Title: Charlotte's Web (Chapter 64)

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: Thank you guys, for all the kind reviews. -Lex

"A man has to be what he is, Joey. Can't break the mold. There's no living with the killing. There's no going back. Right or wrong, it's a brand. A brand that sticks."

- Laura Kinney (X23) in "Logan" (2017 movie)

"When you're a kid, you think that you'll always be... protected, and cared for. Then, one day, you realize that's not true. If you open your eyes, you will see what we're going through. 'Cause when you're alone as a kid, the monsters see you as weaker. You don't even know they're getting closer. Until it's too late."

- Stanley Uris in the 2017 movie version of Stephen King's "It"

"Don't wanna be the parenthetical, hypothetical

Working hard on something that I'm proud of, out of the box

An epoxy to the world and the vision we've lost

I'm an apostrophe

I'm just a symbol to remind you that there's more to see

I'm just a product of the system; a catastrophe

And yet a masterpiece, and yet I'm half-diseased

And when I am deceased

At least I'll go down to the grave and die happily

And leave the body and the soul to be a part of thee

I do what it takes" - "Whatever It Takes" by Imagine Dragons

The day wore on and on for Jane. The game- the messing with peoples' heads- just didn't seem terribly important anymore, even if it meant catching the bad guy. There would always be far too many bad guys to catch, and there was enough mental manipulation in the world to make Jane feel almost dirty, now, doing his usual tricks. He felt a deep sadness in his chest, almost- but not quite- a physical pain in its own right. He felt dirty and sickly, a queasy sort of sticky shame sensation in his solar plexus, a feeling like he had shat into his own circulatory system and was now, dirty, from the inside.

Fuck.

When did sadness and disillusionment become actual, chemical depression? When did anxiety and paranoia become psychosis? When did being scared of the possibility of not seeing potential threats in any given room and a feeling of never being safe and gasping in the night, being unable to sleep and startling at shadows, screaming out "no" as sleep came upon the body, cold and shaking hands, insatiable tooth-grinding and a feeling of being unable to breathe properly... when did all those things begin to creep into full blown anxiety disorder territory?

He couldn't afford to get sick in the body, or sick in the mind. His kid was already sick, and she was trying her damndest to find her way out from the nightmare of it all. If he lost the plot, now, what chance did she have? She was alone in her nightmare, lost in the dark of the storm, and though she had fought long and hard, she was exhausted and looking for a guide, a parent, someone to show her the way out. That was his job. It was the least he could do.

And he would do it.

He would do it. He would help her. It wasn't a question of trying. He would do it. It would manifest in reality, this help. She would heal. She would be okay. Because he would keep it together, and be her touchstone.

No other outcome was acceptable.

She would be okay. She would find her way out of the dark night of her soul because he would be there, and he would never leave her, and he would never hurt her, and he would show her the way of love, and acceptance, and comfort, and guidance.

He couldn't do much about his superficial resemblance to her tormenter. That was out of his hands, unless he wanted to grow a beard and maybe dye his hair, get colored contact lenses. And Jane was pretty sure such a drastic cosmetic shift would only disorient Charlotte more, not make her feel safer in his presence. Any obvious physical changes done for her benefit would be illusions. Lies. And she'd been lied to enough.

No, what she needed was someone who was so different in personality and tone and mannerism and scope that the superficial reality that was the physical didn't make a dent.

And that meant... he had to work hard not to be manipulative, not to dig into peoples' minds and play with their so-called hidden thoughts and motivations. He had to be earnest, and live simply, be transparent and predictable.

He could do it. The mentalist game was getting old, anyway. Mess with somebody's head and all you've done is mess with their head. It didn't actually make a dent in crime long term, or bring closure to loved ones (as at least one suicide amongst his previous clients illustrated) or solve anything. It was just more of the same lies and twisted, sleight of hands that kept the program that had tortured Red John secret, the same kind of mental manipulation of the public which allowed such programs to exist in the first place. People were brainwashed and indoctrinated, coaxed into believing such realities simply could not exist in modern-day society. Nothing could be further from the truth.

But the cognitive dissonance ran so very deep. Could he fight fire with fire? Use the same sorts of manipulative tactics against the enemy to force progress? Or was that merely an excuse, a last-ditch attempt to hold onto that which was comfortable because it had become habitual?

Jane didn't know the answer to that one, and not knowing the answer to something so basic and central to his life was unnerving.

Everything was changing. Charlotte hadn't just come back into his life with all her baggage and nightmares. She'd come back into his life and completely changed the meaning of his life, the core beliefs, the paradigm.

And he felt, now, like a man lost at sea, not sure which direction to swim in... but plenty sure a myriad of dark, yellow-eyed, man-eating, cold-blooded monsters lived in that sea.

He'd had many dreams of sharks coming for him when he was little. On the surface, some might be able to neatly attribute those early nightmares to the success of Jaws. But life wasn't neat and recurring dreams denoted deep, personal concerns, more than could be generated by a Spielberg flick.

He'd had dreams of swimming in motel swimming pools, on vacation somewhere with his father. He'd be in a routine motel swimming pool. chlorinated and bright, small palm trees dotting the perimeter of the pool, sometimes women in orange and yellow loungers sunning on the deck. Just splaashing, playing, swimming. And then... impossibly, the pool would be much bigger, and deeper, the edges of it further away, the sides jagged rock eroded by eons, the water itself the deep grey-green-blue of the pacific. Suddenly the water would also be much colder, and the sun would be obscured by clouds and the light would turn grey. And in the water, in that blood-smelling, salt-smelling water where his torso and arms and kicking legs disappeared in the blue-green-grey he would suddenly feel movement in the water.

Feel water surge over his dangling, kicking legs as something monstrously huge and unknown passed underneath him. The desire to get out of the pool-ocean would become overwhelming. He'd look around for a boat or a buoy or anything... anything... but there would be nothing by the cold, shifting grey-green-blue ocean splashing in his face, his hair. His body would become stone cold, covered in goose flesh. And he'd feel the movement again, this time stronger and closer, this time dangerously close.

Something big, under the dark and cold and almost-black (when had the sea become black? he'd think, but some part of him would assure him it had always been black and had never been grey-blue-green)... something big was getting nearer. Like a shadowed nightmare approaching. Nowhere to swim to, no way to stop swimming, no signs of help, no rescue helicopters or seaplanes visible in the sky, no boats on the horizon, nothing but the almost=black water and the darkening sky. He'd kick his feet and stare up at the sky, a sky that was suddenly night, and look at the stars above his head in this oceanic soon-to-be-grave, and the stars would twinkle back. In his dream he would call out to them for help, call out the stars, praying in his own child-subconscious desperation to God, but the stars would not help. One by one they would wink out like burnt of Christmas tree bulbs, until the only light seemed to come from a very dim and blood-red moon, and only then, glancing down at the churning waves would he catch the thing which was coming for him. Coming with incredible speed, mouth open in an endless black rictus thorned with prehistoric razor-teeth, eyes too large to be anything in existence and somehoe more real than anything in the waking world, eerie and oil-yellow and imbued with a savage conscious glee as the mouth came closer and closer and closer...

and that was when he at age 7 and 8 and 9 and 10 would startle awake shrieking, sweat-cold and shivery even in the unconditioned summer-hot air of the trailer, clutching his blankets and trembling. Half the time curled in a ball on the mattress in his own sick-smelling urine.

