didn't speak. She tried once again to move the fingers, chewed on her lower lip in concentration, eyes round and huge, overwhelmed and oddly numb, all at the same time. Her pupils were very large again, a sign Lisbon knew equated to fear. When Charlotte's pupils were that large, she was scared. Very scared.
"They're all purple," she finally said in a forlorn voice, and huffed out a low sigh. "They look like sausages."
"Careful. They're healing, Charlotte," Jane said with infinite patience, and he put one of his hands on her hand and stroked the skin around the IV port. Charlotte watched his movements carefully, inspecting everything he did as if not quite sure who he was or what he was doing. Lisbon couldn't really imagine how hard it must be for Charlotte, to try and heal from her torture at Red John's hands, but to have her father look so much like Red John... did Jane trigger his own daughter, simply because of what he looked like? It seemed more than likely, and another layer of the cruelty that Red John had buried both his brother and niece under, whether intentional or not.
The teen finally looked back over at Lisbon, who was still watching the interaction from the open doorway. Lisbon smiled warmly at the girl in what she hoped was a reassuring manner. Charlotte tilted her head, blinked, seemed to trace the outline of Lisbon's face with her eyes. She still seemed dazed and not fully conscious. But at least she was talking and making eye contact. At least she was seeing the real world to some degree. That was a step in the right direction, to be sure.
"Do you know who that is?" Jane prodded, looking back at Lisbon. Charlotte squinted, as if her vision were poor. Lisbon waited patiently.
"Hmmm. She's pretty," Charlotte told the room, not quite answering Jane's question. Jane smiled at his daughter gently, caught Lisbon's eye and gently shook his head, indicating Lisbon shouldn't announce her identity. Not just yet. .
"Yes, she is pretty. But do you remember her name, Charlotte?" Jane was speaking in slow, simple sentences. Repeating Charlotte's name often. Lisbon knew he was trying to ground her in reality. Keep her from being overwhelmed, but bring her back to the present.
Charlotte looked back at Lisbon and squinted again. Finally shook her head, no. Jane nodded, as if he had expected as much. Pieces arranged themselves in his mind.
They were dealing with some sort of dissociative episode brought on by extreme trauma, extreme fear. Some sort of fugue state. To push her too quickly could be counter-productive and cause more pain and long-term anxiety, but to let her live in denial would lead nowhere. It would be a difficult balancing act.
"That's Lisbon," Jane finally told the girl, eyes intently locked on his child's face. "Do you remember her now, Charlotte?"
"Hmmm," Charlotte said, and nodded. It wasn't an answer so much as a place holder. That little "hmmm" gave the illusion of an answer without actually saying anything. Jane smiled tenderly at his child, let out a low sigh.
"Do you know who I am?" Jane said softly, carefully, after ten seconds of silence.
Charlotte looked back at him. Lisbon held her breath, suddenly afraid of what Charlie might say, of what her answer might mean for Jane. If she said... Lisbon pushed the thought away.
"You look like my Daddy," Charlotte said, words uncertain, tinged with sadness. Jane nodded. Charlotte looked puzzled by the nod. Lisbon felt herself relax just a little, and sucked in a breath. Pinpricks of light danced in front of the CBI agent's vision.
"But you're not him," Charlotte added.
"I'm not?" Jane coaxed, looking back at Lisbon, nodding that it was okay for Lisbon to come into the room, to join them. She wouldn't scare Charlotte.
"No," Charlotte said, looking over to Lisbon for help. Finally she shook her head.
"I am your Daddy, Charlotte," Jane said slowly, eyes scanning her face, gauging her reaction. She didn't respond for a long while, and when she did it was to shake her head. No.
"No, you're not. It's impossible. You're not my Daddy."
Jane looked at her searchingly and nodded his head again. "Why do you say it's impossible?"
