Author's Note: Boo! :) Sorry I've been absent so long, but I've had so much on my plate. I've had to concentrate on my own work for a while, but I can't leave anything undone and seeing new episodes made me want to dive back in now that I have time to. Hope you enjoy.

Disclaimer: I do not own the Mentalist and would not be foolish enough to claim to.

Wainwright was sitting at the front of the class at his desk already when Jane entered, pouring over papers and playing absentmindedly with his tie. Smiling gently, Jane turned to the classroom. Summer and Cho had already made it to the far corner, talking to the black kid whose name he hadn't caught yet. Eying them at the back of the room warily and shaking his head in amusement when Summer winked at him, Jane took his seat in the middle, dropping his bag down beside him. He leaned his head on the back of his chair, weary from his worry. It had been a long night and as he settled, he had the feeling it was going to be a long day. He could not have guessed how long.

Slitting one eye open, he could see Van Pelt already sitting beside him, her pencils and things laid out just so on the desk before her. Her gaze, however, wasn't on them, but on something else entirely. He grinned, peeking the way she was looking, where Rigsby was sitting on his desk, talking to his fellow football player. It made him smirk. They were both so besotted, he didn't know why they danced around each other so. Why not just ask each other out and be together? It would be so much easier. Though he supposed he was one to talk.

Speaking of Lisbon.

He opened both eyes to look at the clock hanging at the front of the class by the door. Class was about to begin. If Teresa didn't come soon, she'd be late. He waited, patiently, for the black hair, the ratty jeans. The emerald eyes.

She never came.

Class began and ended without her.

Nor did she show up to third period Art. He looked for her, watched the door like a sentinel, just waiting for her to walk over the threshold and apologize to the teacher. To give him one of her half smiles, the ones that always made his organs do somersaults inside his chest. He'd had a rough night and sorely needed one of those looks today. The desire burned him, he needed the reassurance so badly. He should have known when Mrs. Frye gave him a curious, slightly worried frown half way through that she wasn't going to come in late.

She wasn't going to come in at all.

He tried to tell himself not to worry. He tried not to think about everything that could have gone wrong. However much he told himself differently though, he was starting to get worried. Even as he waited, as patiently as he could, disquiet slowly grew inside his ribcage till it turned to downright dread. What if her father had... no, he wouldn't think things like that. Not until he talked to James at lunch. Watching the clock though, seeing the time ticking slowly away, he couldn't really control the thoughts running through his head. The worry ripping his insides apart like so many ravenous animals in a frenzy. He scrubbed at his face. This was madness. Completely and utterly. Not only did he have Mrs. Ruskin to worry about, now Lisbon was- How could he have let himself get this far? To need someone this much after only having known her such a short time?

It felt like an eternity that he had to sit marking his page, as though it meant anything to him. As though he cared. The infernal ticking of the clock morphed from a benign, everyday sound to a menace. It just kept going, slow and inexorably marching along toward some kind of doom. All because of the empty space at the front of the class that should not be empty. Because this class was mostly over with now too and SHE still wasn't here. Inside his chest, inside his memory palace, the flood gates were creaking steadily open on all manner of images and fears he kept stashed away there. A closet that was never to be opened, never thought. Only he couldn't stop it. Couldn't push it closed again on the images of Teresa.

Her smile, her laugh... her hurt. The tiny growth within him, the feeling seeded into his heart by her presence was growing too large to be contained. Too new and unknown to hide or protect. She was it's source and if he couldn't protect her-

She was already too important to him to shut out, too entrenched to be put aside.

And she was just... gone. No matter what he tried to say to console himself, he couldn't help but feel like a part of him was gone with her.

Putting his brushes' end in his mouth, he forced himself to sit up straighter and bounced his leg in a quick, nervous rhythm that almost matched the hammering of his heart. He sighed impatiently. Perhaps he was stuck in a cruel purgatory where it's residents sat, waiting in dread for all eternity. A prison, where he couldn't move- couldn't breathe. That's certainly what it felt like. He couldn't handle this on top of his worry for Mrs. Ruskin. He was being eaten alive with anxiety, much like the Eagle from the tale of Prometheus, a never-ending pecking that tormented him into this madness.

Intruding upon his loop of fear, making him start terribly because he had been staring off into space absentmindedly, Mrs. Frye suddenly leaned into his line of sight. He started back, but the woman simply put a wet paper towel to his cheek, wiping at it. "Paint tends to get everywhere, I know that Patrick, but this is a bit much even so." The thing was coming away green.

He hurriedly took the paper towel from her hand to do it himself, murmuring an apology.

The art teacher merely sat on her heels, crouching beside him and looked up at his eyes. "Are you worried about Teresa, or is something else bothering you?"

Uncomfortably, he shrugged.

"A non-committal answer if ever there was one." She sighed. "I'm sure Miss Lisbon is just sick Patrick. You know, where people catch a cold or the flu?"

She didn't understand, but she was just trying to make him feel better. Jane knew that, and though it didn't work, he appreciated the sentiment. So he gave her a halfhearted smile and went back to painting. His attempt at a tree was looking more and more like a frog.

After a moment of studying him, Mrs. Frye nodded in defeat and stood.

When class was out, he was the first through the door and though it was torture, he beat back his desire to run straight out of the school to Lisbon's house. Though how he was expected to concentrate on Chemistry at a time like this, he didn't know, because he was bleeding out. Exsanguinating- being deprived of his life- that's what this was. Some kind of slow torture where his blood was drained from him and then replaced liter by liter with frigid ice till it was a struggle just to feel his feet and not to fumble with his pen.

He felt cold all over and a little ill.

It just got worse when lunch time arrived. He had thought that seeing James and talking to him would assuage his fear. It might have, except James didn't come. He sat at their regular table, but there wasn't hide nor hair of the younger Lisbon anywhere.

This was ridiculous. There was no way they were both sick.

Feeling the worry surge to a kind of painful panic again, Jane stood abruptly. In his haste to do something, anything, he stumbled a little getting his legs out of the bench.

A hand cuffed his back roughly.

He looked up, hoping, but it was Rigsby that leaned down closer to him.

"Hey, you alright man?"

Surprised as he was, it took a minute for Jane to regain himself and nod jerkily. He wasn't, but the guy wasn't going to be able to do anything about that.

Or could he? Jane looked back over at him as he shrugged and went back to not paying attention to the brown haired girl who was trying to talk to him about diapers or something. It was a thought that wouldn't leave him, a bright spot of possibility in the shadow that had been the last few hours of his life.

Rigsby had a car, an old truck that had been his father's. Jane knew because he had seen it one day when he was walking Lisbon to practice. It might be a way to save himself. Maybe, if Teresa wasn't going to come here, he'd just have to go to her.

The second the thought had solidified, he looked up, but Rigsby had already moved out of sight. Gathering his bag, he bolted toward the nearest exit and rounded the corner just in time to see the brown haired girl give Rigsby an ineffectual shove and storm off. "Uh, Rigsby!"

The jock turned to him, expression angry, but it slid away from his face slowly when he saw who had called and he paused long enough to let Jane catch up. "Hey Jane. What's up?"

"You still drive that old truck to school every day?" They moved down the hall absentmindedly together.

Rigsby eyed him warily. "Yeah. Why?"

Just as he thought. Jane smiled deviously. "I need a favor."

One eyebrow raised in his direction. "What kind of favor?"

He shrugged. "Big one, but trust me, I'll make it worth your while."

Rigsby halted, looking after him as he continued walking. "Why doesn't that make me feel any better about what you're about to ask?"