Fucking sharks.

Jane paused and looked around the bullpen. He had drifted off, sitting on his couch, pondering his life. He felt disoriented and his head felt wooly, stuffed with cotton. He thought of T.S. Elliot and the bit about the hollowmen filled with straw and felt a shudder come over him.

He forced his thoughts back to Charlotte.

She had shown him every indication, since her arrival back in his life, of wanting to get well. Of wanting to heal. He supposed if she didn't want to heal, if she had given up, she would have died long ago. Or become like Red John. Neither of those things had happened, but a person- especially a young person (and even younger in the mind)- could only be alone, lost in the dark, for so long before the dark choked the life out of them.

And manipulation... it felt dirty now. If used for good? Manipulation for good? That now seemed like a semantic argument, disingenuous at its core. One could rationalize anything, and he had been rationalizing taking advantage his entire life. He'd learned at the hands of his father, and become good at it, and become glib. And that glibness had indirectly cost him his child's innocence, her childhood, a lot of her sanity. The lion's share, really.

He would repay her by being the father she needed... and that meant recreating himself to be something capable of helping her, of being someone she wouldn't fear because there was no disingenuity in him.

But he wasn't used to behaving this way, to dropping the act, the mentalism, the manipulation. It was his life, ingrained in his personality after decades, a splinter in his mind... something he had previously cherished and admired about himself. Now (but not for the first time today), he felt a sick, sullen sort of gross despair, a sense of being hoodwinked by a manipulative father, a manipulative father who had brought two innocent boys into a cold world, abandoned one to the powers that be, and taught the other how to manipulate with the best of the sociopaths.

He wasn't a sociopath, of course. He had never been one. Even when he'd manipulated people for profit, he'd rationalized his behavior and put it in a context which made it okay. He was helping them, he'd told himself. Helping them to come to grasp with things they were too blind or brainwashed or fearful to see. They needed his skills.

But sociopaths rationalized, too. Their rationalizations tended to be less charitable and more grandiose, but they did the same shit.

And the needy people crying out for his impressive skills?

Had they really needed his skills?

Or had he needed their paycheques, had he needed the rush of getting one over on others, the burst of adrenaline as the game of mental wits played itself out, as he went head to head with others in games of emotional chess and, every time, every time bar none came out the winner? Every time, save for Red John.

And that had been the most bitter of losses.

And it was time to stop.

But... how did you stop a behavior your'd been perfecting your entire life, a way of being so refined it lived in your cells, expressed itself in your dreams, your subconscious thoughts, they way you looked at people and made facial expressions? How did you change that and become someone new?

He didn't know. He was adrift in a sea of self-recrimination and uncertainty.

(big yellow eyes under the waves, an open mouth coated with endless teeth, a black deeper and more terrifying than any black hole, coming, coming... to eat him)

But he would figure out how to do it.

He would figure out how to change, and become transparent because Charlotte was watching him like a hawk, she was seeing the small aspects of his personality, the aspects of his psyche which had become habitual, and any desire to manipulate would be seen and processed and become a reason for distrust.

Her life was the black sea. And she was swimming and treading water, exhausted, on the look out for sharks.

He couldn't afford to do anything shark-like.

And, if she couldn't trust him, she was lost. Because she didn't trust herself. Because she was lost in the dark of Red John's programming, the dark-sea of his childhood nightmares.

She would drown, eventually. Even the strongest swimmers drowned. Nobody could keep going forever.

In many ways, she was getting better. Going to school. Trying. In other ways... pain built up over years, deeply repressed, was coming out. Stomachaches and headaches and crying spells. Spending too long in the shower and nightmares she tried to hide from him, nightmares which both terrified and shamed her, the small cries of a wounded animal in the night, choked and soft. The cries of someone trying to be unheard.

He'd heard them more than once, now, and had wanted to go to her every time he heard, to take her into his arms and kiss her sweaty head and rock her like she was still a chatterbox toddler, to take away the pain and the bad thoughts and the haunting memories and just rock her, hold her, kiss her until she forgot all the bad things.

And there were so, so many bad things.

But that wasn't possible and she wasn't ready for that, not yet. She was trying to keep quiet because she still feared exposure and the fact that she feared her father hearing her in her agony meant she still distrusted him on some very basic levels.

So... he had to change.

He had to become someone, slowly, bit by bit, she could trust.

And in order to do that, he had to consciously process everything he did, moment by moment, and be honest with himself, and be very, very certain his subconscious wasn't in the driver's seat.

He had to undo the programming of his own youth, whatever traits he shared with Red John (and he knew, despite the sick, hot shame in his gut that there were more than just a few personality traits they shared), he had to take them out of himself. His insides were knotted up. A Gordian knot of sorts.

He didn't know how to cut that knot. He didn't know what was required.

And it weighed and pressed on him, as he thought about his brother as a little boy, sobbing in some government-funded torture facility while scientists who coldly documented his reaction to their DARPA-funded torture clinically compiled their data. The data that was the percentages and graphs and charts of a child being ripped limb from emotional limb on a 20th-century psychological rack. In the middle ages, the rack had been physical. The victim almost always died.

But technology had progressed wonderfully, hadn't it?

You could now rip someone completely apart and keep their heart beating, their lungs inhaling and exhaling, their neurons firing, their pupils dilating and constricting, their mouth moving with empty, dead words...

What a fucking nightmare.

Those fucking evil men in their white lab coats and government-issued absolution soaked in the blood of innocents, those monsters had managed to make the rack of the middle ages even more sadistic.

He wouldn't have thought that was possible if he didn't know the things he knew.

Because, the psychological rack was far, far worse when you got down to brass tacks.

The psychological rack was a living death; a torture which could endure for 60, 70, 80 years...

Jane had never believed in any sort of metaphysical Hell. But wasn't Red John's fate a Hell of sorts? He had been trapped in the madness of his programming, unable to break free, for virtually his entire life. Not simply tortured by demons, but turned into one of the demons, himself?

If that wasn't Hell, what was?

The body had survived, but whatever innocence had first been present... that was what had died. More accurately, that was what had been murdered.

Whatever humanity had been there originally, that had been killed, gasping and screaming and internally sobbing while the body of the child known-once-upon-a-time-as-Peter-Jane lay bound and shackled to a gurney, the pupils of his tortured eyes blown huge with fear and drugs.

Jane couldn't keep the images from his mind. He couldn't keep from seeing what he now knew had happened.

He could see it only too well, imagine it too vividly for comfort, and it left his hands cold and shaky.

He wanted to vomit, but he couldn't. His stomach felt both cold and hot in alternating waves, queasy and hard and inflamed.

Jane wanted to scream, but what good would that do?

Time seemed to distort; the bullpen looked too vivid, the darks of the shadows were too dark, the colors of the people and their plants and clocks and desks were technicolor bright.

Some invisible hand of God had turned the saturation up on reality.

And he couldn't stop his inner dialogue, his inner nightmare, even now.

He could never bring Peter back.

Peter.

Peter.

How could he- of all people- have forgotten so much?

But Peter hadn't been Peter for most of his life.

That little boy he'd once loved so dearly had perished long before the body he'd worn like a cheap suit had died.