"Red John killed my Daddy," Charlotte said softly, and her eyes darted towards the now empty doorway, as if she were afraid the aforementioned monster might appear to fill the space at any moment. Jane felt a chill race through him. He got up and went to the open door and closed it shut. Tried the light switch on the side of the wall. Warm light filled the room from the ceiling lamp. Jane came back over to Charlotte and sat down beside her bed again. Lisbon watched him closely, seated near where Jane sat in front of his child's bed. He didn't seem too certain about how to process this latest bit of information.
"I am your Daddy," Jane finally said again, voice confident but still very gentle. "I can promise you that. Red John didn't kill me."
Charlotte stared at him a long moment. Finally sighed, loudly. She was obviously confused and fearful, that much was obvious.
"Red John killed my Mommy and Daddy," the girl started, uncertain, eyes trailing from Jane to Lisbon and back to Jane again. She looked so small and battered and forlorn, Lisbon had the sudden urge to go to her, hug her. Comfort her. Instead she just watched from where she sat on the floor, cross-legged. If anyone could get through to her it would be Jane.
"Charlotte, how old are you?" Jane asked softly. She stared at him for a moment, a look of confusion on her face. She looked down at her hands. Frowned at the dark, swollen fingers with the ends covered in gauze to protect the nails that had been ripped out in that hellish little coffin. If she were in pain, she gave no outward sign. But Jane knew she was in pain. Even if she no longer processed it consciously, she was in pain. Deep pain.
"I don't know. I died a long time ago."
"You think you're dead?" Jane questioned, voice little more than a whisper, but Lisbon could hear the change in his words. This was deeper than a mere dissociative episode. This was pure delusion. The girl was still staring at her hands, mouth moving as if she were saying something to herself silently. Lisbon watched Jane carefully, could almost smell the sadness on him. He was trying hard to seem calm and unaffected, but she knew he was hurting deeply for his child and Lisbon's heart broke for him.
"Look at the fingers. Look... look at the fingers. So many fingers have been hurt."
Lisbon was starting to get an idea of what she was dealing with now, a sense of the extreme trauma and damage that had been done to the kid's psyche. Charlotte was in some regressed state. Her mind didn't know how to process everything that had happened to her. And who could possibly blame her? But it was remembering enough of the horror to fill in the blanks with Red John. Lisbon continued to watch from where she sat, cross-legged, on the floor. She barely dared to breathe too loudly. Her eyes flickered over Jane's rugged features, back to Charlotte's dazed, pale face, then back to Jane.
This didn't seem like a problem that was going to be fixed anytime soon. Even with Jane's masterful mentalist abilities.
Jane covered his daughter's small hands with his much larger ones. Looked into her eyes like he did when he was trying to make a connection with someone. Charlotte's eyes flickered to meet his, then flickered away, as if she couldn't stand the intensity in his blue gaze for more than a second. When she looked at him, who was she seeing? A look of fear passed over her wan face like a shadow, and Lisbon felt more than saw Jane tense up, unsure how to proceed. Then it passed and Jane relaxed a little.
"Charlotte, you're not dead. You didn't die. Red John didn't kill you. I promise you that. You're not dead. Those fingers? The ones you keep looking down at? Those are your fingers. Those are your hands, Charlotte."
Charlotte sighed again. She looked over to Lisbon. Looked back down at her hands.
"Look at the fingers, so hurt. Look. So far away..."
Jane nodded sadly. Gently touched her hand again and stroked the skin with his thumb. Charlotte eventually looked at him.
"Do your hands hurt? Do your fingers hurt? Charlotte?"
She frowned at that. Looked over at Lisbon, as if Lisbon perhaps had the cheat sheet. Lisbon gave the girl another smile. She didn't know what else to do. Her smile felt strained on her face, overly bright and tragic.
"This was my room," Charlotte told Lisbon plaintively in response to the smile, much the way a small child would. Something about that response made everything somehow much more sad. Charlotte was still trapped in her five year old mind. The interim had been a trip to Hell.
"Yes," Lisbon agreed slowly, nodding, smiling, analyzing everything. The air in the room felt too hot, almost musty. The teen looked back at her father with her green laser eyes.
