Hey there. Sorry it took me so long to update but the characters don't seem to be cooperating. They keep dancing around each other and it's taking them too long to get to the good stuff. I wanted to do Lisbon and Jane's POV in this chapter but Lisbon's kinda ran on so I'm going to do them as separate chapters but will post them at the same time. Some reviews would help with the creative process and encourage faster posting. I'd even take a flaming at this point ;)

The rating on this is currently T (adult themes, suicide) but I'm of the Saw, Hostel, Friday The 13th generation so it kind of takes a lot to faze me. If you guys think this is a bit much I'll up it to M now either way it will definitely go to M for the baby making chapters.

You know the drill the show and its characters aren't mine I'm just borrowing them.

36 Weeks Earlier

It was early morning as Teresa Lisbon stepped out of the CBI headquarters elevator and into the serious crimes bullpen. "Not even 7:00 am, to damn early to be at work on a Monday" she thought taking a pull from the coffee she was holding. She strode purposefully towards her office, unable to stop herself from glancing towards the brown leather couch even though she knew her perpetually reclining consultant wouldn't be there. Any other day of the week and Patrick Jane would already be taking up room on the comfortable piece of furniture. Pretending to sleep, an either empty or full and steaming cup of tea resting on the floor next to him, all depending on whether he had spent the night in the bull pen or gone to catch a few hours of sleep in whatever apartment or random hotel room he was called "home". Unless they were on a case, business at the CBI didn't actually start until 9 am, Jane was usually there first no matter how early the workaholic Lisbon came in, followed by the dedicated Grace Van Pelt at 15 minutes to 9:00, second in command Kimball Cho at 9:00 on the dot, and last, Wayne Rigsby doughnut in hand, at around 5 after 9:00. Mondays were the same for everyone else with the exception of Jane, who usually strolled in about 10 minutes after Van Pelt. Lisbon knew it was because he had spent the weekend there, at his home by the sea, were his wife and child had been so brutally murdered, and she knew he had to get up ungodly early if he'd slept at all in order to get to Sacramento by the start of work, considering the several hour drive from Malibu. She wondered if he did it to feel closer to them, if it provided a measure of solace, but she suspected that he did it to fuel his rage, to remind himself of what Red John had taken from him.

With a brisk shake of her head Lisbon pulled herself out of her reverie. Looking around she realized that while she had been lost in thoughts of her consultant she had entered her office, put her things away and sat down at her desk. She grimaced, briefly wondering if insomnia was contagious while she turned on her computer. Not that it was surprising that she was having trouble sleeping considering what the last few weeks had brought. "Has it only been six weeks since I last had a decent night's sleep?" she thought. Six weeks since the "Kristina and Red John fiasco" as Lisbon privately refered to it. The first three weeks after the serial killer known as Red John had killed the college kids that had dared impersonate him, rescued Jane from said college kids, murdered a TV producer to teach "psychic" Kristina Frye a lesson and then maybe kidnapped Kristina Frye, had been understandably busy. Jane had that cold and slightly maniacal look he always got after a Red John case, feverishly reading through case files, his intensity magnified tenfold by having come face to face with the killer. This time he had company though. Van Pelt fueled by her guilt at losing Kristina on her watch, whether it was to Red John or Kristina running away in fear, had doubled down, coming in at sunrise and leaving only when she could hardly keep awake anymore. Cho out of loyalty to his boss, unit and a desire to catch the murderer that had hurt his friend and so many others, had locked down his poker face and amped up the dry one liners. Rigsby had been working so hard that he'd forgotten to complain of hunger and had even skipped lunch a few times. Lisbon had picked up Jane's habit of spending a few hours resting on the couch in her office instead of going home to sleep. She blamed herself for not watching Kristina personally, for letting Jane go off half cocked getting himself captured, but most of all she felt the guilt of failing again. Of letting down the families of the people Red John had slaughtered again, letting down Mandy Bosco and Jane again. All those people without closure or justice, all those lost soul's unable to rest because the animal that killed them had slipped through her fingers again. Failed his next victim because she knew there would be more. He had called her cell phone, telling her where Jane was that he was safe and for a second she had felt absurdly grateful to the murderer, before the anger had kicked in. When she had walked into that abandoned building and seen the three young kids dead, the two copy cats killed outright, they're bodies mutilated for Red John amusement and the third, they're unwilling accomplice, had bled out from his wound while he waited for help. He'd bled to death while he waited for Lisbon and Jane had seen the whole thing.

