Jane's hand trembles against the doorjamb, moonlight bisecting the smiling red face on the wall, and Lisbon watches it all come back to him because it's the least she can do. It's the only thing she can do.

Relief is a terrible, traitorous thing to feel in this moment. It shouldn't suddenly be easier for her to breathe. Her heart shouldn't be skipping beats. It feels like she's laughing in the face of the man who, in a rare moment of honesty, begged her to let him be happy — and it feels good, to kill that man. It feels good to know that Jane, her Jane, the man of hard-won compassion and good intention, has come back. Like Jesus out of the tomb.

She wonders if Jesus ever wept to see the sunlight again.

Jane is weeping now, silent tears that catch the light and drip into the collar of his shirt. His hand, before trembling, is now shaking so badly that it stutters down the doorframe, causing him to list like a drunken man. He's crumbling, one valiant mental defense at a time, bowing to his fate and his future and his present; Lisbon can't imagine the kind of walls a mind like his can throw up, and how sharp the memory of that night must be to keep cutting them down.

"I'm sorry," she repeats, helpless to do or say anything else. Guilty. It's her choice that's brought them here, her inability to sit there and watch Jane walk away, with stolen money and no shame, absently rubbing a wedding band he didn't even know the value of; she's caused him pain, and she doesn't like that.

But Cho was right: as cruel as it is to say, the death of his family had made Jane a better person. Hellbent and desperate and grieving, and better, wiser, kinder. If she'd let that other version of him walk away, he would make the same mistakes again, and again, and again. Hurt more people. Maybe get more killed.

The Jane she knew would ask her to put a bullet in him first.

The Jane she knew — knows — is sagging slowly to the floor like a puppet at the end of a show, one hand latched onto the doorknob and the other wrapped around himself like he's bleeding out, like it's all that's keeping him in one piece. He goes down to his knees, then slips sideways against the door, accidentally wedging it further open with his shoulder; Lisbon can see the rust-brown of that smiling face from the stairwell now.

Red John is still out there — she hadn't even thought of that when she brought Jane here. What would he have done if Jane had wandered back in front of the cameras, as feckless and irresponsible as he had been seven years ago? Would he kill Jane this time, to finally drive home the lesson? Would he do whatever was done to Kristina Frye, hypnosis or drugs or torture, until Jane was as empty and lifeless as the woman he once tried to protect?

She wants to move outside her body and shake herself, slap herself silly — she knows she did the right thing by bringing him here. She did right by Jane by making him remember. But no matter how many reasons she finds to support her choice, she still feels like she's betrayed him. Betrayed someone that he could have been, happy and safe, even if just for a little while.

Jane hasn't moved again. The shaking stopped at some point, but the stillness is worse; Jane, she knows, is someone who emotionally implodes, a supernova drawing in on itself to form a black hole. There are a million horrors that haunt his memory palace — it's the worst place he can be left alone in.

Lisbon shakes off her shameful paralysis and moves slowly, cautiously closer. When he doesn't react to her presence, she steps up into the doorway with him, careful not to look down at him, staring out over his meager bedroom instead.

She'd been here just once before, in the early years of their partnership: Jane hadn't shown up for work, a no-call no-show after months of getting there before anyone else and leaving after everyone else, and she'd panicked, driven up to Malibu with her heart in her throat, worried that he'd finally caved to grief and done something he couldn't take back. Feeling responsible for him.

When he hadn't answered the door, she'd kicked it in, gone room by room before finally climbing the stairs. The bedroom door had been closed; standing before it, she'd hesitated, just for a second, wondering what she'd find. Wondering if this is how he'd felt.

Then it had opened, and Jane had stood there with his hair uncombed, shirt untucked, with red-rimmed puffy eyes, and over his shoulder had been that smiling red face and single mattress —

— and she'd realized what day it was. What anniversary it was.

She remembers so clearly the way he'd been hunched into himself in that doorway, the bleak way he'd looked at her; she remembers thinking he looked dead already, in a way his body hadn't caught up to yet. She remembers the flat, listless sound of his voice when he'd said "I just — I couldn't, today," just before it cracked all the way down; she remembers how she'd slowly, carefully drawn him into a hug, staring over his shoulder at the blood on the wall — that had never been cleaned, the blood that Jane presumably slept under each and every night —and thinking oh God, what have I gotten myself into?

"I forgot them." Jane's voice in the present sounds the same as it had then. It sounds like he doesn't really care about the answer, to anyone who doesn't know him, but Lisbon does. He doesn't look at her when he says it; he doesn't want to know if she lies.

"You did," she agrees. Jane's jaw works as he swallows, hard, and she adds, "But you remembered them, too."

"How did you explain away the wedding ring?"