"When... when I was alive? I had more things. More than this." Charlotte moved the hand without the IV line, gesturing the mostly empty room. Jane smiled at her again, but Lisbon saw the pain in his eyes.
"Charlie, all your stuff? I still have it. I put it up in the attic. It's up there waiting for you."
"No," Charlotte said, and stared down at her lap. "It's gone. He burned it up."
"Who did?" Jane asked quickly, eyes flashing with intensity.
"The devil," Charlotte said softly. "The devil burned it all up. After I died. When I went to Hell."
Jane was silent a long moment. Lisbon could see his jaw flexing. He very rarely became rattled, and even when he was, he was exceptional at dissimulating his emotions. But he was upset now, and it showed in the way he was clenching his jaw, the look of loss and grief in his eyes. His daughter was alive, but she had suffered so, so much. Lisbon knew he was hurting for his child.
"You went to Hell?" Jane asked, almost too soft to be heard, voice cotton batting, voice a whisper in the wind. But Charlotte heard him. Nodded. Jane nodded back to indicate he understood.
"Why did you go to Hell, Charlotte?" He asked, focus like a laser. Charlotte looked more confused and uneasy than anything else, as if Jane might be trying to trick her. She looked back over at Lisbon, expression uneasy. Lisbon smiled at her encouragingly but the smile felt strained on her face. There was nothing going on in this conversation that deserved a smile, but what other options were there when it came to replying?
"Charlotte, hey," Jane coaxed, redirecting her attention. "Can you tell me why you think you went to Hell? Did Red John tell you that? Is that what he told you?" Lisbon could hear the venom in Jane's voice, under the forced calm.
Charlotte didn't respond, just stared at Jane with a dazed, open look on her face.
"Did Red John tell you that?" Jane tried again, a dog with a bone.
It was a fair enough conclusion to draw, Lisbon guessed. The child had witnessed her mother die and had been kidnapped by a genius manipulator who had planted all sorts of craziness in her head and tortured her for the next decade. If that wasn't Hell, what was?
Charlotte had been in the first grade when Red John took her. Over the next ten years, the monster with her Daddy's face had destroyed her childhood, her sense of goodness in the world, her sense of safety, even her sanity. All of her elementary school years had been lived out inside the yawning black hole of insanity and depravity that was her life as Red John's protegee. Her middle school years had also been swallowed by that black hole. Her entry into teenage-hood and then into young adulthood, swallowed by that very same blackness. Charlotte had become emancipated, learned to kill, learned to see death as something both theatrical and artificial... and her emotions had never had a safe place to grow.
Emotionally she was still very much a six year old.
Jane watched her, waiting for his answer.
"What I did," Charlotte said, voice little more than a whisper. "So I went to Hell. For what I did."
"What did you do?" Jane prised out carefully. Charlotte sighed again. Drew in a deep breath. Looked at her father, over at Lisbon, back at Jane. Jane smiled at her, but there was no real comfort in it.
"Charlie?"
"What I did?" Charlotte tried again, looking to Jane for help, unsure of her own truth, her own reality. Whatever she was wrestling with, it was something she obviously felt a lot of guilt over. Jane nodded at her, and Lisbon saw the hand that was covering her's squeeze, just a little. A gesture of comfort.
"You can tell me," Jane tried again, keeping his tone of voice light and unaffected. "You can tell me. I won't be mad. Lisbon? She won't be mad, either."
Charlotte let out a deep exhale. Looked away from her father, away from Lisbon.
"I let them die," she said in a small voice. "I let my... I let them die."
"You let who die?" Jane said with amazing calm, even though Lisbon was pretty sure he already knew what she was going to say.
"My... my Mommy and my Daddy. I let... him... I let Red John kill them. Because of me... that he killed them. My...fault."
"How did you do that?" Jane said very gently. Lisbon barely dared to breathe again.
"I upset Red John. I made him mad. Because I was bad. He wanted me to come with him and I ran away. So he..." Her words trailed off. She was out of words. She stared at Jane as if begging him to understand.
He did.
"You ran from Red John?"
Charlotte nodded slowly. Jane nodded back.
