Title: Charlotte's Web (Chapter 47)
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: Trying to get this next chapter out in a timely manner. Please review. I do like getting reviews. And yes, this will be a Lisbon-centric chapter, so if that is your thing, then you'll probably like this chapter. I recently had a friend die and then a pet, so am kind of bummed. Reviews always much appreciated. –Lexikal
"I act calm on the outside, but on the inside, I'm so angry sometimes I think I'm gonna explode. All the misery and the pain that I see everyday makes me want to scream, but I lock it down. I lock it down because I have to be calm and rational because that's my job, but I want to pull this trigger. I want to kill."" – Teresa Lisbon, The Mentalist (episode "Red Badge", season 2, episode 3)
Lisbon: "She took somebody's life. She confessed to a police officer."
Jane: "For God's sake, Lisbon, the girl's father was an abuser."
Lisbon: "So was mine! I didn't shoot him." (The Mentalist, Season 3, episode 14, Blood for Blood)
"I prepare for the noble war. I'm calm, I know the secret. I know what's coming and I know no one can stop me, not even myself. I kill people I like. Some of them beg for their life. I don't feel sad. I don't feel anything. It's a filthy world we live in, it's a filthy goddamn world and honestly I feel like I'm helping to take them away from the shit and the piss and the vomit that run through the streets. I'm helping to take them to somewhere clean, and kind." –Tate Langdon, American Horror Story
Wednesday, November 15th, 2013 5:13 am. PST
She woke up in Lisbon's pantry, holding a can of peas. She was at the back of the pantry, more or less, in the gloomy, musty dark. This was Lisbon's domestic life, here, the bowels of her most ordinary domestic inclinations: boxes of instant potatoes and bags of banana muffin mix, canned peaches and peas and large jars of peanut butter, 'cause you saved when you bought in bulk. Grown up-food, stuff with a little nutrition in it to make it worth going in the cart. Boring stuff.
The pantry door was cracked open and she could hear Lisbon and Patrick in the kitchen, talking in hushed tones about their little head-case in the pantry.
Lisbon sounded (a little) worried in the way Charlie was beginning to think she got during stressful times when dealing with people she was emotionally attached to and Patrick sounded… like Patrick. He had it all together. He was fine.
The girl strained to hear what they were saying, feeling silly, and sweaty, heart racing from whatever adrenaline release the dream she'd just been in had triggered in her body. She had been dreaming just a few moments ago, but the dream was almost entirely gone now, dissolved into the ether in the way that dreams went.
Here one moment and gone with the next, with only tear tracers on your cheeks and that acidic aftertaste of fear to show for it. Maybe faint scent impressions, disturbing visuals. Nothing you could hold onto.
But that was par for the course of her life- impressions and emotions, moving and undulating like the lava in a lava lamp, nothing solid, nothing lasting. No firm ground.
Charlotte shut her eyes and tried to remember what her subconscious had just been dazzling her with. She knew from studying under Red John (study wasn't exactly the best word to use, but it was fine for right now, in the musty pantry and with a jack-hammering heart and a major case of the creeps)… from studying under Red John, she knew that dreams were often the truth of the matter, as a person truly believed that truth to be, presented in symbols in the night.
With all the pretenses and masks of the day stripped away.
Dreams contained clues to what a person truly thought and felt about things, even when they didn't consciously know themselves. Sometimes, especially when they didn't consciously know, themselves.
She'd been running in the dark…
Something with a big city and a hospital and someone female, a helper-type, by an ambulance. Smoking. The smoker had spoken to her in soft tones, gentle and soothing.
Charlotte thought the dream version of herself had been climbing up buildings with dragons or something on them, running in the dark, a small child in a huge, shadow city. Scared, alone, running. Monsters were coming after her, shadow men, shadow figures, and they meant to do her grave harm.
That part of the dream was true enough to her life of the past decade.
Even when she was sitting still, she felt like she was running, or just about to run. Never able to relax, or be still internally, or be at ease. Red John had stolen her peace. He'd not only stolen it, he'd stolen the very concept of peace, that it was anything more than illusion.
He'd broken her mind, and a broken, keening part of her inner mind didn't think she could ever get that peace back or that innocence. That part of her spoke to her in feelings and images right before she fell into sleep, that broken, grieving part of her, forever trapped in the murder death of her mother, in the last death throes of her own childhood, looping infinitely, a ghost in her own mind.
Now, she was awake. In Lisbon's pantry, in the dark. Her throat hurt, just a little, like maybe she was just starting to get a sore throat. Or… perhaps she had been screaming in her sleep.
And the pantry door was open, so probably either Patrick or Lisbon had noticed she was missing from her spot on the couch and had come looking for her… and found her hiding in the dark, trembling in the dark.
Her cheeks burned at the thought of it. How pitiful and pathetic. Dear God, she was so sick of this traumatized, sleep-walking fugue shit. It was getting old, now.
The hushed adult conversation from the kitchen was continuing, too.
Charlie craned her head, trying to listen better to the two adults and their hushed words. Thought she picked out a soft word, one of Lisbon's. Was it "doctor"? Charlotte tensed. Felt insane. Embarrassed.
Whenever she heard the word "doctor" in connection to herself, she felt insane and ashamed and desperate to escape. It was conditioned at this point, beyond conscious control.
She hoped desperately the word wasn't doctor, and if it was, it wasn't in regards to her.
She hated doctors.
Distrusted them, and feared them and was repelled by them and their cold, sterile hands and their objective, clinical gazes and the way they acted like they had some "right" to touch other peoples' bodies. Like their "right" to "heal" (and how many of them, statistically, actually healed? Not many) was more pressing than the patient's "right" to have control over his or her own body.