That fragile, precious humanity had been murdered while Jane was doing parlor tricks and scamming overweight housewives with his alkie father; it had shriveled in on itself until it decayed in the flesh and rotted from within.

The most putrescent and vile of stenches.

And the stench of that inner-rot was a stench most people couldn't detect, not until it was far too late...

Whatever wonder and awe and ability to connect with others and bond and form meaningful attachments and see beauty and innocence and vulernability as aspects of existence to be cherished and not exploited, all those "good" personality traits his brother may have been born with, those precious, precious parts of a person which could never be purchased or replaced... all those parts of Peter had been murdered, too.

At Redrock boys' home. A nice-looking place, Jane was sure, maybe with a barbed wire fence but a place motorists wouldn't suspect housed such horrors.

And the torturers, disconnected from the full-impact of their labor and "just following orders" could even delude themselves into feeling proud of their torture.

Jane ground his teeth, hard, thinking his thoughts.

He couldn't stop...

He owed Peter this much.

Every psychological aspect which made a body "human"- all those human-things which writers throughout the ages referred to as the soul, all of those aspects of life had been abused and burned and drugged away, until his brother was left no more than a fleshy-walking carcass, a zombie with the intellect and cunning of a demon.

That had been Peter's fate, while he, Patrick, had suffered his father's drunken rages and pitied his lot in life.

That had been Peter's fate and the fate of countless others.

Jane shut his eyes as these thoughts came to him.

His eyes wanted to brim with tears, but he kept blinking, grinding his teeth. Focusing on the small things in his environment, now, even as a desire to sit and sob grew and grew and grew.

In his peripheral vision, he could see Cho sitting at his desk, throwing him stern, somewhat concerned glances.

Jane shut his eyes and thought his thoughts.

Red John, the Red John that had been created by the state was a monster.

Peter... the little boy who had screamed and sobbed for him as a toddler as they were separated... that child had been damaged by life, untrusting, abused... but he'd been decent at one time, born with the same innocence as all children.

He'd forgotten Peter. For so many years. A black hole. The toddler from his childhood had been forgotten.. into the same black hole as so many toddler memories. Buried and sealed inside a catacomb of grief. And his exposure to 10-year-old Peter? That time hadn't simply been forgotten or repressed.

That exposure, his mind had dissociated from, essentially clipping his brother out of his life, as neat as someone making a collage and using scissors to clip out an unwanted person in the background. Snip, snip, and Peter-the-psycho-firebug-killer was gone, and little Patrick had been able to function again. It hadn't been intentional, or conscious.

But he'd clipped his brother out.

And that was a betrayal, even if unintentional.

He'd clipped his brother out so very neatly, until...

Until... all of it had come back. His wife and his little girl and his bravado on TV and that horrific night coming home to find Red John's rage and sadness and desire for revenge painted on the wall in the form of a grinning, demonic smiley face. His wife, dead, and propped up like a toy in a diorama. A little child he'd been too shocked and traumatized to look at properly, a little girl he'd known at the time was his baby girl...

He had to change.

He had to fix his broken pieces, and rebuild himself, and teach himself how to be from the ground up because his way of being- alluring as it was- now tasted bitter and toxic.

Jane felt that toxic, almost burning-sensation in his cells. In his rock-hard neck muscles, and in the sense of shame and grief in his stomach and chest, the tight bands around his head, a sadness beyond what he'd thought he was capable of physiologically experiencing, a shame more severe than he'd thought possible.

He would change.

But he didn't know how. He didn't know where to begin. The others in his office were used to him being their leader, not needing their advice.

The tables had been turned. And he was out of words, and out of focus. And the colors were too bright; the desks and people too far away to be real.

Jane got up off his couch and began to pace, pulling at the expensive fabric of his suit vest, fingers trailing over the stylish buttons.

He paced, and thought his thoughts, and paced some more. A tiger caught in a cage.

He had to think a way out of all of this. A way to make it right, whatever could be made right...

Time passed and disappeared into the dream where all time goes to die, and still, he paced.

The day wore on...

Jane paced, and sat down on his CBI couch, and got back up twenty seconds later, and bugged Cho (not hard to do, really, Cho had almost certainly been annoyed from the moment the doctor had first slapped his bare ass after his birth) and shot the shit with Rigsby and asked Van Pelt question after apparently impertinent question about hacking into various US military databases.

By 2:30 in the afternoon, Lisbon had had enough. She sighed, looked Jane over, asked to speak to him privately. Jane grinned at her (what else could he do, when the desire in his heart was to cry?), followed her to her office.

"You okay?"

"I feel a bit wired, yeah," Jane admitted, still grinning. He felt a slight twitch coming on, a tic, a spasming in the muscle in the corner of his mouth. He took a deep breath and he held it and looked at Lisbon with as much calm resolve as he could muster.

She wasn't buying it.

Shit.

"Jane..." Lisbon exhaled. "You're driving Cho and Rigsby nuts, and when they get upset, it's more work for me. You know better. Lay off them, okay? Play nice."

Jane got up off the chair he was sitting on and paced in front of Lisbon's desk, began to pick little knick knacks up off her desk and look them over with desperate intensity, put them back down... pick them back up again. This origami frog... he'd made this once upon a time, hadn't he? A lifetime ago, really. Looked familiar, but now he wasn't so sure.

"Lisbon, you take up origami, or did I make you this?"

"Jane, you're beginning to worry me."

"Sorry," Jane said immediately and looked at the floor now. It wasn't an act. He didn't like the idea that he was worrying Lisbon.

But God, he felt like he was going to jump out of his skin with the knowledge of what he had uncovered, with his powerlessness to dig deeper into it, to expose it, to stop it, or make it right. It nagged at him; it made his heart race.

This new knowledge made him want to run until he collapsed, and then run some more, just so he could do something tangible. It made him want to rail at the heavens and at a God he didn't believe in for justice that almost certainly would never come.

He'd always seemed so good to others at being calm and controlled. What they didn't know- couldn't know- was that that smooth exterior had developed as a survival mechanism to deal with early fear and stress.

And for a long time, he'd been able to convince himself that the act was the reality. That he actually was calm. That he actually was confident, and happy, and peaceful and all the other lies that sold so well because other people WANTED him to be those things; because other people were scared and awkward and unhappy, too. And those other people were looking to someone who wasn't those things to guide them to the light (so to speak), to lead them, and make it all okay.

What a hideous joke, really.

Jane shut his eyes, still standing in front of Lisbon's desk, and tried to focus on his breathing.

It was hard.

Because he wasn't calm; had never really been calm.

After decades of acting calm and happy and confident and competent, of talking in the soft, understanding lulling voice of a good hypnotist to the bewildered, stressed-out masses, of doing hypnotic inductions, he'd managed, somehow, to even fool his own endocrine system, to fool his fearful brain, to get his subconscious, even, to lie down and go to sleep, or at least the more anxious parts of his subconscious.

All that was waking up, now.

Waking up, apparently, right in Lisbon's tiny, tiny office.

Red John and his baggage had come back into his life and torn a huge, gaping hole in the middle of it, and now the old, nasty stuff Jane had spent years trying to control and master was coming to the surface... the ghoulies were slithering out.

Body aches, lack of concentration, obsessiveness through the roof.