"I hided from him under my bed when he wanted me to come with him. If I had gone with him then he wouldn't have..." She trailed off, unable to finish the sentence.
"And that made him mad?" Jane, so calm.
"That made him kill them," Charlotte corrected, sighing, voice shaking out of her. "I made him mad. And he killed my mommy. And then he killed my Daddy." Her voice hadn't gotten any louder, hadn't changed in any obvious way, and yet Lisbon could almost feel the screams in it. Lisbon felt chills run down her spine, around her belly, over her genitals; she felt cold all over, then hot. Jane was ramrod straight, rigid. He heard the screams in his daughter's words too, apparently.
"No," Jane said, finally, shaking his head for added emphasis.
"No, that's not true. That's not true at all. You didn't make Red John kill anyone. He was lying to you. You didn't let your Mommy or Daddy die. That was a lie he told you. He was lying to you. He was a liar, Charlotte."
"I ran from him," Charlotte said stubbornly, looking at Jane's hand covering her's. Jane nodded.
"I hided under my bed," Charlotte said again, stuck on her own perceived crimes. Jane nodded again. Over the last decade he'd tortured himself with his own perceived shortcomings more times than he could count. He knew how hard it was to accept the truth that sometimes life was unfair, sometimes you were the victim of a force much larger than yourself and had no power.
Jane was out of words. What could he possibly say to make this better? Sometimes words weren't enough, not enough by a long shot. The mentalist was silent for a moment, mulling over what he wanted to say.
Finally he spoke.
"Red John didn't kill me. That was a lie he told you, to confuse you and upset you. He didn't kill me. I'm right here, Charlotte. Right here, with you."
Charlotte stared at him tiredly. Her soul was exhausted.
"He killed my Mommy," the girl tried, unsure of herself, trying to hold on to whatever she knew that might be true.
"Yes," Jane admitted soberly, nodding, eyes full of darkness. "Yes. He did kill your Mommy. I'm so sorry about that."
"But not my Daddy?"
"No. I'm not dead. You're not dead, either."
The girl looked unsure. Confused. And not quite sane. She was teetering on the edge of a long drop into somewhere very dark and very ugly.
"Oh," she finally said. Jane nodded at the oh. It was a reasonable enough response. "Oh". Jane couldn't find it within himself to tell her she hadn't gone to Hell. In all the ways that really mattered, she had gone to Hell, and he wasn't gone to deny her the words for that experience, the validation of the extremity of the torture she had suffered. She had gone to Hell.
They both had gone to Hell.
Monday, November 6th, 2013 9:81 p.m. PST
The hours trundled by. Jane showed the girl where the bathroom was, where the toilet paper was. He disconnected her IV, pulled it from her hand. He pulled Lisbon aside, talked to her, and Lisbon ushered Charlotte into the washroom and gently washed the inked smiley face off her abdomen while Charlotte sat on the toilet and stared off into space
They ordered pizza and Charlotte nibbled at veggie pizza, eyes over-bright and expression a little numb. She was exhausted, and not just physically. After the pizza, Jane carefully guided her up to the attic and showed her the neatly stacked boxes of her old things. He showed her photographs, her old toys and books and dolls, puzzles and board games, drawings and little animals made out of oven bake clay she'd made a lifetime ago.
Charlotte stared at everything with heavily lidded eyes, as if remembering memories from a past life, pale and eerily still. It was hard for her to pick up things with several of her fingers broken and splinted, but she gently patted the dolls Jane showed her, pupils still dilated, eyes glassier by the hour. She sat cross-legged and looked at the old books of her earliest childhood: Where the Wild Things Are, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Goodnight Moon, Harold and the Purple Crayon, The Velveteen Rabbit, Frog and Toad are Friends... not burned up. The devil hadn't burned her things up after all. Her Daddy had saved her things...
She sat, slowly paging through the books, eyes scanning over the illustrations. Jane watched her tenderly. Lisbon sat next to her, smiling as the child-in-the-teeager's-body flipped the pages. Half the books had Charlotte's early childhood scrawl in the front of them, her name written in various shades of crayola green marker. CHARLOTTE. Sometimes Chartolle and once (Lisbon saw, smiling) Cahrletto.