Assholes. Entitled, arrogant jerks. With their needles and their restraints and their ECT shock machines that weren't about healing or therapy or anything like that, but about torture and compliance and wiping out memories of crimes.
Assholes.
Charlotte gritted her teeth. Her brain was already beginning to loop, obsess.
Doctors… they thought they owned the bodies of their patients, and that was why when you didn't behave, they sedated you and restrained you and locked you away. Because to them, you were their meat-puppet to operate on and cut into, their fleshy tinker toys. You weren't you and you didn't own you, they owned you. Fucking Doctors. Fucking doctors and their fucking arrogance…
Charlie craned her head a little more…
Yup, Lisbon and Patrick were definitely having a little hushed chit chat about her, because right there, right then, she heard her name. Soft. On Lisbon's lips.
But she couldn't really make it out and she felt ridiculous sitting in the dark, holding the Green Giant garden peas and trying to eavesdrop on them from her hidey hole in the pantry, which wasn't even a hidey hole at all, because they both knew she was in here, cowering in the dark. They both knew.
"Get it together Charlotte, you whackjob," she murmured to herself.
The girl replaced the can of peas on a shelf and scoured Lisbon's non-perishable canned and boxed goods with her eyes, looking for something she might have conceivably come in here for. Something to grab and nod at as she emerged from the dark, to take away a little bit of the burning shame.
Pudding or fruit roll ups or Pop Tarts or something. Something like that. Something Charlie-esque, full of sugar, maybe a cartoon rabbit or something on the cover. Nada.
Lisbon was more health conscious than that shit.
The jig was up, anyway. They thought she was sleep walking or the PTSD, crazy-serial-killer-protégée equivalent, and putting the peas back on the shelf and pretending not to be in some altered state of consciousness a few minutes earlier would just come off as phony.
She wiped her face with her hands and it was slick with sweat.
Great.
She smelled of sweat again and her t-shirt was drenched in sweat. Night sweats. Fear sweat. Fear-sweat smelled different than regular sweat, it had a citrus vibe to it, sort of electric.
But she could still walk out of this pantry and at least pretend she'd been merely curious, even if it was obviously a bullshit diversionary tactic.
Patrick played those kinds of games, didn't he? Maybe they'd let it slide. He played them all the time, it sounded like, and she was his kid.
Except… it hurt in her stomach, and between her legs, a throbbing, pulsing pain.
Not cramps. Body flashbacks. Not this shit, please, not now…
Something moved inside of her, a horrific and painful body memory. A knife, a blade. There was even the feeling of leaking, of something wet between her legs.
"Not now," Charlotte murmured in the gloom of Lisbon's pantry, and counted to ten, and prayed for the pain to abate, for the blood sensation and the trickling feeling to go away. For God to intervene and take that particular shame and burden away.
It didn't go. God was on lunch break, somewhere. Or maybe God felt such shameful things were therapeutic when they were experienced in close proximity to adults who seemed to have your best interests at heart.
Whatever.
She walked slowly, peeked around the corner.
Both Patrick and Lisbon looked over at her immediately. So much for being subtle about this.
Patrick raised his eyebrows, as if asking her with his face what she thought she was doing. Lisbon tried on her reassuring, protective smile, the one she probably used on little kids when she was trying to talk to them at crime scenes and they were spooked by all the noise and lights and grown up stuff.
Charlotte mumbled something about getting lost on the way to the bathroom, looked at her feet, and shuffled back into the living room.
Face burning. Such obvious bullshit. She grinned a bit to herself, though, because what she'd said had been a flat-out bullshit lie and yet she'd said it and walked past them. The cock of the walk, ha ha.
This crazy shit had to stop, though, and soon. She'd embarrassed herself enough to last the rest of her life. More than the rest of her life, really. Several lifetimes over.
And even if Patrick himself didn't appear to feel shame like a normal person, she did. Oh boy, did she ever feel shame. It gnawed and gnawed at her, from the inside out, sharp and achy at the same time, always there in the pit of her stomach, that shame…
The pain in her belly and lower parts ratcheted up another notch as she neared Lisbon's couch and sat down.
The teen winced, climbed onto Lisbon's couch and hugged her knees to her chest.
Sharp, knife-like and throbbing, and if she didn't know better she would have thought she was gushing blood all over Lisbon's expensive-looking couch, because it certainly felt that way. But she'd experienced whatever this was before, and knew her body sometimes haunted her with sensations of things that weren't actually taking place in the here-and-now.
She opened her eyes and looked down, just to be sure, to be positive, but there was no blood.
The sensation was bullshit, her body was haunting her; it did that sometimes. Keep it together.
Keep it together.
The sleeping bags and pillows and blankets had been neatly folded and stored in the corner of Lisbon's living room, on the ground. Either Lisbon or Patrick could have done that, they both seemed tidy that way.
Lisbon came into the living room, then, carrying a cup of hot tea, what smelled like chamomile. Handed it to her.
"Tea?" Charlotte said, and took it. Tea was Patrick's thing, not hers, not really.
"No soda," Lisbon said by way of explanation, shrugging.
"Okay," Charlotte said, and shut her eyes. Another sharp stab of pain ran through her belly, her shameful lower parts- the parts they didn't feel it was fit to put on baby dolls for all their grossness and traumatic potential. God had really messed up, giving people genitals. Such shameful things.
Maybe God was a pervert. Maybe you had to be a pervert to think up genitalia in the first place… so maybe praying was a bad idea, if the creator of all things was a giant pervert.
Maybe it was better to just be alone, in that case… except…
God, it hurt. Like a sonofabitch, stabbing, stabbing. Relentless.
