AN: Thanks for all the feedback so far, so glad to know you're still enjoying the fic :) This chapter brings Mr Danny Ruskin to the table. I was a bit wary to explore Danny's character as we've only seen him once but I felt he was too important to leave out. I've tried to keep it in character, please review and let me know what you think!
Danny is sitting, waiting.
He drums his fingers against the table. Impatiently. It's your standard run-of-the-mill café, its low quality reflected in the fact it's mostly empty at eleven in the morning. The waitress, Stella, according to her name badge, has been making eyes at him and it's starting to make him uncomfortable. Fortunately it's only a few moments before the door creaks open and he sees a face he hasn't seen in a long, long time.
"Well, well - look what the cat's dragged in," smirks Danny. He's always been wary of Sam Barsocky, a formidable woman if ever he knew one. His eyes follow her as she slinks round behind him to take a the seat beside him, and his smart comment is rewarded with a sharp stinging slap to the back of the neck.
Danny yelps and paws at his neck to soothe the sting. Sam sits and looks up at him, one eyebrow raised, thoroughly unimpressed.
"Long time, Master Ruskin."
He nods. "Long time."
"How've you been, Danny?"
"Same old; and you?"
"Same old," she agrees.
They sit in silence for a moment.
"Sam, not that I'm not happy to see you, but what's all this about?"
With a look he can't identify, Sam pulls her purse from where she'd left it on the floor. She looks through her purse and pulls out an envelope. She places it face-down on the table and slips it over to him with a single finger. He picks it up in his hands. No address on the front, just Danny, handwritten in a vaguely familiar scrawl.
He looks up at Sam questioningly.
She shrugs.
"Don't look at me, Danny. Nothing to do with me."
He turns the envelope over and pulls the flap out and pulls out what is inside.
A postcard.
A beach scene.
He turns it over and reads the sideways scrawl of small handwriting.
Danny
Sure you've heard the past months' events, and if you haven't I'm sure you'll guess now. I did what I always said I'd do. It's good, though I confess I do feel a little lost. Without a goal to focus on I find myself mourning your sister and niece in a fresh and bitter way that doesn't suggest they died over a decade ago. I've been holding myself off from it for years, I suppose. Not sure what the future holds, but for now island life is still a refreshing novelty. Look me up if you're ever down this way and feeling sentimental.
P.
Danny looks up at Sam. She looks melancholic.
"Did he write you too?" Danny asks.
"He sure did, for all he said. Asked that we'd give out this here envelope to you."
"The lucky few we are," Danny smirks.
"Aye," Sam sighs. "Well, us and that cop lady."
"Huh?" Danny asks, eyebrows raised, peering out from under them. "Lisbon?"
"Lisbon."
Danny whistles disbelief and pushes himself back in his chair. "Whew.."
"She ain't no normal cop lady, Danny Ruskin. She's a good 'un."
Compliments such as this are rare from Sam, and unheard of regarding a member of law enforcement, Danny knows.
"You're telling me?!" He exclaims. "She was the one let me run off, let on I'd never been there in the first place. Hell of a lady cop, that one is."
"Mmm-hmm," Sam murmurs, humming in agreement. "Patrick Jane could do a lot worse than her."
"Wha- oh, you think.. You think they- they're-"
"I'm sorry, Danny. Angela was a great girl. You know we all loved her. But it's true. I for one could see he's smitten. It's been a long time since Angela. Long enough." She pauses. "Maybe too long."
Danny nods, slowly. He sniffs. He thinks of his sister as she was, as he had had her his entire life. Cheeky. Beaming. Loyal as all hell. She'd spent too much of her life running after him, looking after him, getting him out of scrapes and messes her whole life. Much like he supposed Agent Lisbon was doing for Patrick now. It occurs to him suddenly that he ought to feel offended by imagining Patrick moving on, striking up with another woman. He feels surprised when he realises it doesn't make him all that angry. Like Sam had said and Patrick had alluded to – ten years was a long time. Longer than they'd been married. He feels even - he might even call it fondness. He supposes it helps that Agent Lisbon had already proved her worth years previous. Danny thinks of her, the guilty sideways glance and his disbelief as he'd realised she was letting him go. He'd ran out of the room and left them there together. They'd been together – not together, but still, together, almost ten years. Longer than Charlotte had been alive.
He clears his throat.
"She must be something alright to keep him under tabs – and to sway you, Sam Barsocky."