"Do you want me to read you a book?" Jane asked, paging through some of the old storybooks himself, occasionally reading a sentence aloud. Charlotte seemed to consider his offer, shook her head. Jane nodded. They sat for a while longer, Charlotte just processing this long overdue trip down memory lane. It was hard to know what she was thinking, what she was feeling.
"Do you remember these dolls?" Jane asked softly about fifteen minutes later, showing her them one by one, stacking the books near the box they'd come out of. She shrugged, stared at the toys with a faraway dreamy look in her eyes.
"Red John is dead, Charlie. I saw him die. I killed him."
The girl had been gently patting an old American Girl doll. She looked over at her father uncertainly.
"Red John can't die," she said, as if he was a little simple-minded for even suggesting as much.
"Red John can die," Jane confirmed solemnly, eyes scanning her open face. "Red John can definitely die. He was a human being. And he did die. He's gone. It's over."
"Red John was never human," Charlotte said, looking up from her pile of little rubber dinosaurs. She had seen them in a museum gift store at the age of three and a half and become totally engrossed. Jane had purchased the entire set, all twenty of them, even though they were hand painted and intended more for adult collectors than children right out of training pants.
"Death is..." the girl started, looking inward now. She seemed overwhelmed, unable to process anything more, but too stubborn to give up. "Death is the end of a life. Forever. There is no coming back from it. It's permanent."
"Yes," Jane confirmed slowly, wondering where this was going. Charlotte looked down at her little rubber deinonychus, picked it up between two unsplinted figures, inspected the detailed body. Was silent, considering.
"Red John is a spirit. Not a body. So he can't end," Charlotte told the raptor toy in her hands. Jane nodded tiredly. He knew she believed what she was saying. He couldn't believe it, but Charlie most definitely did believe it, and he wasn't going to upset her by arguing with her.
"How can life ever end?" Charlotte asked a moment later, when Jane didn't respond. This was said with dawning horror, with the unreal terror that accompanied thanatophobia. The finality, the certainty, of death... was dizzying. More so, of course, for a kid who had seen death framed as torture and horror for such a long time. Jane knew, looking at her, that her subjective experience of reality and space and time was very different from what it otherwise would be. Red John had pushed her right up to the edge of madness and left her teetering on the brink. Sometimes she seemed to be falling, though. He caught the look of terror in her eyes in those moments, a sudden look of panic.
"You know what death is," Jane said gently. "It's when a person... or sometimes an animal... gets old and sick... the body stops living and is buried. The body disappears."
"Am I going to disappear?" Charlotte asked, staring down at her hands, her purple, splinted, damaged fingers so easily changed by injury.
"No," Jane said, catching Lisbon's eye. Charlotte was too upset. It was time to wrap this up. There was a difference between helping someone see reality and overwhelming them right out of the gate.
"When I die I will disappear," Charlotte said, clearly haunted. Jane was silent. Eventually nodded.
"Yes. Your body will disappear." Just because he had never believed in a soul didn't mean Charlotte couldn't gain comfort from that idea.
"I don't want to disappear," she said in the same low, haunted tone. "I don't want to turn into nothing."
"You don't have to worry about that right now," Jane said gently.
"I already half disappeared," she said a long moment later, voice little more than a whisper. "I'm already almost faded away."
Jane didn't know what to say to that, Lisbon knew. For the first time the enormity of the damage his child had sustained began to ping in his conscious mind. And with it, the fear that nothing he could do might bring her back and ground her again. There was an autistic quality to her, borne completely of trauma and horror. What sort of treatment could there possibly be? No medication or drug could fix this. Most therapists, Lisbon knew, would be totally out of their depth.
It would be a slow journey back to wellness, if, indeed, it was possible at all.
"You didn't fade away, Charlotte. You're right here. You're right here at home and you didn't fade away at all," Jane said kindly. "You're right here. Back at me. With Lisbon."