So hard to experience pain like that, and try to act normal, not give the entire thing away. What expression were you meant to have on your face, when it felt like your nether regions were being knifed to ribbons?
"You okay?" Lisbon said in a conspiratorial whisper and took the tea back from the girl before it was dropped on the sofa, put in on a coaster on the coffee table for a later time. Turned back to look at Charlie with a concerned face that- miraculously- seemed entirely genuine.
Prodding dark eyes took her and her pain in, eyes that were used to looking at things beyond the merely superficial surface most people stopped at and thought was the whole truth. Lisbon looked deeper than most.
The idea that there were deep people in the world was comforting in theory, but when they were looking deeply at the parts of your own life you most wanted to keep private, then- then it was just unnerving.
Charlotte shrugged, nodded her okay-ness.
Her body was having none of it, though, this stoic act.
A wriggling sort of stabby pain and wet-wormy-pain ran through her privates and the kid screwed her face up in a hurry. Winced. Made a hissing noise through her teeth. She felt pale and gutted, if it was possible to feel "pale", she felt dizzy and faint and disgusted by the sensation.
She didn't want to, but sometimes sensations got bad, and it got away from you, and the wincing was involuntary.
But it wasn't just the pain that made her squirm, it was the feelings accompanying the pain, the movement and the wriggling, the invaded-grossness. Something alien and vicious, entering, devouring… it cut off her breath.
"Fucking hell," Charlotte moaned under her breath. The words fell out of her mouth, tumbled out of her, like cut up body parts, and disappeared into the room, but their meaning remained.
Lisbon's dark, intelligent eyes narrowed in concern.
"Charlotte?" Lisbon coaxed gently. Her voice was an anchor, somehow.
The teen was obviously in distress, and the normal human thing to do, especially the normal human female thing, was to inquire about perceived distress in another. So Lisbon was following and running that program, and Charlotte supposed there were much worse things in the world than running the concerned-female-program.
"Where is Patrick?" Charlotte murmured, eyes still closed, fingers laced over her belly. She didn't want him to see her like this, not now. Couldn't bear the thought of his piercing blue eyes that saw so much taking her in, in her current state, wheels in his brain turning, making connections, coming to conclusions. The soft, gentle, at-ease face he would make and wear for her sake alone.
But in his mind's eye, he would see, he would see in detail and see her shame and her helplessness, and he would know.
No, she couldn't bear for him to come in here right now.
She couldn't bear for him to know, but also, to be concerned.
To see genuine concern on a face so much like the monster's face would scramble her circuits in ways she didn't feel ready to even consider. Her brain was already scrambled like eggs, but that would push whatever was still lined up right over the edge.
She could bear him when she wasn't having these feelings, but right now she didn't want to see him, or smell him.
Because he physically looked nearly identical to Red John, and because when she felt these things, she wanted to kill Red John, do anything to get away, to run…
Lisbon was watching her stiffly, analyzing all this silence, and the winces and the distress, and that was bad enough in its own way, that was revealing enough. But Patrick could not come in here…
Patrick. Her Daddy.
He had a distinct, male smell, not bad and almost sophisticated. Maybe it was cologne. Maybe it was something in his sweat, his perspiration. Maybe it was pheromones, his hormones, something else.
But it was familiar, and in a way she didn't want to consider or think about, enough like Red John's basic animal scent to make her want to run away from him, sometimes. Maybe it was even her imagination, and the smell didn't objectively exist. She wasn't sure.
It wasn't like she could ask Lisbon if she, also, smelled it…
It didn't matter, really, because it existed in her perceptions, and when you got right down to it, weren't perceptions everything?
Lisbon was still watching her, as the seconds ticked by, face artificially at ease, but in the eyes was worry.
Charlotte nodded at the older woman, tried to sort her thoughts out, the rising panic attack.
She couldn't have Patrick near her right now, and she couldn't tell him to go away if he came near.
She wanted to hide somewhere, hide for many, many years, maybe. Or run… run and run and run and run… but there was nowhere to go.
She had done a lot of running as a child, and there had never been anywhere to go, to escape to. How did you escape yourself, and your memories and your fears? You couldn't, not by running.
There was never anywhere to go.
The endless Hell of running.
"He's having cereal and tea in the kitchen," Lisbon said in response to her inquiry, sitting down next to the wincing adolescent and Lisbon's dark eyes were still scanning her face for even more clues about what was going on in the teenager's head, and what to do about it, how to help.
Lisbon had become a cop in the first place to help, of that Charlie was pretty certain.
Charlotte had considered for a number of years now that police in general were power hungry narcissists who didn't actually care to help and that the social perception of them as basically kind and rule-oriented with a desire to maintain order and peace and come to the defense of the weak and injured; that idea Charlotte had come to believe was a lie being fed to the unthinking masses. It was easy to deceive the masses: the same people who believed "their government" always had their personal best interests at heart and that alphabet soup agencies like the CIA weren't also responsible for "terrorist" organizations like Al Qaeda.
Most people were morons.
But Lisbon seemed to be the real deal, a tough but compassionate woman who legitimately wanted to help the weak and exploited, and put away the "bad guys". Life still had a number of surprises, and the idea that such a personality could exist in the real world, in a world where children were raped as infants with hot curling irons and necrophiliacs had "dates" with dismembered, frozen body parts was turning out to be one of them.
It was also strangely soothing, the idea that basically good people could exist in real life, and their goodness wasn't an act or a put-on or a scam. It was a soothing concept.
It was soothing, and it made sense that most people would want to believe in it, to help cancel out some of the chaos and terror and murder in the world.
"Who found me in the pantry?" Her voice came out of her of its own account, small and young but haggard, somehow. Worn out and pale, if a voice could be either.