Inability to fall asleep... or stay asleep, if he managed to count himself down into dreamland with an auto-induction. Nightmares. All of it.

Fucking all of it.

The ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties of his life, his childhood, all the dark nooks and crannies of his existence as Patrick Jane, those dark places which had housed so many psychological demons, all of that chaos was coming to the surface now.

Lisbon had a front-row seat to the show, now, too. Was watching him, even now, very carefully. Like he might snap.

Lisbon wasn't used to this.

Jane wasn't used to this.

And because he wasn't used to this, because he had never experienced this state of mind and emotion before in his adult life, he wasn't able to see how he looked from an outside observer's perspective.

He couldn't tell just how alarmed Lisbon was.

Lisbon watched her partner as he stared at the floor, a worry line forming between her brows.

He was so... hurt.

Of course, it would be insane to expect anyone to go through what Jane had gone through- especially lately- and be hunky dory. That wasn't possible.

But it was still unnerving to see him struggling, and struggling so obviously, when he'd always been so calm and controlled, even in life-threatening situations, even in situations where she was seconds from yelling out of sheer panic.

Everyone had their limit. She knew that intimately. It was nothing for anyone to be ashamed of, the fact that they were human, and that the stress of the human world could get to be too much sometimes. Certainly, Jane's ability to handle stress was second-to-none.

Which was why seeing the stress start to send him off the rails was so damned scary.

"Look... regarding the videotapes. We can get Van Pelt to look into the facility, do some digging, look at current personnel, maybe find someone who has dirt on them they wouldn't want getting out to the general media and-"

"Lisbon? Blackmail? Extortion? That sounds very naughty." Jane's voice was reedy with adrenaline, fatigue. It was a queer sound she hadn't heard before, and it made something in her stomach tighten with compassion and shared grief.

However concerned she'd been minutes before when she'd called him in here ratcheted up another few notches.

"If it's between that and watching you have a stress-induced breakdown, I'll go with the former and then go to confession like a good little Catholic," Lisbon said sardonically, and sighed again, looking at him.

Jane smiled, delighted. She smiled back at him.

He was so obviously trying to project an image of calm, of stability. She didn't buy it, but the fact that he was still capable of trying to fake it meant she'd go along with the show if he would listen to reason.

She'd always assumed Jane's shows were for others' benefits. Right now, she was pretty sure this particular act was for his benefit, so he could keep moving forward, step by step.

So he didn't have a panic attack- or worse- right here and now.

If he needed the illusion to get by, she would damned well let him have it.

"But give Van Pelt a few days to do research, okay? Don't try and... and contact anybody there. Okay? Promise me, Jane? You're not on your A-game right now. I think you know that, don't you? And this is important. We only have one shot here. So promise me, okay?"

Jane considered her words and nodded.

"I'll let Van Pelt work her hacker magic," he finally said, voice still that queer, reedy tone. Lisbon smiled, ignored the sadness she felt, kept her face as neutral as possible.

"Thank you. And you know... if you're not up for interviewing suspects right now, nobody would have a problem if you-"

"I'm up for it," Jane started. It wasn't an ego thing. She'd often thought in the past that part of his desire to do mental manipulation tricks was an ego thing, an alpha male dog sort of thing. But now... now it seemed like a need to hide his weakness. Lick his wounds in private. The scared wounded animal instinct. Lisbon cut him back off.

"But if you're not up for it... A lot of the stuff we're working on right now is more or less routine, anyway. Nothing that requires your exceptional skills in manipulating human consciousness and decision-making. It's okay to take a break; God knows you've earned one. Maybe help Cho with paperwork or something?"

Jane made a face. "Paperwork? Seriously, Lisbon?"

"Or something," Lisbon repeated.

Jane nodded. Turned to leave. Looked back at Lisbon, and locked eyes.

"He is... he is dead, isn't he? I mean... he is, right? For real? Charlotte's just traumatized and seeing waking nightmares or something?"

"He's dead," Lisbon said firmly.

She could remember the way Red John's eyes had gone blank as the life had drained out of them, before the explosion. She'd seen enough people slip away to know what human eyes looked like the moment consciousness cut out. It wasn't a look that was easy to confuse with anything else.

And Red John had left them alone since that time. He'd never left them alone that long before, not since killing Jane's wife, not since Jane had come to work for the CBI. More to the point, he'd been unable to leave them alone that long. The compulsion to play with their heads like a cat playing with scared mice had been too strong.

"But if he is...? If it was anybody else, Lisbon, I'd say I was being paranoid, that, of course, he is dead... but it's Red John we're talking about, here. Master of the mind-fuck."

Lisbon winced. Jane almost never swore. It just wasn't his style. That he had, now, spoke to incredible exhaustion.

"He's dead, Jane. Why don't you go have a nap before you pick Charlotte up? She's a feisty little thing. Like raising a lion cub, almost."

Jane grinned. "Raising her does call for a nutritionally complete breakfast as brought to you by these fine Post cereals... and Tropicana."

"What?!" Lisbon asked, not following. Jane waved her comment away.

"Just a TV commercial. You know? The nutritionally complete cereal, the glass of OJ, the toast?"

"Jane, go have a nap," Lisbon said again. Jane nodded and drifted away, back out of her office, closing the glass door ever-so-gently. Lisbon watched him leave, a slight furrow forming once more between her eyebrows as he carefully closed the door to her office.

Fuck.

Fuck...

Charlotte all but ran to Jane's car when the bell rang and she saw him waiting for her in the Citroën. She opened the back door, let Dixon jump in, slammed the back door, opened the front passenger side door and then got in the passenger seat. She was grousing almost immediately at her father, animated and clearly in a fluster about something school-related.

Jane nodded at her seat belt and she pulled it on; Charlotte sighing, downright annoyed by his excessive concern for her internal organs lest she get into some unfortunate automobile accident.

"They want me to do a fucking science fair project," she began.

"Language," Jane said mildly. He turned in his seat, looked at his daughter; the flush of her cheeks, the fire of her intense green eyes, the slight red undertones of her golden blonde hair. The little spitfire. He smiled at her, amused.

"Hello, Dad. Nice to see you. How was your day? My day was okay, but x, y and z have me just a tad disappointed with my current educational experience..." Jane began, grinning, knowing he was pressing her buttons but unable to stop himself.

Charlotte groaned, decided to ignore his comments.

"A fucking science fair project! For a special needs shitty science fair, where people will probably assume I am borderline retarded and pat me on the head if I manage to speak without drooling all over the floor or pissing myself," Charlotte insisted with annoyance, speeding up as she detailed the exact nature of her annoyances.

"Yeah, that sounds pretty harsh," Jane said in that same, mild tone, and put the car in drive. Time to go home.

Suddenly, he just wanted to go home, get a shower, get changed into his L.L. Bean pajamas and spend the night sacked out on the couch, zoning out, watching TV. Something mindless.

"The teacher suggested I do a project on dog intelligence, just because I own Dixon. I own ONE dog! What sort of control group could I possibly have? What sort of comparisons could I make with ONE dog? Am I supposed to compare Dixon's intelligence... to Dixon's intelligence? Does she think Dixon has multiple personalities or something? Does she even know what the scientific method is, or am I just supposed to doodle images of purebred dog breeds on a poster board with Sharpie markers and use polysyllabic words which sound impressive and add some bogus math equations nobody will even bother to question the purpose of? My God... do these teachers even CARE what standard of work they hold us to?"

