Title: Charlotte's Web (Chapter 48)
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, guys, for the awesome reviews. Apparently in the past chapter I referred to Lisbon's eyes as dark. My brain must have not been fully caffeinated. I apologize. You can read "dark" as troubled and not as brown, if it helps. Sorry for taking so long to update.
There was a death of a friend and deaths of some pets (I hate the word "pet", it reduces the life of a non-human to something almost trivial) recently, and chronic illness to boot… the combination got in the way of any "extras", like fan fiction writing.
Death is something that scrambles my circuits, so to speak. I have never adapted well to it. Maybe nobody really does and so denial is the default for most, but it really unhinges me, in a way where I can't ignore it, deny it or stop thinking about it in physical terms of decay and loss and fear.
The idea that you can known somebody one moment and have this precious, almost impossible bond and connection to them, and the next moment, they are a decaying husk of meat and all that ever made them is AWOL, that aspect of life scrambles my circuitry.
The materialists would say extinguished for all eternity. Those with more "spiritual" inclinations contend that they "go on", but good luck, in our current form, making contact with them after the heart stops and the brain goes dark and rigor mortis sets in. This will loop in my head, this undeniable fact, that we are all winding down to the big dirt nap, and a sort of existential panic grips me. Then what follows is a period of anhedonia followed by a need to "work things out" in my own mind about the nature of our existence. Ha. So. Yeah. Sorry for the delay.
But Adam does not need to turn on the light. Leslie does it for him. She stands next to the sink. Her hair is disheveled and hangs in front of her face, masking it. One hand grasps the edge of the sink. The other she has placed on top of her head. Towels, soaking wet, are strewn all over the bathroom. The small, enclosed space reeks of flesh. "Get out of here," she says, her voice deeper than he has ever heard it.
"Mommy…" Adam's chest heaves; his eyes fill with tears.
"Say go."
"Go."
"Louder…"
"Go! Get out of here!"
Leslie recoils a little, lets go of the sink. She is reeling, and for a moment it looks as if she will collapse.
"Go! Go!" Adam shouts at the top of his lungs while tears course down his face.
From "Breed" by Chase Novak
She awakes and finds herself tied down to a gurney. She is in a cotton hospital gown, the type that never fully close in the back. Ankles strapped down, feet strapped down, tight, tight like whoever did it wanted her to realize she is fucked.
Greasy bangs in her eyes. She tries to move, can't move much. Feels like she is wearing diapers under the gown. There is a smell of old urine and her privates burn and itch, like the skin of even her genitals is screaming.
She had gotten away from this place. So why is she back here?
It must be a dream.
It has to be a dream. A very, very bad dream. The type that warrants two fingers of scotch upon return to conscious non-REM awareness, a hot shower, a run, anything to forget…
"It's not a dream," a young man says. An attendant. A telepathic attendant, judging by his keen, overly-bright eyes and that leering smile. Teeth like Chiclets gum, with a razors edge.
He has come into her room, is looking at her chart on a clipboard, this eerily perceptive attendant. "But we're going to fix you up, Charlotte. You're going to be okay. You're going to start feeling better. Then everything can go back to way it's supposed to be."
"I am not supposed to be here-"
"Your father says differently," the man says immediately, serious, face dour and haggard. Charlotte feels a sensation of bitter betrayal cut through her like a knife. Shame and grief. There is the sudden need to sob and she forces it down. She will not let this… whatever he is… see her sob. She will not give anyone the pleasure. Not ever again.
Least of all these walking corpse-wannabes dressed in hospital scrubs.
"My father?" The words slide out of her mouth, unbidden, traitorous in their curiosity. Traitor words. Traitor lips. Stop talking mouth. Please, stop talking.
You'll get us both killed.
The mouth is its own creature, slug-like and repellent. It doesn't listen. Inside her mouth, inside their shells of enamel, every one of her teeth seems to titter its horrible, mocking laughter. Laughter only she can hear.
