Lisbon knew the Plaskett case had disaster written all over it from the moment it fell in her lap.
Jane was tense and even more manic than usual. When she stopped by his hotel the first night they were in San Angelo to check on him, he wouldn't even open the door to her all the way.
"What are you doing here?" he demanded, his face only barely visible in the gap where he'd cracked open the door. His eyes darted back and forth over the parking lot behind her.
"I came to see how you're doing," Lisbon told him. "But I can see you're totally calm and normal, so I guess I shouldn't have bothered."
"I know we're out of town, but this is a Red John case," he said. "The usual rules don't apply."
Lisbon rolled her eyes. "I didn't come here to sleep with you, you idiot. I wanted to make sure you're all right."
"Red John painted a young girl's toenails in blood to taunt me and kidnapped her sister. I'm just peachy. Thanks for checking in." And he closed the door in her face.
Lisbon sighed and went away.
The rest of the case went much the same way. Jane was distant and cold to her, intensely focused on Red John. He condescended to tell her when he figured out Hardy was Red John's accomplice, but then their staged argument about the warrant felt too real for comfort. Red John's mine.
They rescued the girl in the end. After she'd made sure the paramedics had thoroughly checked over Maya, Lisbon went back into the house to walk the scene again.
It was clear Red John had been in the house, watching Jane and Hardy when they arrived. The forensics unit had found a still-steaming cup of tea next to a monitor with a security feed.
The tea cup matched the pattern of Rosalind Harker's service. The idea of Red John taking it as some kind of memento of his time with Rosalind turned Lisbon's stomach.
She found Jane back in the cellar, staring at the security camera mounted on the wall.
He didn't turn around. "He was here." His voice empty, defeated. "He was right here."
Lisbon found she didn't want to dwell too deeply on exactly how close he had been. He could have reached out and grabbed her and grabbed her on the stairs, or grabbed Jane when he'd first come in. An image she immediately wished she could unsee washed through her mind: Hardy and Red John pinning Jane down, Hardy cracking his gum as he watched Red John gut Jane like a hunter with his prey before she could get there to stop him—
She shut the thought down and focused on what was most important. "We saved a girl's life, Jane. We saved her life." Seeing this garner no visible reaction from Jane, she added, "We have Hardy, okay? He's going to tell us what we need to know."
"Oh, you think so?" He turned and glared at her with something between contempt and despair. "You should have waited. We agreed on that."
Bright, hot pain flashed through her chest like a bolt of lightning. Jane on the floor, a long jagged gash along his belly, his eyes blank with pain.
She kept her voice cool and deliberately didn't say the name. "What if Hardy had killed you right here?" Jane was the smartest person she knew. Surely he could be rational about this.
"Then he would have led you straight to Red John," Jane said impatiently.
The air left her lungs. Not like having the wind knocked out of her, a sensation she was familiar with, but as though her lungs were suddenly no longer capable of drawing oxygen from the air.
Anger saved her. Her voice came out harsh in the cold room. "You'd be dead."
"But you would have Red John," Jane said. Like that was all that mattered. Like he didn't matter.
Lisbon felt like her skin was coming apart, like all the blood and muscle were boiling over, about to spill out of her until she was nothing but a pile of viscera at Jane's feet. She stepped towards him, closing the distance between them, needing to see him more closely, needing him to see her, to listen to her for once in his life, the damn fool man.
The lightning pain had reached her throat and stayed. "I don't think you know what you mean what you say." The words choked, but she forced them out. "I think you choose life."
Jane's gaze was pitying. "You think wrong."
The pain swelled. The lightning threatened to burst open in her chest like an exploding star. "No, you think wrong." The lighting had stripped all the calm control of Agent Lisbon from her voice, leaving nothing but the flayed, exposed reality of Teresa. "Can't you see there are people who care about you, who need you? You're being selfish, and childish, and I want you to stop it."
Jane broke from her gaze. He looked down at his hands. "I wish that I could, but you know, there are some things you just can't fix."
Her heart galloped in her chest, the lightning lancing through her whole being with every traitorous beat. She could only look at him, aghast—at herself, for saying so much, for feeling so much—and at him, that he really believed this, that a person could be broken, that he was broken, like a piece of machinery, nothing but an assembly of parts that didn't quite fit together anymore.
He still refused to look at her. "You needn't be angry. It's just the way of the world."
She found her voice again. "Human beings don't break, Jane."
He looked up at this. "Of course they do."
"No." She wanted to sit down beside him, to take his hand. But the place was still crawling with techs, and she'd already made enough of a spectacle of herself in front of Jane alone. "We experience pain. Sometimes unimaginable pain. But that doesn't make us less whole. A lot of the time, it does the opposite."
"Pain makes us whole?" Jane scoffed.
"It gives us empathy for the suffering of others," she said pointedly. "And allows for—connection points with fellow members of the human race."