"Jane," Lisbon said, then corrected herself, because Charlie didn't call her father Jane. "Your dad. But it's no biggie. He told me he used to sleep-walk as a kid, so it's probably hereditary…" Lisbon mumbled, stopped herself. She was trying too hard to put the kid at ease. Waaaayyyyy too hard.
And trying too hard would come across as desperate, and desperation would only rev the adolescent up more. Time to bring it down a notch.
"Oh. He probably thinks I'm nuts, right?" Charlotte's words, deliciously self-centered and ego-centric, the way a normal teenager should be. Lisbon smiled despite herself.
"Jane is the last person who gets to think anybody is nuts," Lisbon said, a soft smile tugging at the corner of her lips. "Trust me on that."
Charlotte nodded at that response, appreciating Lisbon's attempt at levity. Another sharp knife feeling though, down there, perfectly timed to let her know her torture wasn't going to be escaped so easily. You couldn't escape Hell with a bit of girly chit chat, nope, didn't work like that, dear Charlie…
As if to underscore this point, there was an even stronger pushing feeling, knife going in; the knee-buckling sharp tang of being destroyed. An actual gutting feeling, like she was desperately injured. A deer with the viscera being removed, but still alive.
Something had just happened which might take her life.
That's what it felt like.
"Fuccccck," Charlotte moaned despite herself, the curse escaping like a desperate little prayer. "Fuck. Not this. Please, no…"
Lisbon's breath caught in her throat. Because what she had considered might be going on… was probably going on.
Charlie let out another whimpering moan, this time a little louder, felt tears bubble in her eyes from physical pain alone. The feelings down there were… gross. Gross was the only way to describe those sensations. Gross and very painful. Sickening. And getting worse as the seconds ticked by, not better.
Gutted deer gross. Never clean gross.
She could taste bile in her throat, that salty, almost-sick taste.
She might burst into tears if these sensations continued. Pulsing and throbbing, knife-like and invasive, excruciating on multiple levels. Please God… take them away.
Lisbon sat on the couch next to her, still and protective, big-sister-style, waiting for the girl to open up. She leaned forward as the pain continued, lowered her voice.
"Is it cramps?" Such a normal question, it could have been on a television commercial for painkillers or some maxi-pad or something. Charlotte ignored the sudden, intense urge to laugh like a maniac. That sort of response would not help, here.
She shook her messy blonde head instead. No. This was not cramps. This was definitely not cramps. It kept up, the movement feeling, the invaded feeling and she bit her lip and hid her face. Stab, stab, stab, stab, stab to the beat of her heart. Awful. It was strange how you could become depressed and stop feeling joy and good things, but the bad things, the shame and terror and disgust and fear… even in the grips of depression, when all the good feelings had been cut into bits; the bad ones still stood, strong and burly. Like they were cannibalizing the bodies of the good feelings, becoming stronger…
"You sure?" Lisbon tried, voice dropping a little bit softer. "I have some midol if you need it."
"I don't… I don't get that anymore… that…" the girl confessed.
All of this was so embarrassing. How could she tell Lisbon that her body was essentially reminding her in spookily accurate detail of the first time she'd been raped?
When she couldn't even think that word in her conscious mind, even?
When just hearing that word on a TV show or seeing it in print made her ashamed, made her face flush and her heart race and brought forth a strong, insane urge to cry?
When even reading the word "rapeseed" instead of canola had her heart fluttering and racing, had her wanting to take a shower and scrub and scrub and scrub?
No. She couldn't think of that.
She couldn't or she would cry. Not just cry. Bad sob. Long sobs. In front of Lisbon. And of course, Patrick would come, and would see, and that would be even worse.
Oh, how humiliating it would be. So humiliating, to be so crazy and so weak, both.
And the knife pain and the leaking feeling and the movement feeling continued. She'd woken up feeling this, woken up from the dream she'd been having with the movement and pain feeling… and it wasn't going away! Her chest felt tight, her throat was a pinhole. A panic attack was beginning to gestate, a new life for panic… growing.
She felt like Lisbon knew what she was feeling, could see it clearly, somehow, could sense it. Maybe read her mind.
Did she smell different? Could Lisbon smell an attack on her, could Lisbon smell Red John on her? Could she? Could she smell the yucky stuff of his, his… his seed? Stored somehow in her body as a memory, now released into the air through traitorous pores?
She wanted to shower. She needed a shower. She was dirty.
The thought was paralyzing. Charlotte could almost smell it now, that horrible smell, and if she could smell it, maybe Lisbon could smell it, and maybe Lisbon was disgusted with her, too… would never admit it, of course, but inside, inside she'd think the girl was utterly depraved and disgusting…
Lisbon was a cop, and she was intuitive. So maybe she already knew.
Charlotte kept her face hidden against the cradle of her knees, ashamed.
Lisbon considered Charlie, hunched and trembling, face hidden. Something was going on that had Charlie distressed, and Teresa Lisbon might have a theory about what could do that and cause this sort of reaction, but she wasn't sure, and she wasn't going to go there unless Charlotte made the first move in that direction.
"Your period? You don't get a period, you mean?" Lisbon said kindly, very softly, too soft for Jane to ever hear in the kitchen, too softly for a bat to hear.
Charlotte nodded, looked up at Lisbon. "I don't get it anymore. I read stress can stop it."
"Are you sure it's stress?" Lisbon queried, more concerned now.
Charlotte blanked on the insinuation there, shrugged. Then connected the words, their underlying meaning. Dropped her face back to her knees, ashamed. More ashamed.
"Um… I'm not… I can't be… the… I can't be… what you… what I think you are saying, I can't be."
She couldn't say the word.