Jane exhaled.

"So, is the problem, here, that you have to do extra work, or that the work you're expected to do is too easy?" Jane queried, looking into the rearview mirror as he pulled onto the highway.

"Both! Extra work that is also bullshit work! Which is the very worst kind of all the types of known work! Now I know how Sisyphus feels... like these stupid maps they have us color! Did I tell you they force us to color maps instead of teaching us things? And you're paying for that instruction?! You should be just as annoyed as I am!"

"They have you color maps?" Jane said, eyes flickering between the road and his daughter. Charlotte nodded glumly.

"Yeah. Apparently, if we color large fields of copier paper with the names of towns and cities typed on them next to different sized dots we'll become world-famous cartographers! Don't you know, that's how Magellan started out? Scribbling with crayolas while his overpaid teacher droned on in a high nasal tone and chewed nicotine gum?"

"Except, probably, nobody in your school actually said those things about Magellan, did they?" Jane asked, trying not to laugh. Charlotte shrugged.

Jane continued.

"And, for the record, I highly doubt your teacher is overpaid."

Charlotte ignored that last comment altogether.

"They might as well have said that! When I complained about it to my aide, you know what she said to me? 'Well, Charlotte, if this is really so boring, how about some algebra? When she knows I SUCK at algebra!"

"That despicable wretch," Jane said, shaking his head in mock agreeance.

"The nerve of her. To suggest you do something more difficult when you were simply complaining about an assignment being too easy. Where will this madness end?"

"You're not taking any of this seriously, Patrick, are you?"

"I'm taking all of it very seriously, Charlie. I'm just not sure this rant is about school, is all," Jane said softly, looking over at Charlotte as he pulled up to a stoplight, raising his eyebrows a little bit, the universal look for "am I right?"

Charlotte scowled back.

"What does that mean? What else would this rant- as you call it- be about? What else could it possibly be about?"

Now it was Jane's turn to sigh.

"You're not dull, Charlotte. Don't act like it. What's... really behind this upset? It's been quite a few weeks since you have full-on ranted about school like this."

"Can't I just find being at the nutcase academy annoying enough on its own merits? Or lack of them, as the case may be?"

"Sure you can," Jane said, not bothering to correct her on the use of the word "nutcase"- it was a losing battle.

"But... is that really what has you so riled up? Because if it's not, ranting about school is not going to fix anything. It's just going to make you feel more upset. It's just going to tell your subconcious mind that the thing that is really bothering it, isn't being addressed. Meanwhile, you'll just physiologically drive yourself deeper and deeper into a state of frustration, the adrenaline will flow, you'll still notbe dealing with the underlying issue-"

Charlotte sighed loudly and stared down at her lap. At least she was listening to his words, listening and really thinking about them.

"If it makes you feel any better, I've been feeling pretty on-edge myself today, too," Jane shared, voice dropping a little, becoming softer, almost conspiratorial.

Charlotte looked up immediately, sensing the imminent admission of some deep, dark secret. Her eyes were shining with intensity. Quite possibly she wasn't the only one in the car having trouble keeping their shit together, and she wanted all the gory details.

"Really? What has you upset? Stuff you learned about Red John yesterday? Tell me. Don't leave anything out."

Jane barked out laughter at the command. Nodded.

"That's part of it," Jane said. "It's... it's horrible what some people will do to other people, in the name of science-"

"Tell me about it," Charlotte started, launching back into complaint-mode, but Jane shot her a look.

"I'm not talking about being forced to do an eighth-grade science fair project, kiddo. I'm talking about... really bad stuff." He let that sink in.

Let the silence just be; let the silence speak to the immensity of what he was saying.

Words couldn't do this justice, anyway.

Charlotte wanted to know what Jane had uncovered, and so far, not sharing the details with her had been to protect her.

But Jane knew, now, that silence wouldn't help. It would only allow her imagination to run wild with all sorts of scary fantasies.

It would only make her feel more alone with her own nightmares.

And she wasn't alone.

They were in this nightmare, together.

And she wasn't alone.

Charlotte began to speak, testing the waters.

"Science... really bad stuff? Red John? What are you talking about, Patrick? I'm not a flippin' psychic, you know. You might be, but I'm not-"

"Government programs using kids as test subjects in some very unsavory, DARPA-funded mind-control experiments," Jane said flatly, cutting her off before she could work herself up again. Charlotte was staring at him with huge eyes, now.

"I knew it! I knew it! Like... some of the stuff Red John tried to do to me, right? Drugs and electroshock and forced confinment and threats and stuff? Like that? Am I right? I bet I'm right-"

"Yes, like... stuff like that. But funded by our own government. Made possible by our own military. Carried out by people who- the rest of the time, when they're not messing with the minds of civilians in controlled environments for a measly paycheque- are as law-abiding as Mister Rogers," Jane said. Each word felt like a small weight being removed from atop his heart.

At the same time, there was a growing fear that his child was not strong enough to hear these words.

Which was silly.

Of course, she was.

She'd lived and suffered and cried and almost died because of shit not much different.

She had earned the right to know.

Charlotte's eyes were huge and round as the shooter marbles Jane had played with as a child. Almost comically large.

"Our actual government? Really? Are you sure? Like... our government-government? People telling the rest of us what to do, how to behave? Elected officials, all of that? That government?"

"Yes," Jane said seriously. "So.. if I seem a little more stressed than usual. It's just... I'm having trouble processing all of this. The scope of... all of this."

One mentalism trick Jane had learned early in life was that if you were concerned about someone, and wanted them to open up to you, but they were scared or shy about confiding their secrets, you could make the process easier by confessing something about yourself, first. Confessing one of your own fears.

Preferably a deep, dark fear which the other person might already suspect.

If they already suspected something you later confessed, that would add to their sense that what you were telling them (often in hushed tones and with an averted gaze) was the truth.

The subconscious mind could be quite arrogant. Wrong or right, the subconscious almost universally believed that it "knew" the truth.

It would lend credence to your words if you disclosed something predictable; a sense of authenticity. Even if you were lying.

It would also form a bond, and the other person would feel- if they weren't sociopathic, that is- almost obligated to return the favor.

Jane had used this technique before, in the past, to coax out painful truths. Only now, he was speaking the truth, and it was an exceptionally bitter truth, one which made him feel like the bottom of his world was a lot less secure than he'd always suspected.

He'd always known people did evil, nasty things, especially people in positions of power who could tell themselves they were just following orders. "Serving the greater good" was a great absolution when it came to immoral acts. People in government used such mind-fucks on themselves all the time.

Jane'd had no illusions about the amorality of a unit of humans who held themselves above others, the unwashed masses, who considered themselves to be superior judges of what the "regular" people needed. For the greater good, of course...

Such positions were well known to breed narcissism and a detachment from reality; to stifle compassion.

But the scope of this particular evil... the exact nature of it laid out in black and white on the printed page, involving his own brother, a brother he'd shared the womb with... the scope of it, the incredible callous disregard for human life and sanity- and the life and sanity of children at that- still managed to stun.

Jane turned back to Charlotte and considered her wide-eyed expression.

He smiled at her gently. Waited for her words.

