Lisbon wasn't sure what the next day would bring. A new case, probably, and…Jane? What the hell had happened last night, anyway? Should she acknowledge it? Should she be embarrassed? How should she treat him?

As it turned out, her worries didn't matter, because when she came in for work, Jane was absent. Rigsby, Cho, and Van Pelt were ready at their desks, but there was absolutely no sign of Patrick Jane.

"Has anyone seen Jane?" she asked.

A chorus of "no"s came from the members of her team.

"Which is weird," Rigsby added; "I mean, he's always here now."

"Yeah," Lisbon said absentmindedly. "Weird." And probably not a coincidence, she added in her mind.

Her phone rang then. She checked the caller ID, and who else would it be but Patrick Jane? She picked up.

"Jane, where are you?" she half-demanded.

"Home," came his reply; he sounded a bit off. "Listen, I, uh…" He trailed off, apparently hesitant to say something.

There was silence for an awkward minute.

"…Are you going to come to work?" Lisbon finally asked.

"Uh, no, I, uh…" He gave a nervous laugh. "I'm sorry, I just don't really know how to do this."

"Do what?"

"How do I call in sick?"

"Sick?" Lisbon repeated incredulously. "You sound fine to me."

"Yeah, right now I do," Jane practically grumbled.

Lisbon blinked but decided not to pursue the issue. "And besides, you don't get sick," she said instead.

"Well, okay, I'm not physically ill," he told her. "It's just that…I, uh…think I'm losing my mind."

Despite everything, Lisbon couldn't help laughing. "So what else is new?" she teased.

But Jane wasn't joking. "No, Lisbon, I mean I really, genuinely think I'm going clinically insane," he told her seriously.

Lisbon't smile faltered.

"Look, I just need a day to see if I can straighten my mind out," Jane said pleadingly. "If I can't get myself together by tomorrow, I'll check myself into a mental hospital."

Lisbon blinked. "Jane, you…you hate mental hospitals," she said, surprised. "You hate shrinks. You hate doctors!"

"Yes," he said, "yes I do."

Lisbon sighed. "Look, Jane, remember what we talked about just last night?" Oh god, why did I have to put it like that?

"How could I forget?" he responded in a strange tone of voice she couldn't read.

"Yeah, not helping," she told him.

"I love you, too."

Lisbon gave a very slow, stunned blink. What? He didn't mean…?

"Okay, you see, that," Jane said abruptly; "that right there is what I'm talking about."

"What?" Lisbon asked, completely baffled.

"I wasn't joking," he told her, and her heart leapt. "And, quite honestly, that scares me."

"Oh. Yeah, I…I see the problem," she lied; in fact, what he was saying made less than zero sense to her. But then again, maybe that was the problem, or at least a sign that there really was a problem to be concerned about…

"Alright," Jane said. "You'll hear from me tomorrow one way or the other. Good luck making any progress on the new case, whatever it is."

"I think we can handle a case without you for a day, Jane," Lisbon said teasingly.

"Oh, you're more than capable of doing your job, I know," Jane said; "the problem is, the other people involved might not let you."

"What do you mean?" Lisbon asked.

Static crackled over the line as Jane sighed. "Look, just do what you can, hopefully I'll be back tomorrow to deal with whatever stupid civilian obsessions might come up."

"Jane, what are you going to do?" Lisbon asked. "Today, I mean?"

"I told you," he replied; "try to get my brain straightened out. Not really sure how I'm going to go about doing that, but a full day should be enough to figure it out. I hope. Maybe."

Lisbon bit back her retorts and said, "Is there maybe some way you could…I don't know…like, hypnotize yourself or something?" she suggested. "I mean, if you need to sort out your own head, you have to know what's in it…" She had no idea what she was talking about, truth be told.

"No, I can't hypnotize myself," Jane said, "but that does remind me of something I can do…Huh. That may very well work. Thank you, Lisbon, I may owe you my sanity."

"More like you owe me my sanity," she teased. "Alright, I'll let you get to it. Good luck."

"Same to you," Jane said, and they hung up.

Lisbon stared at her phone for a minute.

What the hell just happened?

"So what's the deal?" Van Pelt asked.

Lisbon forced a smile. "Jane's taking a day off," she told them, "says he thinks he's going clinically insane. He'll be back tomorrow or not at all, according to him."

"Clinically insane?" Rigsby repeated.

"Yeah, I know," Lisbon said, rolling her eyes. "But he has just as much right to take a sick day as any of us, and he's never taken one before, so…I can't order him to come in." Plus I don't want him to be around if he's really that crazy.

…Crazy enough to kiss me…?