Jane twitched. He met her gaze for one long, searching moment, then looked away again. "We still have Hardy," he said, a little desperately.
Lisbon wasn't sure if the desperation was to avoid engaging with the statement she'd laid before him, or simply a desperate bid to refocus his attention on Red John.
She let him change the subject, and allowed her tone to return to reassurance. "He's going to talk. He's going to give us Red John."
Jane remained unconvinced. "Right. We have Hardy. Yes." His words at odds with his bitter smile.
"We saved a life," Lisbon reminded him.
"Yes, we did," Jane said, subdued. "Hurray for us."
Now she just wanted to throttle him. He was being selfish and childish. She didn't care about his quest in that moment. She only cared about Maya. Maya, who had lost her sister. Maya, cold and shivering, clinging to her with strong arms and fierce desperation in the place where two men had trapped her in a living hell for days on end. It was time, Lisbon decided, she returned her own attention to what was important in all this.
She turned on her heel and left Jane to brood in Red John's lair. She found Maya outside, leaning against a squad car, her arms wrapped around herself in the too large clothes someone in the tactical unit had scrounged up for her.
"Maya, I'm going to fill out some paperwork with the forensic unit, and then we're going to take you home, okay?"
"Okay," Maya said. She was several inches taller than Lisbon, almost towering over her even slumped against the squad car, but her voice sounded young and small.
Lisbon's heart went out to her. "Do you need anything?"
Maya shook her head, and Lisbon could see her determination to keep herself calm and composed. "I'm good, thank you."
Lisbon spared a moment to admire the young woman's grace, after everything she'd been through. She opened her mouth to offer what little comfort and encouragement she could, but then there was a commotion behind her, and the sound of gunfire rang out.
Within the space of two seconds, she'd turned to see the barrel of a gun pointed straight at her. Hardy had broken free of his restraints and shot the officer nearest him before turning his sights on her.
Lisbon took half a step to put herself more squarely between the gun and Maya. Her hand was on her gun, but it was too late, she'd never have it drawn in time. Hardy was going to shoot her, and God knew what kind of idiocy Jane would get up to without her to knock some sense into him, and oh, God, what about her brothers—
And then a shot rang out and Hardy had a hole in his chest. Jane, of all people, was standing there with a smoking shotgun in his hands, staggering from the recoil. She stared at him, uncomprehending, her hand still on her gun.
Jane looked at the gun like it was a bomb he'd picked up by accident and then exploded in his hands. He threw it away from himself, appalled. He spared her a brief glance, but then the line of his mouth hardened and all his attention was for Hardy.
Lisbon wasn't sure what he expected to happen when he went to Hardy's side. That the man he'd just shot would confess Red John's identity with his dying breath? She stood there in a state of numb shock while Hardy gave a mad, gasping laugh in Jane's face as he died. Her hand was still on her gun.
After Hardy died, they had to process the scene all over again. Lisbon called Cho and Rigsby to come back and lend her a hand. They were all there two more hours, flagging new evidence for the techs and painstakingly interviewing everyone all over again. Lisbon gave her statement to Cho mechanically, her mind elsewhere. Jane, with a gun in his hands. She shook her head to clear it. The image still wouldn't compute.
It was nearly dawn by the time they packed everyone up and left, and almost 8 am by the time they'd driven Maya back home to her family.
Jane disappeared.
Lisbon was oddly relieved by this, feeling thoroughly unprepared to face him. She spent the morning trying to scrounge up witnesses who might have seen Red John with Hardy, but she hit nothing but dead ends. Rigsby and Cho returned to Sacramento. She briefly considered going back to the motel to grab a couple hours of sleep before hitting the road herself, but decided to forego this appealing prospect and return to Sparrow's Peak in the light of day, instead.
The police tape was still up everywhere, but the place was deserted. Somehow, it felt even creepier in broad daylight than it had last night. She walked the perimeter of the property, looking for hidden exits, a secret tunnel—anything. Then circled back to the house. When she went back inside, she stared at the blue and white china tea cup a long time.
She rifled through the objects in the room, searching for any clue, any breadcrumb that might give her a direction to turn in next. Red John had built this place, spent significant time here. His belongings, the design of the structure itself had potential to shed light on the man who'd built it. Who he was, what he valued. Anything that might give her the smallest hint about where he'd gone after he'd banged that hatch closed and left Hardy behind to die at Jane's hands.
She spent the entire afternoon there before finally admitting defeat. She stopped for a bite to eat along the road, then went back to the motel to collect her things. But when she got there, her full belly and sleepless night caught up to her. She couldn't face driving three more hours to get home. She resigned herself to spending one more night in San Angelo.
It was only 9 o clock, but she took a shower and went straight to bed, beyond exhausted.