Humans- at least non-sociopathic humans with a decent share of mirror neurons- had a natural tendency to open up and share things with people who shared with them first, especially if confesser #1 felt scared or embarassed by his or her revelation.

The natural human response was to make the person who had disclosed their secrets feel better about the disclosure, because the fact that the person had shared such a troubling, dark truth with the other person was subconsciously processed as a compliment, a sign of trust with regards to something person #1 found scary or shameful or disturbing enough to keep secret from almost everyone else.

Bonds could be formed this way, but more importantly, fathers who also happened to be well-versed in mentalism could get their adolescent daughters to open up to them without resorting to tactics Red John would have been compelled to use.

Red John was not the type who would confess something to Charlotte in an attempt to get her to "open up", because, by definition, Red John didn't feel bad about things. He wouldn't even pretend to feel bad about things, to have them weigh heavily on his mind because that would create the illusion (at least in his own mind) that he was weak.

Red John's grandiose sense-of-self would never allow him to view himself as weak. "Weak"- in Red John's mind- was something worse than death. Weak was something deserving of death, and his torture had imbued him with a cut-throat need to live at all costs if living meant dominating others, being superior to others. At least, that had been the psychological state of Red John, post-Redrock.

No, Red John had gloated, not confessed his fears. He didn't take his secrets to bed with him and worry and stew about them, develop ulcers over them, go through Hell trying to shoulder the weight of them alone.

Sociopaths were incapable by definition of feeling real shame, and most didn't experience what the layman called fear, either- not unless it related to the immediate threat of exposure of who and what they were.

Ergo, this was a tactic Red John almost certainly had never used to gain Charlotte's trust and dig into her mind.

That made the use of it bearable.

Jane watched Charlotte. She looked at him, eyes still bulging.

"DARPA?" She finally said, not quite ready to spill her guts just yet.

"The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency," Jane clarified.

Charlotte nodded again.

"I think I heard Red John speak about that agency a few times," the girl said, and Jane nodded what he hoped was an encouraging nod.

Keep going, kid. You can do this.

He waited for Charlotte to speak. Being quiet, now, would not hurt his chances of digging into whatever was bothering her, because she would be tempted to view his silence as fear and anxiety over his own admission.

"They... DARPA... our government... they are funding projects on little kids? Bad projects? To... to brainwash them, and change their personalities?" Charlotte asked as Jane's eyes flickered back to the road.

"Yes," he said glumly. The glumness wasn't an act.

"But... why?" Charlotte breathed, and she sounded very small. Very young. Hurt badly, but still innocent enough to have trouble understanding, on an emotional level, why anybody would want or need to hurt another.

Still innocent enough for the "need" for government-funded hurt to be incomprehensible on an emotional level.

"From what I can tell... so they could develop techniques to control enemies in war-time scenarios. And develop spies who wouldn't react to torture if caught, who wouldn't disclose matters of national security, because whatever information they had that the enemy wanted would be locked in a part of their mind their primary personality couldn't access."

"Wait... you mean... primary personality? So... they wanted to create multiple personalities in some of these people? These kids?"

Jane looked over at Charlotte and nodded. Charlotte bit her lip and looked at her lap.

"Very scary stuff, huh? It's been making it hard for me to focus on my work at the CBI," Jane confessed, shooting a glance at his daughter.

"But why...why Red John? He never went to war. And, he's not a spy. And... why him? Why kids? Why not use adults? Maybe adult volunteers? People volunteer for war. If people volunteer to go and kill other people, wouldn't some adults choose to volunteer for something like this?"

Jane sighed. Smiled tenderly at his kid. Thought through his response carefully.

"Apparently, most forms of trauma-based mind control are much more effective if the subject is... conditioned... at a very early age. The younger the child, the more malleable their mind. And... with some young kids, who go through severe trauma... they develop this defense reaction called dissociation, which is a fancy word for saying their minds break free from what is going on in the immediate, painful reality. Their conscious awareness of reality goes inward, where it is protected from whatever is hurting them externally."

Charlotte sucked in an anxious breath. Jane looked over at her. Smiled what he hoped was an encouraging smile. Continued.

"Everybody dissociates sometimes, too. It's a natural occurance. Hypnotic trances are just once example. So is getting so interested in a book or movie that hours can go by, but to the person reading or watching, it feels like only a few minutes have passed. But, what these scientists discovered with their research is that not everyone has the same ability to dissociate. Not everybody can dissociate to the same extent. Some kids can go... deeper... into it than others. And those kids, those traumatized children, their ability to mentally remove themselves from painful or terrifying experiences... well... the government thinks that is a useful skill in the development of spies, assassins, soldiers..." Jane trailed off, looked over at Charlotte again, then back at the road.

"Maybe it's useful for them to learn how to make people zone out in general, too, I don't know. Make the population easier to control and manage? The documents I read seem to pertain specifically to a war-time application, but I don't think people immoral enough to torture children would feel any moral need to refrain from using the general population as guinea pigs, either."

Jane's jaw moved as he ground his teeth. He kept his eyes on the road, now, waiting for his child to speak.

There was an extended period of silence as Charlotte sorted through her thoughts and emotions. Finally, she spoke.

"But... they essentially have to... severely traumatize the... subject... the kid... to get that reaction? Scare them that badly, or hurt them... that badly? On purpose?" Charlotte's words had a shivery, trembling quality to them that told Jane it was time to wrap this conversation up.

This honesty was good, but it was possible to have too much of a good thing.

"Yes, kiddo. That's part of what I found out. That's part of why I have been on-edge, since yesterday. So... now you know. I told you. You know."

"This is still going on? This is what happened... to Red John? As a kid?"

Jane couldn't speak. He just nodded. There was a lump in his throat, hard and cold. A sudden, insane urge to cry followed on its heels. Jane fought it off.

He would not be crying in front of his kid, god damn it.

Charlotte was silent again, taking it all in. Amazed not only by the details of the program- of so much "legal" evil- but by Jane's admission of the information.

They passed several cars. The bright, afternoon light of Sacramento shifted and the world passed by outside the reinforced glass of the windshield. Trees and shrubs, other cars, people on the sidewalks with their name-brand shopping bags and strollers, pushing little children who didn't have the first clue what sort of world they'd been born into. If they were lucky, they'd never have reason enough to find out.

A boy was walking a dog on the sidewalk, a little poodle mix, his face solemn as the dog sniffed grass along the sidewalk edge with an equally serious expression.

There were the usual sounds of the city.

The buzz of human activity, the sounds of cars and their horns, distant sirens. Voices on the street, what sounded like hip hop music full of expletives growing louder and then evening off and then becoming fainter again as the car the "music" was blasting out of sped away over the horizon and disappeared from view.

Silence in the Citroën, though.

Finally, right when Jane was about to ask if she was okay, Charlotte spoke.

"Poor.. poor little Red John..." her voice was so soft it was almost a whisper. There was so much pain and compassion in her voice, that Jane felt the urge to cry come back all at once, hard and mean and pressing on the back of his eyes.

He fought it back again.

He ran her words through his mind again.

Jane instinctively wanted to disagree with her about that, about Red John being in any way "poor"- but, looking at everything, taking everything into consideration, a case could be made that Red John- or at least the child he'd once been- most definitely fit into the "poor" camp.