"But Mommy... Mom, Mom is dead," Charlotte repeated slowly.
"Yes," Jane said.
"Red John killed her," Charlotte confirmed woodenly.
"Okay," Charlotte said uncertainly, putting down the deinonychus and picking up an allosaurus. "No more talking about Red John anymore," Charlotte added, blinking. "No more."
"Okay," Jane said, nodding.
"You want to take any of this stuff back down to your room?" Jane asked Charlotte, looking over at Lisbon, sending her a meaningful look. Charlotte had processed enough for the night.
Charlotte considered the toys and photos and books. Finally selected a photo album, a few old children's books, her dinosaurs, a collection of troll dolls. Jane noted that she left behind most of the larger objects that had been most prominently displayed in her room when she'd been a child. He'd been expecting as much.
"The TV is hooked up and the cable is back on. You want to go downstairs and watch some TV before bed?"
"We just woke up," Charlotte said. It was nearing 11 pm, but they had gotten up late.
"Yeah, but it's still late at night," Jane said with a yawn. "Lisbon, want to watch some TV for a while before bed?"
Lisbon nodded. Slowly, they walked downstairs. TV would be a good distraction from the past.
1 week later...
Monday, November 13th, 2013 2:05 p.m. PST
Jane sat at the dining room table, watching Charlotte spoon spaghetti-ohs into her mouth. The week had gone by almost in a blink.
Jane had decided Charlotte needed new furniture and he needed a new bed so they had gone to a furniture store the day after Charlie had looked over her old toys in the attic, and Jane had new stuff delivered. Charlotte had chosen a simple blond wood bed frame and Jane had gotten her a matching desk and wall to wall shelves for the "stuff" he planned to buy her.
He got himself a new bed frame, too, as he had never kept his original bed frame or mattress. His bed's mattress had been soaked through with his wife's blood and had been "processed" and Angela's brother Danny had gotten rid of the bed frame and the rest of the furniture in his room. Jane had been on his way to a full-fledged break down by that time but had managed to get across the order to Danny not to throw away anything of Charlotte's.
Jane had also grabbed some bean bag chairs for Charlotte, a few floor lamps, a green desk lamp.
He wandered through the store and pointed things out to her as she walked beside him, pale and bug-eyed, overwhelmed by the lights and noise and people, eyes darting every which way. Lisbon walking beside her protectively. Charlotte seemed more or less indifferent to whatever Jane pointed out, except she shied away from anything overly girly or pink. Green was good, wood was good, simple was good. Jane saw her staring at a selection of lava lamps, face relaxed, eyes heavy lidded, watching the lava morph and float through the lighted water.
"You like the lava lamps, Charlie?" Jane inquired and Charlotte shrugged, then nodded.
"You want one?" Jane prodded. He's always heard girls liked to shop, but shopping with Charlotte was like pulling teeth. Finally she nodded. Jane asked her what colour and she pointed to a lava lamp with yellow fluid and purple "lava" and a dark purple base. That had been five days earlier. The stuff had been delivered and set up within a few hours.
Lisbon had still been in Malibu, then, watching Charlotte, still processing the whirlwind of events that had taken place over the last month. Charlotte seemed to be going inward in subtle little steps. She was beginning to process what had happened to her, and was obviously having trouble dealing with it.
The day after the furniture was delivered Jane phoned and got an alarm system set up in the house. Alarms on both doors, on all the windows, plus cameras throughout the house. He wanted Charlotte to have her privacy, and at the same time he was terrified of what lurked in her mind, what horrors might yet be unveiled with time, and his desire to keep her safe (even if that meant from herself) won out.
Jane knew he had to hire someone to help with Charlotte. He couldn't see any way around that.
He didn't feel safe leaving her alone, even though she wasn't deliberately self destructive or delusional. The full extent of her trauma was still becoming known to him, and he wanted someone who could watch her when he was busy, do errands, cook meals. And yet, paranoia tugged at him, the idea that everyone out there "might" be one of Red John's eyes haunted him.