Sleep was slower coming than it should have been, her brain unhelpfully choosing to cycle through a collection of thought fragments revolving around Jane and Maya and Hardy and Red John and the barrel of the gun pointing at her. Jerking away when the shotgun went off and Jane, holding a gun, it was all wrong, he hated guns—
The tangled images followed her into her dreams. She wasn't sure exactly how long she'd been asleep when a noise woke her. The sound of a key card disengaging the lock to her motel room door.
Adrenaline shot through her and she scrambled for her gun. She had the safety off and the gun pointed at the door, her heart in her throat, before she'd processed that this wasn't a continuation of her nightmares, the handle was really turning. Dammit, Jane had been right about Red John coming after her, and oh, no, poor Jane, he'd be too distraught to crow over being right if Red John killed her, and who was going to look after Jane if she wasn't around anymore?
Then a familiar curly-haired profile emerged from the shadows. Jane slipped into the room and engaged the deadbolt behind him.
Lisbon hastily re-engaged the safety and lowered the gun. "Dammit, Jane, you ever hear of knocking? I could have shot you."
"I didn't want to attract attention," Jane said, unrepentant. Without turning on the light, he double checked that the curtains were drawn. He spied a chair in the corner of the room and dragged it over to the side of the bed without waiting for an invitation. He peered at her in the darkness. "I didn't hear from you today."
Her eyes narrowed. "You're the one who disappeared without a word. I'm not your keeper."
"No. But you usually like to keep tabs on me anyway," he observed. "To make sure I don't need rescuing from some sort of trouble I've gotten myself into."
Lisbon shrugged uncomfortably. "I figured you might want some time alone today."
He looked at her in the darkness. She knew he could hear what she hadn't said—that she'd wanted time alone, too, to marshal her own thoughts, to delay this moment, the inevitable acknowledgment that he'd killed a man and sacrificed his best lead to save her.
Also, sometimes she got so fed up with his disappearing acts, she just wanted to not reward his inconsiderate behavior with her attention and worry. Or at least, not to actively let him know how much she worried about him when he was out of her sight for any prolonged period of time.
"So what did you do today?" she asked, curiosity getting the better of her.
"I spent most of it in an orchard."
"An orchard?" she repeated. Jane, obsessive extraordinaire, had spent the day after letting Red John slip through his fingers, what—enjoying the sunshine?
"There's nothing like fresh oranges," he said, further boggling her mind. "Besides, as you said, I needed time to think."
"What did you think about?" Lisbon asked, half-afraid, half-hopeful that he might actually tell her.
He shrugged. "This and that."
Her heart sank. The familiar urge to throttle him returned. Did he have to be so obtuse about absolutely everything?
Reading some of her frustration, he added, "I spent some time thinking about what Red John might do next."
Lisbon relaxed. This, at least, was consistent with the Jane she knew. "And?"
"I didn't reach any meaningful conclusions," Jane admitted.
"Did you spend the whole day there?" Lisbon said, dubious.
"I took a nap under a particularly fine tree," Jane said. "And this afternoon, I took some oranges over to the Plasketts."
Lisbon blinked. "That was nice of you."
"I wanted to ask Maya if she'd seen anyone with Hardy at Sparrow's Peak," Jane explained.
So it had been more of his plotting to get to Red John, after all. Lisbon found this inexplicably reassuring. That Jane was still his maddening, inscrutable self. That events of the previous evening hadn't suddenly caused some seismic shift in his personality.
"I brought you some, too," he added.
It took her a moment to realize he was still talking about oranges.
"You probably don't want any right now," he mused. "As it's so late. But I could make you some fresh-squeezed orange juice in the morning."
She looked at him sharply. That sounded like a suspiciously domestic offer.
They didn't usually wake up together after their nights together. Jane would insist on getting up and disappearing into his own room somewhere around four in the morning. He always seemed reluctant, but grimly determined. Or at least, so it seemed to Lisbon, in her half-woken daze. She'd developed a theory that Jane slept better when she was in bed with him. Though she always amended this hastily to 'when other people were around' in her own mind when she caught the thought forming. Careful not to attribute any measure of peace he experienced to herself, specifically, but rather to simply being around other human beings in general. Anyway, it wasn't like she had a way to test this theory, so it was a pointless thought to begin with.
It was just—sometimes she had the sense he would have liked to stay. He'd started out leaving at two or three in the morning. More recently, he'd gotten into the habit of leaving at four. Sometimes stretching it to four-thirty, as though chafing at the bounds he'd set himself.
"Orange juice sounds nice," she said tentatively.
He looked at her expectantly. "What did you do today? I thought you would have gone back to Sacramento."
"I went over to the sheriff's office," she told him. "Spent the morning talking to people who worked with Hardy. I tried to track down social contacts, but turns out he didn't have a lot of friends."
Jane snorted. "Who knew?"