Lisbon was sure that he had imagined the things Red John had done to his family before, it explained his insomnia, but now he knew he'd seen and heard what the killer did to his victims first hand, now he knew exactly how much they had suffered. The thought enraged Lisbon, which strangely was a good thing, it helped her not think about the fact that Jane had been at Red John's mercy. That it could have just as easily been Jane's blood used to draw the killer's trademark smiley face on the wall, Jane lying cold and broken on the ground. Instead he'd been unharmed, with the exception of the deadened look in his eyes. The anger had helped her get through the drive back to head quarters without breaking down and once they got there she'd even been able to hold off for a while before questioning Jane on what The Killer had done and said. She knew his confrontation with Red John had left him more shaken than he'd ever admit, because when he'd answered "he didn't say anything," she'd been able to tell he was lying. Her anger at his lies had been added to her anger at the rest of the sorry situation and it had sustained her through the three weeks that followed, going through files, questioning and re questioning people and going through Kristina Frye's life with a fine tooth comb in the hope of finding a clue to her location. Eventually though the trail grew cold, the manic look in Jane's eye faded and everyone conceded that they weren't going to find anything new.

Things went back to normal, well as normal as they got in their line of work, and since it seemed like all the other criminals had decided to take a break Lisbon was able to go home to get some rest for the first time in what felt like forever. Except now that there was no case to occupy her mind she found that all those thoughts that she had been pushing to the back came rushing forward. She had time imagine all the things Red John could have done to Jane which was when the nightmares started. She would dream of Jane strapped down and helpless while a grotesque figure cut and tortured him. She would dream of finding him just as the light started to leave his eyes. Even worse were the dreams where she didn't get there in time, where he was dead when they got there and she never got to talk to him, to tell him to hold on, to not leave her. Tell him how much he meant to her. She would wake from her thrashing, sweat drying on her skin a scream tearing itself from her throat and be unable to get back to sleep.

What was worse, it wasn't the nightmare images of Jane dead that kept her awake, it was the feeling of desolation that swept through her afterwards, the feeling that if he was gone Lisbon didn't want to go on either. She didn't have a problem acknowledging her physical attraction to Jane, he was good looking and charming even though he was a little too pretty for her taste (she preferred a larger more rugged body type, like Rigsby) No, admitting an attraction, well to herself anyway, wasn't the problem. The problem was the other feelings. Feeling she'd sworn to never have again, that she'd felt only twice before, once when she'd lost her mother to a drunk driver and when she'd lost her father to grief and his own hands.

Lisbon's feeling of loss when her mother died was easy to understand, she was her mother, the person who cared for her and comforted her, who told her she would love her forever no matter what. So the feeling of wanting to just disappear when she lost all that, well who wouldn't? But she had her brothers and at the time her father. Her brothers had needed her to judge who had jumped the highest and to kiss their scrapes all better. Her father had been there to hug her and tell her it would be okay, she'd believed him, at first anyway.

The loss of her father was a little more complicated. While it was true that by the end he had been a drunk, a terrible father and some would say a terrible person there was a time when Lisbon remembered being so sure she had the best father in the world. When she was a child he would come through the door after work shouting "I'm Home!" giving her mother a loud kiss on the cheek, then he'd sweep Teresa or Tess as she'd been then, up in a big hug telling her he'd missed her and asking what his "little princess" had done that day. And he had actually listened as she'd and her brothers told him about their day, laughing at their childish adventures and ahhhing over they're messy art projects. It had all ended after her twelfth birthday, after a drunk driver killed her mother, a drunk driver that was never caught. At first her father was obsessed with the case, calling the detective investigating it once a week for updates, after a few weeks of calling and getting nothing he'd started drinking after every weekly check in. After a few months he'd stopped waiting for the check ins to drink, a few months after that he'd stopped checking in, but the drinking had continued. By her thirteenth birthday he was a completely different man, his kids no longer running to the door to meet him when he came home, but rather running and hiding from him when they heard him stumbling up the stairs. It was shortly after her 16th birthday that he'd taken the old revolver they had kept around for security purposes put it in his mouth and pulled the trigger, all while Teresa watched and her three younger brothers huddled in the back yard, curled up together whimpering in their old dog's house, where she had hidden them. After what he'd done to them she hadn't expected to feel anything put relief at his death, instead she'd felt an overwhelming grief. She hadn't remembered the beatings and the yelling, instead she'd remembered the ice skating lessons, baseball games and riding high on his shoulders at a carnival. She'd collapsed on the floor sobbing and crawled over to her father's body. Knowing there was nothing she could do she still hadn't been able to stop herself from gently shaking his arm and asking, begging "daddy?" The only response she had gotten was the gun falling from his limp grasp; she'd looked at it and wondered "should I use it on myself?", "It hurts so badly and I'm so tired." "Surly God, the kindly God her mother had spoken of and believed in would understand, maybe she'd even get to be with her parents again?" Before she could pick it up though she'd heard faint cries from the back yard, "the boy's" she thought and she couldn't do it, she wouldn't abandon them like their father had done. She would stay and care for them like he should have done, like the man he used to be would have done.