"You can't?" Lisbon said.
"I don't do anything that would make that possible," Charlotte said, cheeks reddening. She didn't have sex. So no babies could be made. That was how it worked. Sex made babies. She didn't do it, that horrible thing, and she was never going to do it, and she was never going to have babies. Not ever. Not ever.
Not ever.
So she wasn't the thing Lisbon thought- maybe- that she was. She couldn't be, if that part of the puzzle was missing.
So embarrassing, though.
Better to talk with Lisbon about this than Patrick, but still damned embarrassing. Charlotte kept her eyes shut. Wished she had been born like a doll between her legs and inside, smooth and sanitary, no nasty bits to interfere with.
Or not born at all. Not being born at all wouldn't have been so bad.
When she opened them Lisbon was looking at her tenderly. Looked like she wanted to say something more, but wasn't sure how to phrase it.
"Is there any way… that maybe… something… maybe something happened recently and…" Now Lisbon wasn't sure how to say the words. In particular, the really bad word.
Charlotte winced again, more pain, more pain down there but also the idea of having to discuss this with anyone, even Lisbon. This discussion was painful.
"No. No…"
"Maybe you should see a doctor?"
"No!" Charlotte choked out, panic tingeing her words now. She squeezed her eyes shut tightly again, screwed them shut, pushed on her belly. Nonononono. No doctors. How she hated doctors. Being poked and prodded. No. No.
No.
"I could go with you?" Lisbon tried. The girl was in obvious physical pain. Significant distress. And she wasn't the type to moan in physical pain over minor things, Lisbon was pretty sure about that.
Lisbon watched the slight form, scared, shaking under her gaze, and felt a rise of bitterness and hatred for Red John. This poor kid- Jane's little girl, her best friend's little girl- was going through so much agony because of that monster. She was feeling all the shame and guilt and upset that was rightly Red John's to experience and process. It wasn't fair. Not at all.
But she was also sheet-pale now, and her bangs were sticking to her forehead with sweat.
Her cheeks were flushed, but the rest of her face was chalky and washed out. There was perspiration on her upper lip and dribbling down her temple. She was hurting, it was obvious, and she was trying to hide it desperately.
Because in the world of monsters, being injured was dangerous. Being injured was an open invitation to be toyed with, batted around, maybe have one's belly ripped out… And Charlie had been raised by the greatest monster Lisbon had ever known of, or considered.
So of course she would do the stoic thing. Lisbon had done it herself at this age, still did it, and she hadn't been raised by Red John, only a run-of-the-mill alcoholic with a penchant for self-pity.
"Do you think it might be your appendix or something?" Lisbon tried, trying to shift the focus from embarrassing girly parts to body parts everybody had. Charlotte winced and shrugged.
She was rocking slightly now. A tear slid out from beneath her eye and down her cheek, one tear, and Charlie rubbed at it immediately. Traitorous tear, making her look weak…
"I don't know."
"Okay," Lisbon said soothingly. She put a hand on Charlotte's thin shoulder, found it to be shaking under her hand, shaking and unsteady, trembling.
It was sweaty, too, the shoulder, and cold under the cloth of her shirt.
Lisbon could feel the tremor in the girls' body, like her body was a live wire or something. Poor little thing.
Poor baby.
But whatever she did, Lisbon couldn't let those thoughts of sympathy and concern manifest on her face in the form of an expression, because Charlie would find such status as "weak" unbearable to withstand. She was already burdened enough.
Good thing Teresa Lisbon had played poker on and off with her brothers in her teens, worked a little on her poker face.
Good thing she had practice not letting sympathy and pity on her face when she'd been dealing with Jane, and his grief, and his agony. She'd had practice.
"I'm going to get you a pain killer, okay? I'll be right back," Lisbon said softly, rubbing the thin shoulder, hoping to impart some comfort with that simple little motion. Everything is going to be okay, Kid.
Charlotte trembled under the touch, nodded, face still screwed up in pain and put it back on the slope of her knees so it could be good and hidden. Lisbon disappeared from her vision, or what would have been her vision if Charlotte hadn't been hiding her face again.
Charlotte could hear Lisbon in the kitchen again, could hear Lisbon and her father exchanging soft, measured words. She couldn't make much out.
Could hear the water faucet come on, what sounded like water in a glass.
Lisbon came back carrying a glass of tap water and two little white pills in her hand.
Charlotte slit her eyes open and looked at the pills.
"What are these?"
"Oxycontin. I got shot a few years ago and my doctor gave me these. I didn't use them all. Figured they might come in handy, later."
"Are they still good?" Charlotte said, wincing. "Don't they degrade or something?"
Lisbon shrugged. "I think they're probably okay. I kept them in the freezer, just in case… I think they are still good. More or less."
"You're not a big fan of doctors, either, then?" Charlotte mumbled, as she reached out her hand. Lisbon dropped them in her palm, handed her the water glass.
"No, not really," Lisbon said with a shrug. "I don't think anybody is."
"Does Patrick know you are giving me these?"
"It was his idea, actually," Lisbon said. Charlotte considered this piece of information, finally nodded.
Gulped the pills and took the proffered water. It ran down her chin, stained the collar of her shirt. Charlotte dried her face with the sleeve of her shirt.
Prayed the pills would make the pain go away, and the horrible movement feeling that made her want to retch and cry at the same time would leave, too.
She lay back down on Lisbon's couch with a sigh. Lisbon watched her tenderly. Went to where the blankets were folded up and came back with a blanket and a pillow.
"Why don't you get a few more hours of sleep, if you can? It's still pretty early," Lisbon suggested, handing Charlie the pillow first, then the blanket.