"Yeah. I guess most people must have picked up on his creepy vibe whether they knew it or not."
"I take it you didn't find out anything we didn't already know?"
"Nothing useful."
He sighed. "It's to be expected, I suppose."
"I went to Sparrow's Peak this afternoon. I didn't find anything there, either. I'm sorry."
He nodded, unsurprised.
"So what are you doing here?" Lisbon asked, when the silence threatened to stretch out. "I thought 'the usual rules don't apply' on Red John cases."
Jane shook his head. "I didn't come here for that."
"What did you come for, then?"
He hesitated. "I just–wanted to make sure you were okay."
She should have known she wasn't going to get away with not talking about the whole 'almost being shot by one of Red John's minions thing.' "I'm fine, Jane," she said quietly. "Thanks to you."
He grimaced, as though her thanks pained him. He took her hand and kissed her palm. "I'm glad," he said hoarsely.
She hesitated in turn, then gestured to the empty place in the bed beside her. "Do you want to…?"
His eyes fell on the space indicated. She could see he wanted to. Badly, to judge by the pained expression in his eyes. "I shouldn't stay."
"Red John's long gone by now," Lisbon said. "You must have thought so yourself, or you wouldn't have come in the first place."
"He could have another minion lurking around," Jane said half-heartedly, but Lisbon could tell he wanted to be convinced.
"Seems unlikely," Lisbon said. "Town this size, in the middle of nowhere? What could he hope to get from them? Seems like a one-minion outpost to me. Hardy already filled that job vacancy. I can't imagine he'd have found time to replace him yet, can you?"
Jane looked cheered by this assessment. "I suppose not."
A few minutes later, he emerged from the bathroom, stripped down to his boxers and a t-shirt, smelling minty fresh.
Lisbon gave him the fish eye. "Did you use my toothbrush?"
"Yes," Jane said, sliding into bed beside her.
"That's disgusting," Lisbon said, appalled.
"We already swap spit on a regular basis," Jane said. "What's the difference?"
There was a world of difference, in Lisbon's opinion, but there was nothing to be gained by arguing the point now. She turned over with a huff and resolved to carry an extra toothbrush at all times from here on out.
Jane startled her then by snuggling up behind her. "This okay?" he said, nuzzling her hair and wrapping an arm around her waist.
Lisbon nodded mutely, too surprised to do anything else. They weren't exactly not cuddlers. She'd definitely lain with her head pillowed on Jane's chest before. He'd pulled her to him and hugged her not unlike the way he was holding her now. They'd woken up entwined together on multiple occasions, having gravitated to each other in their sleep. But it had always seemed like a natural byproduct of sex. Nothing that needed to be examined too closely. This—this asking, this wanting to be close just to be close—this was new.
She was so busy puzzling out what she thought about this development that she didn't realize at first that Jane was holding her tighter than normal and trying to stop himself from trembling against her.
"Hey," she said, her hand automatically moving to cover his where it splayed against her stomach. "What's the matter?"
He only shook his head against her hair and took two shuddering breaths, trying to regain control of himself.
She turned over in his arms, sliding one leg between his and scootching herself forward to fit herself against him more neatly. She wrapped an arm around his waist and kissed the hollow of his throat. "I'm all right, Jane," she said softly. "He didn't hurt me."
Jane let out a deep whooshing breath and held her tighter still.
Lisbon let him.
After a few minutes, he'd stopped trembling. His heartbeat had started to slow to something like normal.
Eventually, he fell asleep like that. Still pressing as close as possible, his arms tightening around her in his sleep any time she shifted. She stroked the curls at the back of his neck, and that seemed to calm him further.
When she woke, it was past 8 o clock, sunlight streaming through a thin gap in the curtains. Jane was still wrapped around her, his face buried in her neck.
She prodded him awake. "Jane. Come on. We've got to get back to the office."
"Mm," Jane grumbled without opening his eyes. "Your budget meeting isn't until 11:30. We have plenty of time."
"It's a long drive," Lisbon said firmly.
"Very well," Jane sighed.
They dressed quickly. Lisbon sighed but didn't say anything when Jane used her toothbrush again.
She was about to open the door when he caught her by the wrist and pulled her into a hug.
She leaned her head on his shoulder, willing to indulge him. Jane, she reflected, was really an exceptional hugger. He had this way of gathering you in. Of holding you firmly, but also somehow signifying that you were…precious to him. Cherished.
"I'm really glad you're okay," he said thickly.
"Thank you for saving my life," Lisbon said, her own voice getting a bit choked. She stood there for a minute, savoring the warm solidity of him against her, the sensation of his arms encircling her. Then she cleared her throat and thumped him on the back. "Come on," she said gruffly. "Time to go."
He followed.
When she got back to her office after the budget meeting, she found a new toothbrush in her desk drawer and a tall glass of freshly squeezed orange juice perched on her desk.