"Who do you think my father is, then?" Charlotte manages to say, and this time the words are of her own choosing. But they are small, scared words, and they tremble in this foul place that smells of disinfectant and death.
"Red John," the man says, and smiles a little. "And he is an excellent psychiatrist. I am sure you wouldn't be here if you didn't need to be here. And there will not be any more debate about it. The patient does not dictate the treatment." The man's tone is condescending and snotty.
"Red John is not a psychiatrist…" Charlotte starts, but she knows she will not be believed. "He kidnapped me. He isn't even my father! He is a killer… He is a serial killer. He kills people. Please, listen to me!"
"Shusshhh," the attendant says, drawing the shhh out and there is something serpentine about him. Red John has this little man wrapped around his finger. All of his fingers, in fact.
Shhhhhhh.
"Please, don't take me back there. I'll do what he says. I promise." She knows she is panicking. She doesn't care. She pulls on her restraints. Something leathery with soft interiors, soft and nice for the crazy wrists, the crazy ankles.
Because restraints are so much nicer for the crazies if they are soft and "garnished" with muppet fur.
She pulls harder, and the restraints tighten up in punishment.
The attendant gives her a stern, slightly amused look.
"You can't kid a kidder, Charlotte. I don't believe you. And you can't get away. You know that."
"Please, you have to believe me…" But her appeals are in vain. He is not listening to her.
They never do.
"Red John says you're bothered by hallucinations and horrible mental images. We can help that. So we will." The man's voice is solid, steady. He is a medical professional, doing a job. He disconnects her IV port from the overhanging bag somewhat mechanically. The bag is empty.
"Please let me go."
"Not with those horrible images in your crazy little head, ruining everything," the man says smugly, and he maneuvers her gurney into the hall. The floor is white and black checked squares. They shine distantly like a chess board, smell of pine sol and some other sort of cleaner. Under the cleaner smell is the smell of vomit and rot and tears. Something sort of sugary hangs in the air, too, like old candy.
She glances down and sees a lollipop stuck to the floor. The back of the lollipop has long, blond hairs stuck to it; they look like they have been pulled forcibly right out of somebody's scalp. There even seemed to be a bit of bloody skin stuck to them. Ouch.
There are flies, also, stuck to the abandoned lollipop, struggling to free themselves. Small little fly arms and legs writhing, wriggling, desperate to escape… waving hello maybe.
Hey Charlotte, how is it hanging? Back to the lightening room, are we?
"I swear, if you look on the internet… type his name in. My real father. Okay? Patrick Jane? He is even smarter than Red John. He will tell you! I am not supposed to be here! Please, will you just check? I can tell you what you need to look up. It's on the internet. Then you can phone the police where it happened, and tell them my name, and where I am from, and they will tell you-"
"Patrick Jane is Red John," the attendant says, shaking his head, as if the kid strapped to the gurney he is pushing has just said something truly amusing. "I think you know that, Charlotte."
"He is not!"
"You can't go until we help you," the attendant says, switching gears, and the gurney squeaks as the wheels roll over the linoleum, squeeeaakkkkk squuuueaaaaaak. Charlotte is reminded of old creaky joints, of terrified mice screaming at feline threats, of doors in retro haunted house movies opening on their own. Her own heart won't slow down. It is in her chest, of course, but also, now, in her throat.
Beating a steady staccato right behind her tongue. Even her heart wants to escape.
"Please… just look him up. Please just look up his name, and phone him. He will tell you, he is real… I am his daughter… you can look up his phone number. I will show you. And phone him. And he will tell you. He will tell you!"
"You killed your own mother. What might we do about that? To make sure that sort of thing never again happens?"
Her heart is no longer beating, it is thrumming, a hum sound, it is going so fast. Her blood is hot, it burns.
The man's words cut her open, lay her bare. Her mind feels like it is splitting up like breaking ice. Cracccccckkkkkkkkkk… the sanity is cracking.
Her Mommy.