He let out a trembling breath.

"Yeah," Jane breathed, and he could taste bile in his mouth, was filled with the sudden sensation that he was betraying his wife and his daughter and all of Red John's unfortunate victims.

But it was true.

And it was needed.

He could say it.

He could say it just this once.

"Poor... Red John..." Jane whispered. The words were cold acid in his mouth. He kept his eyes focused on the road and on the cars in front of them. His knuckles were swiss-cheese white on the steering wheel.

Charlotte exhaled loudly, overloaded with new information. After a few moments of silence and staring at her lap, she pulled her backpack up off the ground near her feet and fished her Nintendo 3DS out, turned it on. Began to play some Zelda game she kept with her in her bag. Ocarina of Time, it sounded like.

One of those Zelda games, anyway.

It didn't really matter.

Jane let her be. The evening ahead would be a long one...

Jane ordered pizza for dinner. He sat sipping tea and watched Charlotte as she did light chores around the house- taking errant dirty dishes to the sink to rinse them off, putting them in the dishwasher, sweeping the kitchen floor, refilling Dixon's water bowl.

She had her school books out by 6:00 pm and worked through the work speedily, trying to get it down. She was having obvious trouble focusing on her work, was doing just enough, Jane could see, to pass whatever assignment she was working on. She worked on 3 math problems, get annoyed. Slammed the books shut.

"Are you done with math?"

"I'm done for tonight. What are they going to do? Put me in some special education class?"

"Touche," Jane said mildly. He understood how she felt. Uprooted, nervous, anxious, on edge. Hard to do math in such a scenario.

When the pizza came she took three pieces and some of the cheesy bread and loaded them onto a plastic plate decorated with star wars characters. She ate on the floor in the living room, cross-legged, rocking slightly, eating like dinner was a chore and she was trying to cross it off her to-do list.

"Charlotte, slow down. The food is not going anywhere. Have some pepsi," Jane said. He didn't much like the idea of loading her up with processed foods and soda but he was learning that she had her comfort foods and that, denied them, she simply wouldn't eat.

They were working together on introducing healthier food options into her diet, like unsweetened apple sauce and berries with oatmeal for breakfast. Every step forward was a small win.

But she was too distracted and anxious to tackle much more than school and deep breathing right now. Hence, Jane had purchased a few 2-liter bottles of Pepsi with the order. Charlotte got up, went into the kitchen, got a plastic tumbler out of the cupboard, took it to the fridge, filled a quarter of the tumbler with ice from the automatic ice dispenser in the fridge door, grabbed one of the new Pepsi bottles and filled up the tumbler until the top was nothing but pale brown foam.

"Take your meds with that, okay? Then you don't have to worry about taking them later."

"Okay," Charlotte said, and Jane watched as she opened the fridge door, fished out the little weekly organizer pack for her meds (plastic, purchased at the drug store for 5 dollars, each of the days organzed into morning, mid day, evening and night categories for medications). She fished out the evening and night meds from the little plastic case, popped them into her mouth (there were an antidepressant and clonazepam for evening anxiety, meant to curtail excessive evening anxiety and prevent nocturnal panic attacks) and washed them down with the Pepsi.

"Focus on eating the rest of your pizza a little more slowly," Jane said kindly from his spot at the little kitchen table. "It will tell your body you're safe if you force yourself to slow down a little. There is no need to do everything so quickly. You're safe, right now."

Charlotte nodded at her father, but he could tell her thoughts were elsewhere. She hadn't completed even half of her assigned homework, but he'd spoken to her teacher. She was having a lot of trouble concentrating due to trauma and panic, and the school agreed with Jane that she should work on homework for half an hour an evening, to the best of her ability, and no more.

With severe abuse cases, you wanted to support the kid and encourage them to focus on school work and learning, but not overload them. Challenge them but not pile additional stress on them. Sometimes it was tough to get the details right, as each case was different. But Jane was a pretty good judge of character and of knowing when his kid was slacking off versus genuinely struggling.

Charlie was struggling tonight. Full of adrenaline, speedy, unable to concentrate.

"Would you like to watch some TV with me now?" Jane said kindly. Charlotte nodded in the direction of the laminated daily schedule posted to the front of the fridge with smiley face magnets. Jane shook his head.

"We can watch TV a bit earlier tonight. You're really wound up. Let's try to focus on something pleasant before bed."

"All the kid shows are boring. I want to watch a horror movie."

"Charlie..." Jane sighed. He knew why she was attracted to horror movies. With her past, how could she not be? Her fears were represented as symbols (usually psychopaths wearing some sort of mask and waving knives at teenage girls). Jane knew she relied on horror as a form of expressing and dealing with her inner turmoil. For that reason, he didn't outright forbid them, but limited them to Saturdays, in the daytime, many hours before sleep.

He also made himself watch whatever movie Charlotte asked to watch, alone, first, looking for excessive gore or scenes which glorified torture or movies with vivid sexual abuse themes. Those were a no-go. So far Charlotte was allowed to watch most of the 80s horror movies with Freddy Krueger and Chucky and Micheal Myers, but most of the more recent horror movies (Saw, Turistas, Hostel), were out.

Charlotte had at first protested, but now, knowing Jane just wanted to help her heal, consented to his guidelines.

"No horror on a school night," Jane reminded her calmly. He'd had this conversation with her many times. She tested the rules, he stood by them, and she felt more protected. Safer. He would go through this conversation with her another thousand times without losing his patience if need be.

"This weekend?

"Yes, one of the ones on the list I've okayed."

"Wes Craven's New Nightmare?" Charlotte asked hopefully.

"Yes, but you'll watch it with me, and we start it before noon."

"So what am I going to watch tonight?" Charlotte whined.

"There is more than horror that keeps your interest. Do you want me to get the list?"

The list was a list of movies and TV shows Charlotte had watched, which kept her attention and weren't babyish but contained little to no violence. Very few movies and TV shows of a non-horror variety kept her interest, but among them were "Napoleon Dynamite", "Office Space", "Ren & Stimpy", "The Office" and many of the studio Ghibli movies.

Jane came into the living room, sat down on the floor next to his daughter, looked through the "weeknight" viewing list.

"You haven't seen Napoleon Dynamite in a while. What about that one?"

"Boring," Charlotte whined.

"I thought you liked it?"

"I did when I first saw it, but now it's boring. What about Fargo?"

"Fargo is a weekend movie," Jane said patiently.

"Donnie Darko?"

"Donnie Darko is a weekend movie, too."

Charlotte sighed.

"I'll watch Pee Wee's Big Adventure," Charlotte said as if she was doing Jane a favor. He smiled. Found it on the weekday list and tapped it.

"Okay. That's okay for tonight."

Charlotte got up and put the Pee Wee DVD in the DVD player, pressed the TV/video button until the right screen came up and pressed play.

Jane smiled.

"You want me to make us some popcorn?"

"Can you make us popcorn with the whirly pop and lots of butter? The microwave stuff tastes like styrofoam."

"I can do that," Jane said, smiling gently.

"Lots of butter, Patrick," Charlotte ordered. She got up, went to her room, came back a few minutes later with a sleeping bag and put it on the couch.

Jane got the popping kernels and butter out, fished the whirly pop out from the oven.

"I... I am going to get my shower now," Charlotte said suddenly, coming into the kitchen.

