Note: Jello-Forever Forum – July Challenge. I will have a follow up to this sometime in the future, but I don't know when. This did not turn out as I originally envisioned it.
Disclaimer: I do not own 'The Mentalist' or any of the characters from 'The Mentalist'. If I did own them, Jane would be living with Lisbon and they would be kissing in every episode.
Jane sits watching from the cliffs overlooking the beach and the gathered crowd. He knows that she is looking beautiful tonight as she mingles with the party-ers in her blue green sundress and sandals with her hair done up. She's here tonight with someone else, someone that she claims she loves more then him.
He healed because of her. He's newly broken because of her. Looking back over the years they worked together and their many conversations, he can't help but wonder where he went wrong. He can't help but wonder why he ever believed he could have a happily ever after.
He remembers one specific conversation they had just a few months ago, just before they caught Red John. They had somehow gotten onto the topic of their feelings about each other, something they still had a hard time talking about even after several years of friendship. She had said that she understood that he needed closure and that after they could move their relationship on to something more. Something they both felt was right and had been a long time coming.
Jane knows that something is wrong with Lisbon. She's been lying to him for weeks now, but he could not figure out why until tonight when she came with the other man. Now Jane knows that she's been playing him along. Now she has destroyed him and everything that he thought they might have been.
The team is down at the party, watching their boss celebrate her engagement. They had been shocked when she arrived with someone other then Jane, someone they had never met. She just brushed off their questions about Jane with a smile, stating that the relationship hadn't worked out and she had moved on.
They watched as the consultant showed up with a single flower for her and as she shut him out. They were stunned when the new man had announced that she had said yes and that they were marrying in a few months time. The team watched as Jane drops the flower he brought for the boss before turning and walk away.
Van Pelt has always admired Lisbon, seen her as a role model. That image has now been destroyed. Van Pelt knows that she will never see her boss in the same light again. To have her boss cut down and trample another person, someone that is so close to her...
Rigsby is surprised and disappointed. His boss, and friend, is hurting another of his friends. He doesn't want to make her mad, but he is so disappointed in her actions. She was throwing away someone that loves and cares for her. She's going to tear the team apart with her plays.
Cho is furious. Lisbon just destroyed Jane without a second thought. Now Jane might be annoying at times, and for a long time was plotting to murder Red John, but he cares for everyone on the team. Especially Lisbon and she just threw him away. The Lisbon that Cho had worked with for the last several years would never had done what this Lisbon is doing.
The team just watches, trying to figure out why their boss is trying to destroy Jane. What will it serve, beside to drive the man to leave them permanently? Their eyes bounce back and forth between the consultant on the cliff and their boss here at the party. They wish there was more they could do to fix the situation, but they know that the only thing for them to do is to stand back and watch.
Minelli watches his favorite team, his prize team, as this assignment threatens to tear it apart at the seams. He knows that Lisbon is just doing what she's been ordered to do and that this just might destroy her personally, but it must be done. The people they will catch with this sting will destroy the entire CBI if left unchecked, but it is slowly killing Minelli to torture his people like this. Especially when those people include a sometimes highly annoying consultant, his protégé and the team that is more loyal to the cause of justice then any other in all of the CBI.
Lisbon wants to die for all the pain she is causing Jane. She knows that she is destroying him and that he most likely will never trust her again, even when he finds out why she's doing all of this. Instead she's pasting a smile on her face and playing her part in this masquerade. Acting as if she really is thrilled about this 'engagement' to her 'perfect' man with close cropped dark hair when all she wants is the mischievous and often times exasperating man with blond curls.
She hates that she's had to push Jane away just as he's really starting to open up and heal. She hates that she has to act like he was just a passing phase. This assignment is libel to destroy the team, she knows this but what is killing her the most is that it is also libel to destroy any chance of a relationship between her and Jane.
She prays for this to end and that she is given a chance to explain herself to him. Her heart breaks at the very thought that he might leave without ever hearing her out. That he might push her away like she's done to him. She prays she's not to late, that she will still have him in the end. She knows she'll have to make it up to him, if he'll even let her.
Lisbon looks at the cliff where Jane is and hopes that he will always be there for her like he promised all those months before when he insisted they do that silly trust fall. She lied at the time when she said that she didn't trust him. She trusted him then as she does now, she just didn't and still doesn't trust herself around him. Even now after all the stunts, fights and general chaos that Jane causes; she still cares deeply for the green-eyed imp. She just hopes he still cares for her.