"You killed your poor, sweet little mommy." Almost a taunting voice, and the words are like salt in weeping psychic wounds. They burn her as her ears take in the sounds and the meaning comes to a head, fully realized.
He is lying, but the words still cause agony. Because what if he isn't lying? She feels insane.
She doesn't know what is real. Reality has been shattered and morphed and distorted hundreds, if not thousands of times, and it is so hard to know, to remember what once was, and know if it is true.
She feels mad.
"Red John did that-" her voice leaks out, air out of a balloon. Weak. So weak. Red John did do that, didn't he? Kill Mommy?
Because now she is confused. Her past slips away, and she looks back at it from a long distance, through a tunnel, and all she sees is splashes of hot blood and dark shadows on the wall of her mind, the sounds of screams come back to her. Her mother. Did she kill her?
So confused. Please, God, no.
"Yes, you did. But don't worry. We're going to help you. So you won't be able to hurt anyone, ever again."
And they are in another room now. It looks like a 1950s-style operating theater. Charlotte looks up and there is a ring of glass in the ceiling, faces behind it, watching her. Vultures watching a small rodent convulse in death throes.
Each of the faces is wearing a mask. But not a surgical mask. A venetian carnival mask. Charlotte has seen people wear masks like this before, in the Kubrick movie 'Eyes Wide Shut'.
They are Satanists, of a sort. Luciferians.
But she has also seen Red John wear masks before, real physical masks. At parties.
With his friends.
The eyes behind these masks look somehow both alive and dead. There is a low, continual roar, like laughter from the theaters.
A roar that is also a laugh.
Somehow, every single person up there in the viewing theater is Red John. Behind the masks, they are all different aspects of Red John.
But how is that possible?
Red John is just one man….
And as she thinks that thought, the attendant squeals laughter. The noise he makes sounds, at first, like a pig being bled over a bucket. Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
She jerks harder on the gurney, trying the restraints, offended by the noise, terrorized by it. The whites of her eyes show in rings around the irises in her terror.
The pig-squeal continues.
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
But then it turns into gurgling laughter.
"Call us Legion, child, for we are many," the attendant says. And even though his face looks nothing like Red John's, upon closer inspection Charlotte can see that Red John, impossibly, is looking through the eye holes of this man's face. As if his skin is a latex mask and Red John is the intelligence behind the eyes looking back at her.
His eyes glint an impossible silver, like the metal edges of his Italian scalpels, the ones he keeps "at home" in a little black suitcase thing by the night table. For his delicate work.
For his "performances" where screams are notes in a symphony and she is the audience.
Beautiful night music, he calls it sometimes. Night music.
The attendant's eyes are that exact same color of silvery-gray dissection.
Scalpels that slice.
Charlotte tries again, pulling at the restraints. The attendant is fiddling with something out of her view. Then he comes back, carrying a piece of red rubber with a breathing tube molded into the plastic. So she doesn't bite her lying little tongue off when they electrocute the evil out of her.
"No… no…. please…" she says, but the attendant only says: Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
She opens her mouth to scream for help, and the mouth guard is forcefully shoved in her mouth. The sharp rubber edges cut the edges of her gums and she can taste thin, anemic blood in her mouth, iron and copper and salt and bile. Sickening.
Red John has told her before that human blood is one of the most physically and psychologically addictive substances on the planet. Makes nicotine look cute.
It slides down her throat now, that thin blood of hers, and pools in her quaking belly.
She bucks on the gurney, bucks hard; pulling with all her might at the restraints in frenzied panic, because she knows damned well what is coming any moment now. A death of sorts.
A living death that is almost worse than dying.
She can feel the edges of the thick, hard leather restraints bite into the tender fish-belly-white flesh of her wrists and cut, sliiiiiiiice. Can feel the sharp, nauseating slice of leather cutting through soft flesh like a knife through butter.
"Little girl, little girl, stop all this commotion," the gaunt attendant says. "You really do like to put yourself through Hell, now, don't you, Charlotte? My little mollycoddled masochist."