"He is not going to make me go to a doctor?" Charlotte murmured, taking the pillow, sticking it behind her head, then darting a glance in the general direction of the kitchen.
"I don't think so. Not unless you get really bad or lose consciousness or something. He doesn't want to make you do anything you don't want to do, and he's pretty good at getting around conventional rules."
"What did you say was… what did you tell him, was wrong with me?"
"I said you were having a bad stomachache."
"That's it?" Charlie pressed, looking back at Lisbon, then back in the general direction of the kitchen.
"That's it," Lisbon said softly, sitting down next to the girl again, pulling the blanket over her thin form.
"Can I watch TV?"
Lisbon nodded, got the remote from the coffee table, handed it to Charlie.
"Sure. Just nothing too loud," Lisbon said. "I might try to get a few more hours myself, okay?"
"Okay," Charlotte whispered. Lisbon smiled down at the girl, who wrapped in her blanket, hair sweaty and stuck to her face, looked considerably younger than her 16 years.
A scared little girl with Patrick Jane's facial features to a degree that made Lisbon feel like she had known this girl for years, too. The familial resemblance was very strong.
Jane didn't look forlorn and exposed very often, though. That look to Charlotte, that aura about her, made Lisbon want to protect her at any cost. But Jane? No. When Jane was feeling sick, he did shit like ask for water and then escape the confines of his hospital bed to steal an ambulance.
It was somewhat of a relief to know that Jane's apparent inability to feel shame probably wasn't genetic.
Charlotte was watching her as she busied herself, tucking her in; a look of wistful yearning on the otherwise pained features.
Lisbon could much more clearly see the tiny 5 year old in Charlotte, the 5 year old she'd been at the start of all this madness than the physically stunted 16 year old she technically was now, could see that little child imprisoned in her face, now, looking up at her in that sick-pale face as she held onto Lisbon's television remote.
And that little child was so scared and unsteady and lost. It was hard to look at, knowing why she was so haunted, and how unfair it was.
A wizened and achingly haggard five year old trapped in some sort of torturous time-loop, nowhere near ready to experience the physical changes of womanhood, horrified and repelled by them.
Charlie was tough as Hell and a fighter, but still just a little kid in her soul, when you stripped away all the bravado and the toughness and the hellish years under Red John's thumb.
Maybe severe trauma did that to a person… slowed their physical development down. Trapped them in the past. Made them a living ghost in their own life.
They ended up haunting themselves…
Lisbon fought the urge to reach forward and kiss Charlotte on the forehead. The girl was jumpy and felt small and ashamed and exposed, was looking at her with those bright, intelligent, tormented, scared little foundling eyes.
Too much mothering all at once might be overwhelming, though. If she had been in Charlotte's place, she would have felt ashamed and embarrassed just to have eyes on her, too. Better not to come on too strong…
Act nonchalant, Lisbon. Play it cool.
"Is Patrick going back to sleep?" Charlie asked as Lisbon got up to go back into the kitchen and give her some breathing room.
"Jane has never slept normal hours for as long as I've known him, so it's anybody's guess," Lisbon said with a shrug. "My guess is he'll finish the pot of tea I made, then maybe do some Sudoku and fall asleep at my kitchen table in a pile of drool."
Charlotte smiled at that. Lisbon smiled internally, gave the kid a measured grin. Good. The girl was relaxing. Just a bit. Good.
"Have a good sleep… Teresa…" Charlie said, almost shyly, testing the cop's first name slowly as if she might be overstepping her bounds, as Lisbon started back to the kitchen. Lisbon smiled at her again, touched by the hesitancy.
"You can call me Teresa if you want. Have fun watching TV. Just not too loud."
"Yeah," Charlie said, still pained by whatever was going on in her body or her memories, but no longer so ashamed. TV was a great distraction. TV was the magical land of spray-on hair-in-a-can and fake-real diamonds and inbred rednecks who somehow had their own shows on The Learning Channel.
And if Jane was reading the situation correctly, if his theory was correct, the 2 melatonin pills he'd got Lisbon to give his daughter should knock out the pain and send her back to sleep for a few blissful hours of much needed rest.
Lisbon had Netflix, and because Lisbon had Netflix, Charlie was watching American Horror Story. She'd been on the second season, "Asylum", right before she'd split her old life and gone looking for Patrick, and now was the perfect time to catch up.
Most TV bored her. Most sitcoms were stupid, catering to the lowest common denominator. Most drama shows were formulaic, had stunted, cartoon caricatures of people. Weren't worth her time. American Horror Story was something else. It almost managed to match the insanity of her own mind, but it was fiction. It was something she could watch and become distracted by, and because it was dark and terrible, her mind could focus on it.
Soft, stupid, fluffy things, she could not focus on them for long. But mayhem and disorder and death, she could focus on, because it felt real and it felt upfront.
She'd watched the first season, Murder House, right as it was coming on TV. Evan Peters had played a psychopathic ghost who had shot up his school in the mid 90s and then been blown away by the SWAT team that had come to his house (the aforementioned "Murder House") to collect him. Evan Peters was- Charlotte was pretty sure- what most girls would consider "hot".
And a very good actor. That first season had kept her attention like almost nothing else had since Red John had swept into her life and spirited her away. Then she'd rewatched the first season.
Season 2 was different, because it took place in an Asylum. And it was more true to life than most people would want to believe.
On the screen one of the main characters, a lesbian reporter who had gone undercover at the looney bin and ended up getting caught inside and turned into an unwilling patient, was being put through forced electroshock to wipe her memories out.
Charlotte looked at the screen dully. The weird pain she'd been experiencing earlier had dulled with the oxycontin Lisbon had given her. The pain had gone, and the sensations. But now… watching this ECT scene, came the hauntingly familiar feeling that nowhere was safe, not any place.