Lisbon hesitates, then does him the same courtesy he does for grieving family members. "You said it was the best way to get women to trust you."

He makes a sound in the back of his throat, halfway between a sob and a laugh. "Did you punch me?"

Lisbon smiles. "I thought about it."

Jane nods once, twice, sagely. Then, abruptly, he levers himself to his feet and bolts.

The bathroom is just a door down, to the left of the stairs; she can hear him retching. Lisbon stays where she is, forcing herself to give him space.

This was the right thing to do, she reminds herself forcefully. The right thing.

Red John's calling card continues to smile at her. Mocking. An augury of the serial killer's dominion over life and death, over this house, over her friend. Three bullets and a not-guilty verdict later, and still none of them are free.

She waits until the worst of the noises die down. Then she gently draws the door closed, laying the boulder back over the tomb, and turns to follow Jane.

The door is wide open, but he hadn't managed to hit the light switch on the way in; she flicks it on. Jane is slumped on the carpet in front of the toilet, one arm curved across the seat, head laid in the crook of his elbow.

Lisbon runs a washcloth under the tap until it's damp and cool, then sits down beside him, cross-legged and careful not to touch, with her back up against the sink; it's not comfortable, there's a handle digging into her shoulder blade, but at least from here she can see his face. He looks bone-white under the bright bulbs, eyes closed, hair stuck to his forehead by a thin sheen of sweat. He looks miles away from the smiling, selfish man of less than an hour ago. He looks…familiar.

Which means he looks awful, and scared, and desperate, and sad. And in possession of a conscience. It's a miserable improvement.

"Put this on the back of your neck," she tells him, holding out the cloth. He moves slowly to take it, like he's trying not to jostle an injury, and Lisbon gives into a usually-repressed instinct and asks, "How did you know where that was with your eyes closed?"

"You're a nice person. You knew my eyes were closed, so you instinctually held it closer for me to find it more easily. I could feel the temperature change by my leg. And you," Jane opens one eye just a crack, giving her a weak facsimile of a smile, "are trying to get me talking, Lisbon."

She can't help but return the smile. Welcome back, Jane. "What can I say, it's good to talk to you again. I missed the real you."

Jane's smile lingers, but he closes his eyes again. Dips his head a little lower, exhaustedly.

The real you is hurting, all the time. Lisbon tries to figure out what she can say that won't make it worse. "We started putting together an office pool while you were…gone. Raising money to get you a bell."

Jane lifts an eyebrow without opening his eyes. "I thought that was our plan for LaRoche."

"Well, LaRoche didn't wander off and get himself attacked on our last case."

"Meh. He could have."

"But he didn't. And you wander off so often, I think you could use it more. Or maybe a GPS tracker. Ankle monitor?"

"Hm," Jane hums noncommittally. "How about I promise that next time I'll drown a little louder?"

Lisbon falters.

For a moment, it's all so vivid again — the sight of Jane's unmoving body suspended in the water, the dead weight of him against her chest as she hauled him to the shore. The way he flopped under her hands with every chest compression, unresponsive, cold to the touch. Not breathing.

"Lisbon?"

She looks up and he's watching her with an unreadable expression on his face. Dried tear tracks gleam on his cheeks. From the feeling of it, there may be fresh ones on her own.

"I frightened you. I'm sorry."

She shakes her head without meaning it. "Someone almost killed you. That frightened me."

He's still watching her. "You're the one who found me."

Lisbon hesitates.

"I wouldn't wish that on anyone. Sorry, again."

"Will you stop apologizing?" she finally snaps. "You have nothing to apologize for. Not to me."

"I don't know if that's true."

"Well, I'm telling you it is."

Jane goes silent, thoughtful. He still doesn't look well; he'd propped his head up in his hand, rubbing slow circles against his temple like he's got a migraine. Lisbon wonders how many of his reactions are emotional fallout and how many could be psychological backlash; is there really much of a difference when it comes to Jane?

"Tell me what you're thinking?" She means for it to sound like a confident command, but it comes out unsure. So many times when Jane speaks his mind to her, she wishes immediately that he could take it back, wishes she wouldn't have to shoulder the responsibility for his schemes or his rudeness or his ill-fated vendetta. Right now, she's worried that he'll tell her he hates her for making him remember, for bringing him here — worried that she'll have gotten him back just to lose him again.

Jane takes a long, slow breath in. Lets it out shaky. "I don't know what I'm thinking. I'm…I have questions." He lifts his head to meet her eyes, and his are so tortured that Lisbon can barely hold his gaze. "But I don't know if I can hear the answers. Not now, anyway."

"That's okay," Lisbon agrees, a little too readily. It's not like she's exactly chomping at the bit to tell him that he did a cold reading for her, or stole an absurd amount of money from an ATM robber and blew it on real diamonds for a woman he'd never met before. She definitely wants to leave the pickpocketing and escaping stories to Rigsby and Cho, just to see Jane squirm a little. "Are there any that you think you can hear now?"