"I thought we were going to watch the movie?"

"I'll hurry. Then I don't have to worry about it later. I will be out in 5 minutes."

Jane sighed. Nodded.

"I'll be out before the popcorn is ready," Charlotte added.

"Okay," Jane said, and his kid ran off. Wired as hell.

She was back 7 minutes later in sweatpants and a sweatshirt with a photo-realistic koala on the front and text which read "Do not wake before noon". She had a towel and was drying her hair. Jane was just getting the popcorn into a big bowl.

He brought the popcorn out and his kid got the remote, turned the movie back on.

Jane settled down to watch sitting on one end of the couch. Charlotte was sitting on the opposite end of the couch, wrapped in her sleeping bag. Dixon was lying on the floor in front of them. Within 15 minutes Charlotte had rearranged herself so that her head was in Jane's lap, like a little child. Dixon, apparently feeling left out, jumped up onto the couch and lay on top of Charlotte, too heavy to be a lap dog and positioned awkwardly, but Charlotte didn't mind and the dog stayed where he was.

Jane smiled. She hadn't done this before, not since she had come back.

It was a good sign.

At 8:30 the movie was over. Jane looked over at Charlie. The meds had calmed her down and her eyelids were heavy.

"Want to take Dixon out with me for his evening walk around the building?" Jane said softly. Charlotte nodded, got up, pulled her windbreaker from its hook on the wall and pulled it on over her sweatshirt. Jane got the dog's leash, punched the code into the alarm unit, locked the front door.

It was a clear, pretty night. The sunset lit up the sky with warm peaches and pinks. The streetlights were already on and glowing their warm peach color. Charlotte walked next to Jane and held Dixon's leash, leading him along with the sidewalk and over to a grassy area, waiting while Dixon lifted a leg and pissed on a shrub. They circled the apartment area several times.

"Do you want to try walking to the 7-11 with me?" Jane said softly. Charlotte's face was turned up into the night sky, golden curls swaying gently in the breeze. She was drowsy and ready for sleep, just relaxed enough not to panic at the idea of walking more than one or two blocks from the apartment.

"I already brushed my teeth," she told Jane sleepily.

"I know. But you did such a great job today with school and homework and not complaining about the movie, I was thinking we could get you a magazine to read during lunch tomorrow?"

"Okay," Charlotte said softly. Dixon, sensing they were going on a longer-than-usual walk, grinned up at Jane, big doggy tongue lolling out of his mouth, eyes bright and excited. They walked away from the apartment and Jane pushed the street light button, waited until the light turned red and the cars slowed and then stopped. The sky was a dark blue now, most of the peaches and pinks had been consumed by the growing night.

The pedestrian cross walk lit up and they crossed together, Jane holding Dixon's leash in one hand, Charlotte's hand in his other. They walked for 5 blocks, crossed two streets, tied Dixon up to the bike rack outside and entered the brightly lit 7-11.

"Can I get candy?" Charlotte said, waking up a little.

Jane considered. She hadn't had actual candy in a while.

"Yes, but only 2 dollars worth. And we'll save it until after school tomorrow."

Tomorrow would be Friday, and Jane tried to do something special with Charlotte on Friday nights. A trip to the movies at the mall, to the video arcade or out to eat. Mini golf. Something fun to make up for all the missed years.

Charlotte walked to the candy aisle, came back a few minutes later with a ring pop, a box of nerds and some pop rocks.

"Okay, do you know what magazine you want?" Jane encouraged gently. Charlotte nodded drowsily, wandered over to the magazine rack, stared with glassy eyes at the large selection of magazines.

She pulled the November/December 2014 edition of Scream magazine from the selection, showed Jane. The magazine was only printed about 4 times a year from what Jane could tell, and the new issues were always released a few months before the month listed.

Jane made a face. He was staring at a glossy cover with Freddy Krueger staring out at him, as well as several smaller images from more recent horror movies.

"Can I get this?"

"If you get that, I am keeping it until after school tomorrow."

Charlotte sighed. Went back to looking.

Finally, she selected a "Ranger Rick Jr." magazine featuring a lionness and a lion cub on the front. The magazine claimed to come with a free pull-out poster.

"This okay? Or are lions too violent?"

"Ranger Rick Junior is fine," Jane said, smiling a little.

Charlotte nodded, took the candy and magazine to the cashier, paid for everything with a twenty dollar bill Jane handed her, waited while her items were put in a plastic bag and handed back.

Time to go home. Jane untied Dixon from the bike rack, gently led his daughter back home through the night time world which scared her so badly.

Charlotte left the bag with the magazine and candy in it on the kitchen table, went back to the couch.

"Can I sleep out here tonight? With the TV on?"

Jane considered the request. Her eyes were closing, but she afraid of going to sleep in her own room, of the dark and the lack of noise. He considered the information he'd shared with her, what sort of effect that might be having on her emotions. He nodded.

"You okay? I know I shared some pretty heavy stuff with you today, but I figured if I didn't, you would make up things in your own mind which might end up scaring you more," Jane said, watching as Charlotte got comfortable on the couch, wriggled into her sleeping bag and pulled the remote from one of the couch cushions.

"If you hadn't told me, I would have just picked the lock on your file cabinet anyway," Charlotte said drowsily. The TV turned back on, and Jane watched, silently, as his kid channel surfed to the Cartoon Network.

"Okay, you can sleep out here tonight, and the TV can stay on, but the volume has to be low. Does that sound fair?"

"Okay. How loud?"

"No louder than ten," Jane said. Charlotte stared at him as if he had lost his mind.

"I will barely be able to hear it, then!"

"The idea is to go to sleep, you know," Jane said. Charlotte considered this.

"You need to get more sleep. You're not sleeping enough," Jane added.

"Can I at least watch TV until I fall asleep? Then you can turn it down?"

Jane looked at his daughter, at her young, eager face. He smiled. Nodded.

"We can do that," he said softly.

"But don't turn it off when I fall asleep. Just turn the noise down a bit?"

Jane nodded again. Charlotte sighed happily. Zipped her sleeping bag up around the sides, patted the top of it to get Dixon's attention. He jumped onto the sofa, wriggled until he was comfortable and lay down sprawled on top of his master.

Jane considered the scene. He went to his bedroom, came back with an air mattress and his own sleeping bag.

"You're sleeping out here, too?" Charlotte added, wanting to protest, wanting to act tough. She had to act tough, Jane knew.

"You're not the only one spooked by some of that information," Jane said softly, as he got the air mattress set up, laid his sleeping bag on top of it.

"You're scared too?"

"It's scary stuff," Jane admitted, not saying more.

"You like to sleep near the TV when you're scared, too?"

Jane looked over at the TV, then back at his teenaged child snuggling with her dog on the couch.

"Yes, it makes me feel a little bit better," Jane said, hoping Charlotte would accept his excuse. She did. Nodded gently, tucked her chin into one hand, turned over on her side. She lay like that for a long while, eyelids getting heavier and heavier. By ten, she was asleep, thumb in her mouth like a much younger child, regressed in sleep. Jane got up, went to her, kissed the top of her head. Pet the dog.

Then he dimmed the lights, changed into his pajamas, crawled into his sleeping bag and zipped it up.

Time to sleep, now.

Time to try and sleep.