The girl turned the TV off. Stared at the wall. She'd been watching TV for a few hours, not wanting to go back to sleep, and Lisbon's house was pretty quiet. She got up and padded to the kitchen. Peeked around the corner.
Patrick was asleep at Lisbon's kitchen table, head resting on his folded arms, an empty coffee cup near him. He'd evidently wanted to give his messed-up little daughter her space.
That was nice of him.
Charlotte turned back the living room. Thought of Lisbon, giving her the painkillers, and the protective look on her face. Lisbon seemed kind.
Red John himself hadn't said anything bad about Lisbon. He'd more or less failed to mention her, except in passing, as a stumbling block between himself and Jane.
Charlotte padded down the hall to Lisbon's room. She had a sudden desire to be near her. Be protected. Lisbon's door was slightly ajar. She pushed it open a little bit and stood in the doorway.
Lisbon was asleep on her side, hair in her face.
"Lisbon?" The teen whispered. She didn't want to be alone with her thoughts anymore, not after that electroshock scene on American Horror Story. She had felt safer this morning, when Lisbon was with her, talking in a low voice so Patrick wouldn't hear. Careful not to expose her weaknesses to her father.
Lisbon grunted and blinked.
"Charlotte? You okay?"
"I was watching TV…" Charlotte trailed. She felt stupid and childish. She felt like she had before her mother had been killed, when she'd had a nightmare and gotten up in the middle of the night, standing in her parents' bedroom doorway until they invited her to crawl up into their bed. Then they shielded her from the night-time monsters with their huge adult bodies. Back then, she hadn't cared about being childish.
"Oh?" Lisbon said, still getting oriented to the here and now.
"I was watching American Horror Story, and they gave this lady electroshock to wipe her memories out, electroshock," Charlotte said in a rush, letting the last word hang in the air, as if it was an explanation all by itself.
Lisbon was silent a moment, finally rubbed her eyes, processing the words.
"Are you… how can I help?" Lisbon said in a groggy voice.
"Can I hang out with you for a bit?" The girl said, looking at Lisbon, curled up under the covers.
"Hang out with me?" Lisbon repeated. She felt drained. The last few weeks, she hadn't slept well, and when she did, she saw Red John in that horrible magician's suit; saw his shining, cruel eyes… and when she woke, she felt like she hadn't slept at all. Red John was such a vampiric entity that simply thinking about him and dreaming about him felt like a form of blood-letting.
How tired, then, was Charlotte?
Charlotte remained in the doorway.
Looking at Lisbon, and Lisbon's bed, her expression somehow both guarded and wistful. Jane had said that Charlie might seek her out as a replacement mother figure, especially as he, himself, was physically so similar to Red John. He'd reasoned that the constant fear and uncertainty would push the girl into either a crisis state of paranoia or that she'd seek out reassurance of his and Lisbon's goodness, and that said reassurance could only be established if the teen approached one or both of them for comfort, and was comforted.
A psychotic break driven by uncertainty and all the years' of Red John's mind-fuckery, or small steps toward trust… those were the two most likely paths Charlotte would take, Jane had said. And psychologically, reaching out for comfort was less work in many ways, and afforded fewer potential risks, than losing self-control by having a nervous breakdown.
Jane had said he thought she would reach out, in the mannerisms and requests of a much smaller child; an emotionally stunted five year old, most likely. A traumatized, power-hungry five year old with a brain full of phobias and repressed terrors.
Since Lisbon was physically less reminiscent of the monster who'd tortured her for the past decade, Jane had reasoned that Charlie would go to Lisbon first for comfort, as opposed to him.
He'd said these things while Charlotte had cowered in Lisbon's pantry holding a can of peas, waiting for his child to wake up, drinking tea that was so hot that Lisbon was amazed it didn't scald his throat.
Lisbon hadn't wanted to accept his predictions, though, because Jane's eyes had been filled with a profound sort of pain when he spoke; which he had tried, and failed, to mask. In his eyes, she saw a depth of sadness that was stunning in its complexity, in its sense of cosmic betrayal.
She'd reached out to squeeze his hand, then, as they sat at her kitchen table and waited for Charlotte to wake up from her waking nightmare in the pantry. And Jane had let her, looking at her with blue eyes that were unmasked, and naked, and hurting terribly.
Charlotte, it appeared, wasn't the only one on the path to reaching out for comfort…
But he had been right, as he almost always was.
Here Charlie was, scared by the images on the television and their similarities to past traumas, seeking (one could only guess) comfort and reassurance.
She was wearing one of her black hoodies and had the hood pulled up over her head, a sign Lisbon had come to associate with the girl trying to protect herself from the outer world, to shield herself from fear.
She wanted to "hang out", even though Lisbon was half asleep. Probably because she found it too embarrassing to admit that she needed a hug, or to be cuddled.
Lisbon smiled at Charlie, tried to think of what to say right now.
She'd never been around really little kids, not since she'd been one herself, and didn't know how to treat a 5 year old trapped in a 16 year old body.
"Sure, you can hang out with me. But I am just going to have a bit more of a nap," Lisbon said, nodding for the girl to approach. "Is that okay?"
Charlotte nodded immediately.
It was after 10 am, but their sleep schedules were wrecked.
Charlotte approached Lisbon, climbed onto the queen sized bed and lay down on top of the covers. Her eyes flickered around the room, ever searching.
"You should get a television in here," she informed Lisbon sagely, as if the lack of said TV amounted to some spiritual transgression of the highest sort.
Lisbon let out a small laugh at that.