"I've always said police was police, but she's the one who got Caitlin back home to us safe. You know, Lele's little girl."
It is that moment that Pete comes in, leading Caitlin by the hand as she totters unsteadily on her toes. The child claps her hands in delight when she sees Sam and falters on step. Pete swoops her into his arms and the girl giggles.
"That's Lele's little girl?" Danny asks. He's never seen her before.
"That is. You wanna hold her?"
The child is in his arms before he can make a sound. Pete goes up to the counter behind him, and Sam follows him, leaving him alone with the child.
"You want some coffee, Danny?" Sam asks, turning back to him.
He shakes his head and she turns back to her husband.
Poor Lele. Years ago they'd been friends. Grown up together. One summer, aged fifteen, she'd held his hand and they'd kissed sweetly behind a carnival tent. And now she is dead and he is holding her daughter. He recognises the child's eyes as hers. Caitlin prods a careful finger into his own chin. He smiles at her and her eyes widen. Then she sneezes. He laughs and before he knows what's happening he can feel tears in his eyes as he realises this is the first child he's held since Charlotte.
And he looks at this child, and he remembers her mother. He remembers his sister and his niece. He remembers how they were all killed. He remembers how it felt to be the one left behind. He remembers how it felt to get Patrick's call. How it had hurt. How he had hung up the phone and sat in silence for minutes, uncomprehending. Then, oh, how he had raged. How he had erupted and exploded and never been the same again.
He remembers the night, a couple of months ago, sitting alone in a busy bar when the newsflash had blazed across the television in the corner. One moment two sport commentators had been comparing notes, the next he was looking at a headline and a crime scene he couldn't quite believe. Another moment again and he was staring into a photograph of Charlotte Jane's face splashed across the scene, a reminder for the Californian public who might have conveniently forgotten the sordid affair.
The people around him were grumbling at the interruption at their precious sports' coverage and it was a moment before he realised it was his voice he could hear. "Shut up!" He was shouting, eyes glued to the screen. "Shut up! Shut up!" He was standing on the supporting bar of his stool, stretching towards the screen, and he knew he looked like a madman, but now it was Angela's face he could see, his precious, beautiful Angela, and why were they doing this, why were they turning his family into a spectacle, hadn't enough been done to them already, and that was all he could think about, not the fact Red John was dead. Not the fact that Patrick had avenged his sister like he'd always said he would. Not that. Because he couldn't deal with that.
Danny shakes himself and brings himself back to the present. He swallows the lump in his throat. Lele's child is staring at him with big baby blue eyes.
His sister's husband has killed the man who killed this child's mother. He feels a twisted satisfaction at the thought.
"Poor baby," he says, voice low in his throat. "All alone." The baby giggles. "You and me both, baby. You and me both."
"Except she's not alone," Sam cuts in.
She's back, standing behind him.
"And neither are you, Danny. You know that."
She takes her seat beside him, and Pete follows her over, two steaming mugs of black coffee in his hands.
"I think you're right, Sam," Danny says eventually.
"She's never right, but she's rarely wrong," Pete pipes in.
Sam gives him a rare smile.
Danny lets a laugh escape. They're some crowd.
"You've realised I'm right?" Sam prompts slyly.
"I think Patrick deserves his happiness. He's paid the price, and over again."
Pete nods. He digs Sam in the elbow. "Y'all talking about Young Pepper?"
"Mmmhmm," she nods.
Danny stifles a shaky laugh and settles Caitlin on his knee. "It's common knowledge then? Patrick and Lisbon?"
Sam stops a while before she answers.
"Well we've figured it out," she says then. "I daresay they have."
"Whether they've come to terms with it, that's the question," Pete says.
"They will." Sam says wisely. "They'll be fine."
Pete leans back in his chair, mug in hand, and gestures to his wife. "I'd trust her word, Danny. She always knows about things like this."
A memory comes suddenly to Danny, years old and years forgotten. Not a big memory, not important, nothing more than a look; just a pointed, knowing look from Sam, a glance as she had caught him smiling at Lele Turner. He'd blushed and Sam had had an extra kick of a glint in her eye the rest of the day.
Pete was right. Sam always knew.
Maybe she was right now. Patrick and Agent Lisbon would be fine, no matter how unlikely it seemed at present. For Danny had seen Patrick pursue his stubborn, sparkling sister and he had made her happier than she'd ever been before. Agent Lisbon was tough, but she was hardly that tough.
Thinking on it now, Danny was certain. They would be fine.