~o~

After he hung up, Jane closed his eyes and sighed heavily. Why did it have to be this way? At least while he was chasing Red John he'd known who he was and what he had to do; now, his brain was a mess. He couldn't even trust himself to think or feel the same thing in any two given seconds. He felt detached, and helpless, and so, so very confused.

Relax, he told himself, as he had told others so many times. Relax…clear your mind…

Where do you most want to be right now? Where are you most comfortable?…Don't force it, let your mind wander wherever it wants to go…

He took some deep breaths as he let his mind drift, touching on place after place in his mind, some real, some not, but none of them felt right.

What did he enjoy most? Where was he most at home? If he could be anywhere, anywhere at all, where would he choose to go?

Slowly, a setting came to him…a backdrop of voices, conversations all around him…phones ringing, some near, some distant…people coming and going, constantly, all with different purposes…and his own little corner of it all.

His couch in HQ.

Weird, that work would be where he felt the most relaxed, but it felt right. Don't question it, he told himself. Just envision it…

It wasn't too difficult to picture himself there - he was already sitting on a couch, anyway, and work was so familiar to him. Between that and his gift, the gift that let him see everything there was to see, he could picture it clearly, every detail - not quite razor-sharp, but vivid enough.

When he felt that he had a good hold on the place in his mind, he started searching the picture. Now look for a person, a living being of any sort - it doesn't even have to be human, just someone or something you can talk to.

The CBI was always full of people coming and going, but in his head, all the people were blurry, more background entities than people. No, wait, there was one person he could see clearly. A woman with long hair, sitting at Van Pelt's desk, her back to him. But it wasn't Van Pelt…

In his mind, he stood up and walked over to the woman.

"Hello?" he asked her.

She stood, then turned around. At the sight of her face, rendered clearly, his breath caught; he almost lost the image.

"Angie…"

Angela smiled at him.

He stared for a minute, then chuckled. "Of course you would be my subconscious," he commented; "you always were my conscience."

"No, I just tried to remind you of your conscience," she corrected. "You had a conscience long before you met me." She smiled again. "It's a bit more ironic that work is where you feel most relaxed, don't you think?"

If Jane had had his eyes open, he would have blinked. "So even my subconscious has a sense of humor. Wonderful…" He gave himself a little shake, then asked her, "Is there anything you want to tell me?"

"Plenty," she said; "where should I start?"

He hesitated, searching for the right words.

"Am I…losing my mind?" he asked at last.

She smiled. "No," she told him, "quite the contrary - you're getting it back."

"I don't understand…"

"For ten years, you've built your life around one mission, one aim," Angela told him, "and anything that might interfere with or contradict your purpose, you pushed aside, locked away in the back of your mind and forgot about. Now Red John is gone, your purpose is fulfilled, so those things can matter now…but…"

She turned. Jane followed her eyes and saw a mass of over a dozen blurry people, all trying to get through a doorway at once. They were stuck, piling on top of each other and squished against each other, all trying to squeeze their way out.

"They're packed away tightly, and you're not helping them back into your mind," Angela said. "Sometimes, things will manage to force their way through, and they might do so at inconvenient times." She gestured. "Like last night."

One of the people suddenly burst through out of the pile, just in time to knock down someone who happened to be passing by with a box in their hands; papers flew everywhere.

"What happened last night?" Jane asked, looking back at her. "I don't understand any of what happened…"

"It's time to move on," she told him.

He shook his head. "That's not…"

"You want to," she told him. "As your subconscious, I'm telling you: You do want to move on, start again, love again."

"But can I?"

She smiled. "You already do."

"What do I need to do?" he asked her.

"You need to reconsider every aspect of your life from your new perspective - the perspective you can afford to have now, without Red John weighing you down," she replied. "Think through things carefully, and consider the implications of everything you find in your head. There are decisions you need to make that may well alienate those close to you."

"Why?" he asked, confused.

"It's your job to figure that out," she told him. "You only gave yourself a day, so you should get started now."

He nodded. "Thank you."

"Don't thank me," Angela said; "I'm you." She smiled. "Open your eyes now."

He did, and all at once, he was back at home, completely alone.

He let out a deep breath, then put his hands over his face, rubbing his eyes. Is it supposed to be that vivid? he wondered. It almost felt real…

…Don't question it. You have a direction to go now, so take it.

~o~

Without Jane to tell them if a report was false or not, Lisbon's team had to take the first case a member of the general public demanded they take, operating under the assumption that it was legitimate. Today, this was a couple whose daughter had gone missing, and who were demanding that Patrick Jane be the one to help them, refusing help from any other team, even though Jane's team's job was homicide investigation.

Of course, Patrick Jane himself couldn't answer the call. Lisbon took her whole team with her to speak with the couple, Jane's warning about what people might and might not let her do fresh in her mind, praying that the four of them together would be enough for people who already clearly were obsessed with Jane.