"I'm not that big of a TV watcher," Lisbon said. Charlotte remained on top of the covers, on her back, staring at the stucco of Lisbon's ceiling. Lisbon closed her eyes again, ready for more sleep.
"If you want a blanket, there are some in the closet," Lisbon said, nodding her head in the general direction.
"I'm okay," Charlie said, lowering her voice to match Lisbon's sleep-fogged speech.
There were a few moments of silence then. Lisbon could feel sleep tugging at her. God, she hadn't felt this drained since she had been a kid and contracted mono.
But Charlie was here, "hanging out", seeking comfort, rigid as a pine board but still trying to connect. Lisbon herself had never been particularly huggy or demonstrative when it came to affection.
But just going back to sleep seemed the wrong thing to do right now.
"So, American Horror Story rattled you then?" Lisbon said, keeping her eyes shut. It would probably be easier for Charlotte to speak if she didn't feel watched, Lisbon reasoned.
"I was okay until the ECT scene," Charlotte mumbled.
Lisbon had heard bits and pieces of a place Red John had but Charlie, some sort of youth "treatment" facility. There had been so much to process the last few weeks that Lisbon wasn't sure she had the story straight, but forced ECT didn't seem beyond the realm of possibility from what Charlotte had alluded to, and it would explain the reaction.
But Lisbon didn't want to make any foolish assumptions.
"Is that something you have had some experience with Charlie?" Lisbon said softly. She could hear the girl's breathing, soft and more or less regularly beside her.
"Yeah," Charlotte mumbled softly, almost too softly to hear.
"Red John's doing then?" Lisbon said, trying to establish what Jane had poetically framed as "tendrils of trust" between them. Keep the conversation alive, ask relevant questions, be nonjudgmental… he'd outlined the effective path to take, to reassure and soothe the girl on one hand as he spoke, tapping each finger for each point.
"Yes."
"That must have been… I have no idea what that would have been like. I can't begin to imagine that sort of betrayal," Lisbon said, opening her eyes a little, making eye contact to emphasize the certainty of her position on the matter. Charlotte held the eye contact for a moment, then glanced away.
"I… I don't think my mind is the same anymore. I think it brain-damaged me."
Lisbon didn't want to dismiss the girl's fears out of hand. She had read a little bit about ECT at Jane's prompting, and memory loss was a not-uncommon side effect.
She didn't want to feed the kid's fears either, though.
"I think that the human brain is incredibly capable of healing itself," Lisbon said, striving for the middle ground.
Silence as Charlotte processed this.
"Yeah. I guess. But… a lot of things are gone."
"Memories you mean?" Lisbon said in the gentle, calm voice she used as a general rule only with Jane, and only when he was confined to a hospital bed.
"Yes. Memories."
Lisbon didn't bring up the possibility of dissociation. That was a heavy topic, and for another time. Baby steps.
"I'm sorry, Charlie," Lisbon said instead, leaning over and offering one of her hands to Charlotte to hold onto for comfort. It felt like the right thing to do, and Charlotte took the hand, brought it up to the side of her face, rubbed it on the side of her cheek.
A very innocent, somehow very primal gesture. Lisbon smiled broadly, despite herself. Felt sleep pulling her back down.
"Are you sure you don't want your own blanket?" Lisbon said, as sleep began to cloud her thoughts.
"No, I am okay, I don't want to sleep; just want to hang out."
"Okay. If you get cold, they are in the closet."
"Okay," Charlotte said.
Lisbon drifted off to the girl holding her hand, rubbing it gently on the side of her face. Such a small physical act, and yet Lisbon thought it was probably the most tangible act of sustained comfort the kid had had since Red John had taken her.
Jane woke up from his nap at Lisbon's kitchen table, stood up, stretched. He had a slight crick in his neck from sleeping in a sitting position but other than that felt fairly refreshed. To his surprise.
The time on the microwave read 12:11 and from the sunlight pouring in through Lisbon's little kitchen window he knew that the letters that followed that time were "p" and "m", and that it was mid day. He cocked his head, listening. The TV was off. Jane wandered into Lisbon's living room. Charlotte's pillow lay on the sofa, crumpled and used, a slight indent in the down where her head had been.
No Charlotte now, though.
Jane wandered down Lisbon's hallway. Bathroom door was open. He felt a spike of anxiety rise in him, just a little bit, a small flame, because nobody was in the bathroom.
Lisbon's bedroom door was open. He poked his head around the corner, felt relief wash over him, an immense affection and love for the two occupants. Smiled at the sight.
Lisbon was hugging Charlotte with one arm in her sleep. Charlotte was sleeping on top of Lisbon's comforter in a semi-fetal position, holding Lisbon's hand against her face the way a much younger kid might hold a favorite blanket to their cheek. Her right thumb was corked in her mouth.
Jane considered the scene. They both looked exhausted, but peaceful. No furrowed brows or moans or shouts in their sleep.
At this point in the game, undisturbed sleep for both of them at the same time and Charlotte reaching out for comfort when Red John had left her with absolutely no reason to trust any other human ever again; both of these things felt like small miracles.
And Jane felt it comforting to know that he could predict the behavior of his daughter, as close to her as he was and as severely traumatized as she was.
She had gone to Lisbon, like he'd guessed she'd might, and here she was cuddling up on top of the covers like… almost like a little dog, or something. Holding Lisbon's hand, sucking her thumb, but on top of the covers. He would have predicted that fact, too, if he had bothered to think through the entire scenario.
As he watched his child, one of her small feet jerked in sleep, a muscle spasm, a twitch. She made a little exhalation noise, something approaching a comfortable groan and turned over.
Still clutching Lisbon's hand.
Jane smiled a little wider at the sight, gently closed the bedroom door closed and went into the living room to wait for them to wake up.