She can't answer him, can't spit the mouth guard out.
He has attached it in such a way that it is wedged in her mouth and strapped over her cheeks, like some sick bondage accessory in a BDSM porno, the type some of Red John's buddies like to watch, which are filmed in places like Moldova and Czechoslovakia and feature children who are usually snuffed out before they sprout a single pubic hair.
Snuff kiddie pornos.
Red John doesn't have much of a taste for them, but he has watched them. She has seen them many times. A form of desensitization, Red John says. To sensitize her to true art, like his night music.
Or maybe he does like them, and just can't admit it.
Some of those kids were fitted with ball gags with similar cheek and chin and head straps. Black leather with silver rings, locking their mouths shut with black rubber so that they could only communicate with their desperate, haunted eyes.
Her eyes fill with tears as she tries to spit the gag out, and can't. She can't help it.
They are going to take another piece of her mind.
They are stealing it.
They are going to rape her brain with electricity, steal her memories with lightning, forcefully. Drive the lightning deep into her mind and her brain, fry the connections… her father (her real father) is getting harder and harder to remember.
Some day he will be completely wiped out, she is sure of it.
His name was Patrick.
His smile was like a 100 watt lightbulb.
The calm sea blue of his eyes, full of compassion and love. She has almost forgotten what he looks like, now, even though Red John claims they look just alike.
His name was Patrick.
Keep repeating it, so you don't forget.
His name was Patrick.
He liked strawberries.
He had a kind laugh.
She has almost forgotten his eyes, and she thinks that maybe it will be better, when his eyes are gone, if she dies completely.
Red John claims he looks identical to her "daddy dearest"; she doesn't believe it…
No, she doesn't believe it.
Because what makes Red John look like Red John is something much deeper and darker than the shape of his face or the line of his jaw or the shade of his hair. What makes him stand out lives in the eerie silver of his eyes; a silver that doesn't show up in photographs, but only in person. Glinting, like sunlight on the sea, like mercury in an old thermometer.
You can't see the sunlight on the sea water when you dip a cup into the ocean and scoop up some water and then examine that sea water back at home, under a microscope.
But you know that you saw the glint of sunlight on the waves, and it hypnotized you once upon a time.
That glint was there, and you know you saw it, and you know it burned with fire at its source.
The corpse-like attendant comes back from where he has been busying himself out of her field of vision, and he has that hellacious headset with him. Big white ear muffs attached to a wire that crosses both hemispheres of her brain. Attached to a nerve bundle of wires which disappear into the machine that wipe away all of her precious yesterdays.
The attendant with Red John's eyes places the white ear muffs over her ears and he is grinning at her, enjoying her torment, the way she can't talk but screams with her eyes.
He is feeding in some way, she is sure of it, feeding off her fear and despair.
Tears leak out of her tear ducts despite her strong desire not to cry in front of this man. She feels like she is about to lose a loved one to death. Maybe she is. Maybe she is…
The grief is unbearable.
His name is Patrick.
Then the switch is thrown and her vision lights up with the white of a million exploding suns and all the blood in her veins boils into an instant vapor, every nerve is shot through with white light and singed, every cell screams like the mouth of a soul in Hell moaning its endless, eternal scream.
She feels, on some level, her body jerk off the bed like she is going to levitate, and her arms and legs pull at the straps and then the convulsions begin.
Like she is being forcefully raped by the spirit of electricity, plowed through the ears instead of the vagina, her saliva turning into a white, rabid foam and ejecting out from between that damned rubber gag in her mouth.
Another piece of her dies.
Lisbon has been up for a few hours, talking with Jane, watching TV but not really watching it, when she hears the scream. It is Charlotte, and it's a real soul-in-hell scream.
"Shit," Jane says, and rises immediately. Lisbon follows and they rush down the hall. But before they reach Lisbon's bedroom, the screaming shuts off in a hurry.