The worried parents were waiting outside for the team to arrive, and they came running as soon as the car parked. Everyone got out, Lisbon introduced herself and her team…and right away, the mother said, "Where's Patrick Jane?"

"Patrick Jane couldn't make it to work today," Lisbon told the woman as casually as possible.

"But…" The woman looked at her husband with wide eyes. He appeared equally alarmed.

They turned back to Lisbon. "We need Patrick Jane's help."

"He couldn't come to work today," Lisbon repeated. "Hopefully, he'll be back tomorrow, but right now, the rest of us will do what we can."

"No," the woman shook her head, wild-eyed. She hesitated, looked back at her husband (who was holding her by this point), then turned back and shook her head again. "No, we need Patrick Jane's help."

"Well, I'm afraid you're going to have to settle for us for today," Lisbon said, getting very annoyed.

"No, we'll wait," the woman said, again glancing back at her husband, who again wordlessly agreed with her. "We'll wait for Patrick Jane. You said he'll be back tomorrow?"

"Ma'am, I was under the impression that this was a missing persons case," Lisbon said. "Your daughter?"

"Yes," the woman said.

"You are aware that missing persons cases are urgent?" Lisbon half-asked pointedly. "The longer we go without your cooperation, the less likely we'll be to find her alive."

The woman's eyes widened even further, but still, she and her husband shook their heads. "No, Patrick Jane will find her alive," she said. "We'll wait for him."

Underneath her frustration, Lisbon was thoroughly confused. "Why is Patrick Jane such a big deal?" she asked. "My team and I have worked with him for ten years, and we can do our job - he's technically not even a cop! How could you possibly justify waiting for his help, especially if the problem is that your daughter's gone missing?"

"Patrick Jane is a hero," the woman said, her voice shaking, her eyes still wide, but her expression certain. "There's nothing he can't do, nothing at all. He works miracles. He can bring our daughter back alive, wherever she might be. We'll wait for his help."

Lisbon sighed. "Ma'am, are you aware that filing a false report with the police is a crime in and of itself?"

"What does that have to do with this?" the woman asked, seeming genuinely confused. Lisbon became worried - if this wasn't a false report, a teenage girl's life was at stake and her own parents were refusing to cooperate with the police.

Jane said he was a big deal now, she thought, and even Charlotte's told me what a sensation he is in the media, but I never thought it would be quite this bad. If Jane's celebrity status is going to put lives at risk, something needs to be done about it. As for right now…

"There's a chance Patrick Jane might not ever be able to return to work," she told the couple. "Either he'll be back tomorrow, or he won't be back at all, and right now, both of those situations are equally likely."

"We'll wait." The words came, not from the mother this time, but from the father, who was, if anything, even more certain than his wife. "Come back tomorrow, with or without him, but we'll wait to see if he can help us."

"He can't help you today!" Lisbon said, raising her voice as though that would help the couple understand how stupid they were being. "We can! Please let us do our job!"

Husband and wife shook their heads simultaneously, both wearing the same certain, closed expression. "We're not doing anything until Patrick Jane comes," the woman said.

Lisbon didn't try to resist rolling her eyes, but she turned around. "Come on," she told her team, "there's nothing we can do here."

Rigsby, Cho, and Van Pelt had been silent during the entire argument, and in fact, they had no idea what to think, never mind what to say. Lisbon had had a bit of a heads-up thanks to her sister's position in the media, but none of the rest of the team had imagined that Jane was this big a deal - that anyone even could be this big of a deal!

They drove back to HQ in silence. When they were there, Rigsby finally spoke.

"What now?" he asked.

"We do what we can without their cooperation," Lisbon answered; "we can look into people's backgrounds, see if we can find any evidence that the report they filed is false."

"What if it's not?" asked Cho.

Lisbon sighed. "I'd rather not think about that," she said, almost under her breath, as she got out of the car.

~o~

"That's all you want me to do?"

Rich had made his request of partnership with Red John's last pet, Brett Partridge. Brett was very surprised by his instructions.

"Seriously?" he asked. "That's all I have to do, and you'll be able to take him down? Are you sure?"

Rich smiled and nodded. "That's all I need," he confirmed.

"Hell yeah, I can do that!" Brett exclaimed enthusiastically.

"The next time they close a case," Rich said.

Brett nodded. "Right." He couldn't help but give a little wriggle of excitement. "Oh, this is going to be so awesome!"

"Yes, it is," Rich agreed, almost under his breath, as he stood to go.

For the record, the mental exercise I described Jane going through IS legitimate, though I don't think the results ARE supposed to be so vivid.