He's quiet long enough that she starts to think the answer is 'no'. Then, closing his eyes and adjusting the washcloth on his neck, he asks, so softly, "It's been seven years? Since they…?"

Her throat closes around the answer. "Yes."

Another unsteady breath in. Steadier out. She watches Jane's thumb turn his wedding ring once, twice, three times. "I asked you if we were sleeping together?"

She can't hold back a chuckle. "Yes, you did."

He raises an eyebrow at her, vaguely teasing. "What did you tell me?"

"The truth," she replies, smacking him lightly on the knee. He laughs like a rusty implement scraping the bottom of a pan. "You were throwing yourself at every woman in a ten-foot radius, it's not like it was devastating news."

"I hope they all turned me down."

"Van Pelt sure did. But if it's any consolation, I think it was more confusion than personal taste."

He lifts his head, brow furrowed. "I hit on Grace?"

Lisbon smiles. "I'm sure she'd be flattered to hear how shocked you are about it."

"No, I just mean —" Jane's good mood subsides a little, his eyes dropping. "She's a professional young woman, she didn't deserve that. Sure Rigsby was thrilled, too."

"I'll leave that for him to tell." She can see him slipping away again, losing himself to the memories of this house and to self-recrimination, and she nudges her knee gently against his. "Any other answers you want right now?"

He mulls it over, still turning his wedding band. "You said you found me."

"You said I found you."

"You as good as told me with your face," he counters. "How long ago was that?"

It's her turn to take a long, deep breath in. Let it out slow. "About four days. We…I pulled you out of the water the same night we found the body, you woke up the next day but they kept you for observation. Day after that, you joined us on the case. We made the arrest this morning." When Jane nods, taking it in, she adds, curious, "How much do you remember from those last few days? Doctors said it might present as a blackout period once you got your memories back."

Jane shrugs with one shoulder, the kind of practiced nonchalance that has her reluctantly braced for a lie. "Oh, not a lot. Flashes, mainly. You. Something about a red herring."

"Do you remember the attack?"

He's too good at what he does to freeze or flinch, but Lisbon knows him well enough to see the way that he slows, the fidgeting of his fingers setting a more deliberate pace as he self-soothes past some block. "Some of it."

She waits. When there's nothing more, she changes subjects. "You're going to have to undergo a psych eval to return to your consultant status. You kinda quit."

"Eugh, a shrink," Jane murmurs. "Whoever that Jane was, he's probably the smarter one."

"He's not," Lisbon says immediately. It must come out sharp, because Jane is looking at her again, those bright, clever eyes searching her face, so she tries to make a joke out of it. "You'd miss us too much, even subconsciously."

He's still watching her, like a hunting bird circling a field. "Oh would I?"

She nods, decisive. "You would. How could the great Patrick Jane survive without the chance to turn my hair grey before I hit fifty?"

He chuckles. After a moment, he pushes himself up from the toilet, shifting slowly and gingerly to rest his back against the bathtub so he can better face her, his arms loosely hugging his knees. "Then at least something good came out of all this nonsense. I get to keep wowing you people."

There are lines in his face she's certain she's never seen before, an exhaustion in stooped shoulders that she hasn't seen in years. His eyes keep straying towards the doorway, in the direction of the bedroom, like if he's afraid he's going to forget again if he doesn't keep reminding himself; they keep dropping to the floor, too, like he wishes that he could.

"I'm sorry I had to bring you here," Lisbon tells him, guilt twisting in her gut.

"Don't be," Jane says immediately, like he'd expected it from her, and for a practiced liar he can be so assiduously honest sometimes, in ways that burn straight through to the heart of her. "I'm glad it was you. I needed to come back, from wherever I was. Whoever I was."

He says it so grimly that she knows in an instant that he remembers more from the last few days than what he's told her — and she knows just what he's thinking of, who he's thinking of. Red John, his mission, the serpent in the garden who will never, ever stop whispering to him.

It's such a sick image, set against the other Jane's pleading look, that half-desperate let me be happy, that she has to say something. "We needed you back too. Rigsby, Cho, Van Pelt, and I. We missed you."

His expression flickers, a second of blankness like the uncanny valley of a plastic mask. Then he smiles, a gut-shot thing like finding his peace in inevitable tragedy, and stretches out a hand, wiggling his fingers at her. She takes it, smooth and damp with sweat and heavy in her own. "You'll have me. Barring any future, unforeseen near-drownings."

She smiles, shaking her head. "Unforeseen. And here I thought you were psychic."

He cracks a tired, mocking grin, and it feels like the sun coming out. "Nobody's perfect."