It was a vertiginous feeling, made him feel a deeply rooted anxiety that no amount of deep breathing or calm self-talk or visualization could minimize.
Red John really did have eyes scattered around and had "touched" the lives of many people. The people he had touched more deeply had become infected with his particular strain of crazy and the idea of making a mistake and endangering Charlotte after everything she had already been through ate at Jane like an acid. He had let her down- badly- before and the idea that a mistake could put her in danger in the future had morphed into a phobia for him.
Lisbon phoned Van Pelt and had her look for potential nurses and caregivers on the down lo, but the unease still nagged at Jane.
Could anyone ever really be trusted? Jane knew statistically that most people were probably safe, and yet the idea of making a mistake was terrifying.
Lisbon had flown back to Sacremento on Friday.
Jane had always been a consultant and more or less had done what he wanted from day one, but Lisbon was team director and she wasn't ready to give up her job and had had to return. She'd flown back two days earlier and the following two days had been filled with stocking up the pantry and getting Netflix hooked up, getting a computer installed in the living room, putting the blinds back up on the walls, painting his bedroom and Charlotte's (the idea that Charlotte might see the bloody smiley face was too great to put that task off for long, even though Jane paid a couple of college kids to paint the room eggshell, and Charlotte had asked her room to be painted green and how could Jane say no to that?) Jane had looked for therapists and counsellors online but none of them looked "good enough" to deal with Charlotte's depth of mental injuries. Most "therapists" had fewer skills than your average carnival barker, Jane knew. They picked up degrees at community colleges and learned the basics, but there were a lot of mediocre minds out there willing to meddle with the psyches of seriously damaged individuals and a mediocre therapist messing around with someone who was deeply traumatized could conceivably do more harm than good. Jane had seen that exact same scenario play out multiple times over the years. Hell, he had meddled with others' minds before himself. He knew precisely how easy it was to do.
He had to be really, really careful. He wasn't going to let Charlotte down, not again.
The FBI had phoned twice over the weekend, asking permission to speak to Charlotte, and Jane has snapped at them and told them his daughter was still healing from her injuries and not "fit" to answer questions.
And once, on the way to the bathroom, Jane noticed Charlotte's door was closed and had a sudden sinking feeling. His vision had pin-holed and he felt a a pressure in his chest, a smothering sensation of panic and had nearly run for her door. She had been okay, sitting in one of her bean bag chairs in the corner of her room, reading a MAD magazine. She'd looked up at Jane, smiled uncertainly.
It took Jane a full ten minutes to get his heart rate to return to normal.
Red John was dead, but his legacy lived on and Jane knew the FBI believed that he had associated with other criminals, and at least a few other serial killers.
Jane suspected as much himself, knew Charlotte could probably be instrumental in providing information that could lead to Red John's violent little pals being hunted down, and he still felt absolutely no compulsion to put his child through the stress of reliving anything. At the same time, he knew that Charlotte herself needed to speak out about what had happened to her.
Jane knew that there was a lot she had buried inside that she hadn't told them, and had probably never told anyone.
Lisbon had phoned the day after she returned to Sacramento, on Saturday, talking about Elian. The boy wasn't eating or drinking and had been put on suicide watch. The FBI wanted to know if Jane could interview Elian, get anything out of him? Jane felt torn between his desire to analyze the kid and tie up loose ends and his desire to stay at home and kick back with Charlotte. His thoughts warred.
If Elian lost his shit and killed himself, how would that affect Charlotte later? This kid was one of the few people Charlotte had known throughout her frenzied young life, one of the few living people she had a legitimate connection to and to disregard that would not be wise. But he couldn't very well go to Sacramento and leave Charlotte home alone.
"I'll watch Charlie if you come back to Sac," Lisbon said, guessing what was on his mind. "Me or Van Pelt. Or Hell, even Cho."