Charlotte is awake. She has screamed herself awake. She is breathing deeply, like someone on the verge of a massive asthma attack. Her eyes are wild with fear.
Nightmare, obviously. She sees the two adults watching her. Tries desperately to pull it together.
"It's okay, I am fine," she lies, eyes darting from Jane to Lisbon. "I'm sorry."
"Nothing to apologize for," Jane says immediately, still in the door way.
Lisbon slowly approaches the girl, because- after all- this is her bedroom. She sits down on the edge of the bed.
"Sounded like a really bad nightmare. Want to talk about it?"
Jane is still watching from the doorway, wanting to comfort and yet unsure about how much space to give his daughter. Who knows, after all, what she was just dreaming about, and what she is able to tolerate as far as a man with Red John's physical features in her immediate vicinity is concerned?
But he can't just go and leave her with Lisbon, not just yet, not after that anguished screaming.
Sounded like her blood was being boiled or something. It chilled his own blood just to hear the noise, eerie in its horror and betrayal. And he isn't someway who is creeped out easily.
Charlotte both wants and doesn't want to talk about what she has just dreamed about; Jane arrives at that conclusion immediately. The part of her that is terrified and in need of comfort desperately wants to tell them the dream and be reassured and comforted; know that she is no longer all along with these horrors, at least not while awake.
The part of her that still has trouble trusting, and doesn't want to appear weak and vulnerable or stupid or babyish, that part has her jaw wired shut. So she shrugs- the universal gesture of ambivalence.
"Maybe. I don't know," she murmurs, buying time.
Lisbon already told him that she wandered into her room earlier, speaking about some horror tv show which takes place in a 1960s mental asylum. The scene that unnerved her involved forced electroshock and Jane winced theatrically when Lisbon let him in on this fact, because, well, Hell…. If Charlotte was trying to scare herself, she was doing a mighty fine job.
She was also, of course, trying to master her fears. It had to be tough, trying to master all the trauma she had been through, maneuver her way through the world, learn to trust, relive horrors most people couldn't even conceive of if they were paid to think up horrible scenarios… all of it, it was just too damned much for one human being to do.
"Lisbon and I, we were just having some tea," Jane says, hoping to convey his love and nearness with his words, his desire to help, without coming on too strong or becoming too invasive or pushy.
"You want some tea?"
Charlotte shrugs again. Decides to go right to the money question.
"Do I have to speak to the FBI today?"
"When you feel okay speaking to them, is the day we will speak with them," Jane says calmly. We, not you. As if they were all raised by Red John, all forced into being a party to various murders, all brainwashed and electro-shocked and raped by one of the most notorious and infamous serial predators of the last 100 years.
We.
Yeah.
Jane's speech isn't lost on Charlotte, who has learned over the years to look for such verbal tricks, meant to calm and soothe. If her father is going to manipulate her, at least he is doing so to help and not hurt.
"What if I never want to speak with them?" Charlotte asks. She is still sitting on Lisbon's bed but has now pulled the throw Lisbon put on her when she got up to rejoin Jane, over her narrow shoulders, over her head.
Jane has already considered this possibility. The FBI will want to speak with her. Of that, he is certain. Right now they are playing nice, because Charlotte is the sole witness in a huge case and Red John is dead and without her cooperation they have relatively little information about one of the most notorious human monsters of all of recorded history.
So, the FBI will play nice and be extra-courteous and smiley and charitable.
But never speaking to them is not an option.
Jane knows this. Unless he plans on taking Charlotte and fleeing to some South American country, then the FBI interview is going to happen. Just half an hour ago, Jane was discussing this very angle of life with Lisbon, Charlotte's avoidance of the past, the trauma of the FBI's questions hanging over her head like a psychic guillotine.
To complicate matters, Jane isn't sure exactly who legally has custody of Charlotte at present. His guardianship of her, he isn't certain of- she was granted emancipation as a minor, but while living with a serial killer who lied about almost everything, so who knows how legally binding that emancipation document really is anyway… if it even actually exists and isn't a figment of Charlie's imagination.