She had sworn to herself then as she'd pulled herself up from the floor and wiped away her tears that it would never happen again, she would never allow herself to become so emotionally dependant on another person again. The thought had only been reinforced as shed gone out back to take charge of the boys telling the oldest to be brave for the other two, wiping the tears of her middle brother and telling him "everything gonna be okay", she'd picked up Tommy the youngest at 6 like an infant and with the other two following had walked to the neighbors to call the police. From that day on she'd decided to depend only on herself. She couldn't trust people with her welfare with her love, they would only end up leaving or disappointing her and she wasn't sure she'd be able to pull herself back from that edge a third time. And all these years she'd stuck to her vow, oh she'd come close a few times, most noticeably with Bosco. He was a good man, a good cop and he had reminded her of her father, before. But he was married, then that thing with the suspect had happened and she'd been reminded of why it couldn't happen, "they'll just disappoint you."She'd still cared for him but not like he'd wanted her to and definitely not as much as he'd loved her.So she'd concentrated on her career, eventually leaving SFPD for the CBI and in all those years becoming too attached had never been a problem. Until now, until Patrick Jane. Jane's abduction had forced her to acknowledge how much she cared about him, how seeing him every morning made her day better. She'd told him that she kept him around because he helped them catch the bad guys and most days that was enough, what she hadn't told him was that on the days when just catching them wasn't enough, when the cases were so bloody and awful that no amount of justice would suffice, it was him that made it worthwhile. Him brining her a cup of coffee or a chocolate bar he'd stolen from Rigsby's stash or just asking her if she was okay. She always answered "I'm fine" and though she wasn't his asking made it a little better. The concerned smile and his hand on the small of her back brought her a little bit further back from the edge.

If she were honest with herself she'd have admitted it a long time ago, she guessed. She put up with more from him than she'd ever put up with from anyone else, his schemes, evasions and his outright lies. She should have washed her hands of him long ago, instead she rescued him on more than one occasion when said schemes went wrong and then taken the heat form the higher ups for him. Hell, she'd even black mailed Sam Bosco for him, one of her oldest friends a man she'd respected and she been willing to lose that for Jane. Lisbon told herself it was loyalty, it was her team and Jane was a member of it so she would do whatever she thought was necessary to protect him, just like she would for Cho, Rigsby and VanPelt. "She'd been a surrogate mother to her brothers from the age of 12, her brothers didn't need her anymore but the instinct to protect was still there so it was natural for her to transfer that urge to her team and therefore Patrick Jane, right?" She'd had an inkling there was more to it when Hightower had shown up and basically threatened her job. Lisbon had never before allowed anything to interfere with her job before, not her personal issues, her love life not even her family. It was, she felt, her most selfish act. She had sacrificed her childhood and many of her dreams to care for her brothers, she didn't resent that, not really, she loved them and hadn't trusted anyone else to watch out for them. Once they had grown and she felt like she had done as much as she could for them she had decided it was time for her to see to her own future.

When she'd thought about what she wanted to do for the rest of her life the first thing that had popped into her head was the memory of the officer that had show up at the front door to inform them of her mother's death. He had stood at the door saying something softly to her father the gun holstered to his hip and shiny gold badge on his chest had intimidated young Tess, but it was the kind, sympathetic look in his eye and the gentle hand he had rested on Bill Lisbon's shoulder when the older man started sobbing that had impressed her. Officer Ellis, she would never forget him. He had provided an escorted for them when her father had insisted on immediately going to identify the body; briefly flashing his lights and sirens for her brothers. When they arrived at the station he and a few of the other officers had entertained the two older boys Jacob and David, showing them their badges and cuffs, even showing the boys where they took the mug shots, while their father had gone down to the morgue in the basement. Tess had stood in a corner of the bull pen; bouncing the 2 year old Tommy on her hip and watching the organized chaos around her. Her next experience with law enforcement was when her father had killed himself. The officers and detectives than had been thorough and professional in their investigation of the suicide. But they had also shown gentleness and compassion to the obviously traumatized children.

So when Lisbon asked herself what she wanted to do with her life it didn't take her long to decide. She was going to be a cop, she would protect people and catch the bad guys. Once she'd decided she set all her force of will on her goal, nothing and no one would get in her way. Her hard work and determination that nothing would interfere with her plans paid off and she succeeded. Now because of Jane she might lose what she'd worked so hard for. Lisbon had briefly asked herself "why am I doing this?" "Why am I staying if they don't appreciate what I do?" "I should find a job in another unit or another agency before my reputation is completely ruined." But she hadn't been able to do it. She told herself that it was her damn stubbornness and loyalty that wouldn't let her do it, that she didn't trust anyone else to protect her team.

She was good at denying her feelings, burying them and ignoring them. But Jane's brush with death and Red John had forced her to confront the truth, it wasn't stubbornness or that they caught bad guys that kept her there it was Patrick Jane and what she felt for him. She realized this weekend that protecting Jane was more important to her than the most important thing in her life, her job. Now she just had to figure out what to do about it.

Wow that was way longer than I planned on it being. I'm not thrilled with it but I've redone so many times that I figured I better post it before it gets any if the story is going slowly but since the whole premise of the is a little out of character I'm trying to use their thoughts and inner monologue to make it seem a little more natural and believable. And sorry about my terrible grammar and my problem with tenses. This is unbeta'd so it's all on me.