"She's..." Jane trailed, not even sure what he wanted to say. His daughter was so traumatized and he knew she had every reason to be, but as life settled down, and his emotions caught up with reality, he felt more and more disturbed by the enormity of her damage, more and more haunted by Charlie's wounds. "Lisbon, she won't eat anything that doesn't come out of a can, now. She's scared of going outside, even for a few minutes. Told me the seagulls might be agents of Red John's."
Lisbon was silent on the phone for a half a minute.
"Jane, she is traumatized. More of it is going to come out as life calms down. You told me as much yourself."
"Yeah, I know," Jane said slowly, rubbing at his eyes. "And when she sees me? Do I remind her of him? I mean... is just being around me reminding her of things she shouldn't be reminded of?"
Lisbon took a deep breath, breathed it out away from the mouthpiece.
"Jane, she loves you. You'll get through this. You know you will. You've both come too far for this to be it."
"Yeah," Jane said, nodding tiredly, but he didn't sound convinced. "I don't know what I am doing, Lisbon. One bad move... I can't allow myself to go there."
"You're going to be okay. Charlie is going to be okay. You're survivors. You are doing well. You knew things might get worse before they got better. You told me that."
"What if I can't help her?"
"Then you'll find someone who will," Lisbon said after a moment, not sure if it was true, unable to say anything else. Saying nothing wasn't an option. She had never heard Jane sound so unsure of himself before.
"She needs to see a doctor for a check up anyway. I suppose I could bring her up to Sacramento to see a specialist and check up on Elian at the same time. Might be good to get out of the house."
"Right," Lisbon said, sounding a little too chipper. Someone had to speak to Elian, "someone" being Jane. The last Lisbon had heard, the kid had been restrained and drugged and was no longer making sense. He was the biggest piece of the Red John puzzle, know that RJ himself had been reduced to ash and Charlotte was going inward. The FBI was desperate for answers. More than that, Lisbon knew Jane wasn't ready to move on yet.
"I'll try to get us up there tomorrow. We'll fly up, because they haven't delivered my car to me being the FBI, of course. Can you see what you can do about that? You're good with people when it comes to things like that, Lisbon."
"I'll tell the FBI you want your Citroën returned," Lisbon said dryly, sighing.
"And the airstream," Jane said, grinning into the phone. He had missed this banter he had with Lisbon, this back and forth volley of words. It felt so good just to pretend to be normal for a few seconds.
"I am sure they meant to return them sooner," Lisbon said tiredly. She didn't sound convinced to Jane.
"Or hoped I'd forget about them so they could sell them at auction," Jane volleyed back, smiling at the mental image he had of Lisbon, not yet ready to hang up the phone. Lisbon laughed despite herself.
"Or... yeah. There might be a few law enforcement officials who think you're annoying enough to warrant auctioning off your things. But they probably were just busy."
"I've missed these little chats of ours, Lisbon. I really have."
"So you guys are going to try and come up tomorrow?" Lisbon prompted. He could imagine her expression so well, that put-on look she got that was half an act when she felt he was wasting her time.
"I need to talk to Charlie first. Someone will be able to watch her when we get in? For sure?"
"Jane, either me or Van Pelt or Cho. Or Rigsby. One of us. We have your back."
"I know," Jane said, and she could hear the pause on his end of the line. He wanted to say something, wasn't sure what to say. Didn't want to hang up and be alone in the house again. Charlotte was home, but he was afraid to overwhelm her too much. Not sure how to interact with her.
She had holed herself up in her room in the corner, buried herself in the magazines and comics he'd grabbed her. He knew she was healing but she seemed to gravitate a bit too much to her bed, pulling the covers over herself in the daytime, blocking out the light with the blinds. It wasn't depression, Jane didn't think, so much as her body was exhausted and her mind was exhausted and she needed a lot of rest, but he still felt uneasy.
"Jane? What is it?"
"She's scared of the seagulls," Jane said softly, and she knew how confused and distraught he was.
"She won't be forever. I'll see you guys tomorrow."
"Okay," Jane said. "Thanks Lisbon." He hung up then, before he could tell Lisbon every fear about his daughter he had in his mind.
Red John was dead, but the damage he had caused was not over. Not by a long shot.