The FBI could force her to answer questions, could force a psych eval if they wanted to, and Charlotte is a walking minefield of trauma and fear. The idea of her being committed to somewhere with "mental health" somewhere in the title gnaws at Jane. The idea that he could lose her if he doesn't play ball with the alphabet soup guys, the idea that Charlie could so easily be revictimized and retraumatized if she doesn't talk feels like another sort of cosmic insult, a cruel middle finger on the part of God.
But short of taking her and fleeing, he doesn't see much way out of the FBI's questions.
And he isn't going to take Charlotte and flea. That is out.
"I think the FBI might become a pain in the ass if we don't give them a few answers to their questions," Jane says smoothly, as if the FBI agents of the world are petulant little children at a birthday party who are not happy with the crap in their goody bags, and need to placated.
Which is, more or less, what Jane thinks of them.
"If I speak to them, will you be there?" Charlotte asks her father directly, but looks to Lisbon, too.
"Do you want us to be there?" Jane says. Us, not I. He means, of course, in the actual interview room, because there is no way he won't be watching through a one-way glass mirror if he isn't in the actual interview room. This thought he doesn't speak, because he wants his kid to feel like she is the one calling the shots and in control, even if she knows, on a deeper level, that they are both sort of playing.
"I don't know," Charlotte says and looks down at her lap. Her fingers are still messed up, but getting better every day. Much of the swelling is gone, and the color is more or less human again, now.
"I won't be upset if you say no. Sometimes it is hard to answer certain questions… with your parents around," Jane says, nodding to Lisbon, who is not Charlotte's actual parent, but is quickly becoming a replacement mother figure whether she wants the part or not.
Charlotte looks over at Lisbon shyly. Her cheeks burn with shame and fear. So much she doesn't want to say, but she can feel it coming down the pike.
"What if I don't want to answer something? Can I just say I don't want to answer?"
"That might work," Jane says softly, but his voice is tinged in sarcasm. "Probably not for everything though." He smiles softly at the idea of his kid just stonewalling. It's both sad and amusing, as a mental image.
The informal agreement he has with the local FBI office is they will try and get Charlotte in on a day when she is relatively rested and calm and that there will be breaks every fifteen minutes if she needs them, because she has a limited attention span due to prolonged torture and is fearful of pretty much all authority figures. 15 minutes in a locked room being asked questions would subjectively be a couple hours for Charlie.
And her idea of authority, it seems to Jane sometimes, is anyone who washes their clothes more than once a week.
The FBI is so far being accommodating, but Jane knows they can change their tune and pull rank with little provocation, and his anxiety for his kid is growing, despite his attempts to tamp down on it.
"Who will interview me?" Charlotte says from under her blanket throw, Lisbon is still sitting next to her, not saying anything, just sitting, hoping to convey strength and camaraderie so that the kid doesn't feel so damned alone in the world.
Jane moves out of the doorway, sighs, and comes over to the bed. Sits down next to his child, too.
"I'm not sure. But the interviewer will be a woman agent. They told me that."
A woman, because of the sadistic, horrifying aspects of Red John's most abysmal betrayals of his niece.
"A woman?" Charlotte says, as if she doesn't speak English and "woman" is a new word that needs a definition. Jane nods. What are these women you speak of?
"Woman?" Charlotte repeats dumbly. Stall tactic. Jane knows stall tactics. Playing dumb is an ancient stall tactic and one he is well acquainted with.
"Yeah. Is that okay?"
"Why not a man?" Charlotte says dumbly, fingers dancing over the threads in her lounge pants. Pastel plaid with a drawstring, slightly fuzzy and apparently extremely interesting to look at, right now. The secrets of the universe, perhaps, are locked inside these Walmart pajama lounge pants.
"We thought women might be easier to talk to, depending on the questions asked," Jane says slowly, meeting Lisbon's light green eyes, no hint of a smile in his eyes now, or his voice.
"Why?" Charlotte pushes, true to form, like the little child she essentially is.
"Charlie," Lisbon says softly, tapping the girl on the shoulder, refocusing her attention away from Jane and his current awkward position. "I think you know why women, right?" This said in a calm, compassionate tone. Something little-kid-Charlie can't argue with.
"I don't want to talk about that," Charlie says with a wave of the hand. "Nobody's business anyway, 'cept mine."
Lisbon looks at Jane, looks at him for direction. His eyes are full of calm resolve. This is not easy, there is no easy way through this. You are doing great Lisbon. Just be you.
"I know it feels like that, but Red John's actions make up a really detailed picture of his pathology, and help the FBI to figure out why he did some of the other things he did…"
"If he is dead, what difference does it make now? They don't have to catch him, if he is dead. So what difference does it make?" Charlotte's voice is understandably guarded, annoyed. Her annoyance is a cover for her fear, her shame.
She has no real reason to feel ashamed, but she does, for the same reason most rape victims feel ashamed. At the admission of being violated and betrayed so, so badly.
"Charlie, remember you told us of other people Red John worked with? The FBI will want to know about that… and some tough stuff, maybe… so things that happened to you, all of them, even if they don't seem like other people's business to you, might be useful to catching these other people," Lisbon says calmly.
Charlotte can't argue with that, because the idea of catching Red John's "associates" makes perfect sense to her. It is one of the few things in the world- that she can count on one hand- that does make sense to her.
She wants to argue, but she can't.
She doesn't want to answer the FBI's questions, but she knows that interview is coming, and there is no getting around that fact.
"Maybe if I speak to them today, I will have fewer nightmares in the future," Charlotte tells her lounge pants softly. "Maybe my subconscious is stressed about this hypothetical interview that hasn't happened yet, but must happen. Or maybe that is part of what is driving my nightmares, maybe."
"That's very perceptive of you," Jane says tenderly, appreciative but not surprised by his daughter's insight.
"You won't let them lock me up in the looney bin if I say the wrong thing or they say I am a nutcase, will you?" Charlotte says then, as if it is an afterthought, but the look in her eyes is almost horror and Jane knows there is only one answer he can give, regardless of the truth.
"No," Jane says, resolutely, even though he doesn't have the final say in the matter. "Lisbon and I won't let that happen. Of course we won't."
"And if it does happen," Charlotte continues, fully aware that Jane is not fully in control of what happens next when it comes to her life, "maybe you can bust me out of said looney bin, because from what I have read of you on the internet, Patrick, you should be really good at busting people out of locked wards."
"Given your lock-picking skills during a time in your life when your fingers resemble Jimmy Dean Breakfast Sausages much more than actual human fingers, well, I'd think you'd be content with your own busting-people-out-of-locked-ward skills," Jane volleys back at his daughter, smiling tenderly at her.
Lisbon looks disapprovingly at Jane for the mental imagery (Jimmy Dean Breakfast Sausages? Could he have said anything grosser right then?), but his words crack a smile on his kid's face.
"Yeah. But who knows. I might need help, even still. Lisbon can drive the get-away car and Cho can print up the fake IDs," Charlotte mutters, looking over at Lisbon with a playful grin.
"Yeah, because that definitely sounds like me," Lisbon responds immediately, before getting up off the edge of her Sealy Posturepedic. "I am going to go finish whatever meal I was eating before we started this conversation. Charlotte, your dad ran to the store when you were sleeping and got you a jumbo box of froot loops, so that you get your daily quota of sugar grams from high fructose corn syrup, today."
"Okay," Charlotte says to that. Her response is completely genuine, no hint of sarcasm, and that makes it funnier.
"Okay," Jane says. "While you eat cereal, I'll call the FBI, okay? Make sure they know we're coming?"
"Mmm," Charlotte mutters with a noncommittal nod, and then follows Lisbon out of the room.