Chapter 5 is here...thank you to everyone who reviewed the last chapter! Also, thank you to mentalagent13 who provided the following quote. I'm not sure about this chapter, though. I can't put my finger on it, I just don't like it as much. So I'd love a review more than usual, because I really want to know if I'm just imagining things or if it really is not very good.

Don't own the Mentalist. With luck, tomorrow I will.

Chapter Five

Waiting is painful. Forgetting is painful. But not knowing which to do is the worse kind of suffering. -Paulo Coelho

Jane was aware it was a dream, obviously; he'd had it many times and the clues were luminous. While wandering through the store, he'd caught his reflection in a mirror and his face was softer, less twisted by time. He not only saw the difference, but felt it, felt lighter, as if some great weight had been lifted from his shoulders and he supposed that it was true. In this dream, Red John existed only as a premonition; a future that couldn't lay a finger on him. Not yet.

And the most immediate clue was Angela, who currently twirled before him in a pink sundress.

'What do you think?' she asked him, smoothing the material over her bulging stomach. Jane caught her eye through the mirror and sighed wearily. He loved her, he did, but he hated shopping.

'Honestly, Ange,' he told her, 'you could turn up in a troll costume and still be the most beautiful woman there.'

She tilted her head knowingly. 'Yes, but you have to say that.'

'It's not a cocktail party,' he reminded her. 'It's a baby shower.'

Humming in agreeance, she turned side-on to analyse herself, oblivious to his lack of a compliment. It never mattered what answer he gave, because the dream would, without fail, go thus: she would buy the dress, and they would drive home. Nothing more, nothing less. Jane assumed that he'd subconsciously chosen this dream because it had no links to the pain of the coming years. It was a snapshot of another person's life, sweet and simple; a world that he used to belong to, before he banished himself.

'I don't think I'll get it,' Ange announced, pulling Jane from his musings, and he felt his eyes widen in surprise. She always bought the dress. But there was disgust in her face as she took in her reflection, and he opened his mouth confused.

'Why not?'

She turned to face him. 'It's too…pink. Almost sickly. Makes me want to puke.' Jane cocked his head, wondering where the real Ange, engaged in a steady affair with femininity, had disappeared to.

'Are you feeling okay?' he queried.

'Super,' she grinned, like there was a hidden joke that he wasn't getting.

As they stepped out of the store and into the street, headed for the car, Jane's stomach refused to settle and a question crept into his mind. It was the reason he kept glancing at her every few moments, the reason the confusion had evolved into a slow fear. Was he beginning to forget her? Perhaps the image of Ange walking beside him was losing its tone at the edges, like an old movie, but recovering a split second before he could see. Before he could begin to panic. Jane inhaled deeply and reassured himself with the thought that the next few moments of the dream were vivid, and decided to set it in action; looking across, he fixed Ange with an intense stare and waited for her to notice. Usually, he marvelled at the sunlight on her cheekbones, or the pregnancy glow of her skin; this time he focused on her edges, refusing to let her fade.

'What are you staring at?' she asked eventually.

He played his role, word for word. 'Am I not allowed to look at my own wife?'

'Of course you are,' she smiled. 'But you're not looking, Patrick, you're reading-and don't even try to deny it.' He wasn't going to. But there was the strange sense that if he walked away from Ange, she would keep talking and the dream would continue on without him; his mind was sticking to the routine, and he had no control. 'It's so strange,' she continued, and Jane knew the words before she said them. 'I mean, I look around and I see buildings and cars and people. But you look around, and you see so much more than that. It's like you're ten thousand steps ahead of everyone else.'

'You want me to stop?' he asked as they reached the car, turning to face her. She shook her head, the deep brown of her eyes twinkling in affection.

'No,' she told him. 'I just don't want you to leave me behind.'

She smiled and kissed him lightly, her protruding stomach pressing softly into him. In the instant before their lips met, Jane noticed that she had to balance on the tips of her toes to reach him; in reality and in every other dream, Ange had been tall enough to simply lean forward. He wondered bleakly if he was just edging into paranoia; dreams could not be relied on, after all, to present perfect detail. But deep down under the surface the confusion had returned and was quietly growing-something about this dream was off. Something about Ange was wrong, and he couldn't quite put his finger on it.

The traffic was light as he pulled the car out onto the road. A silence descended, which relieved him because it was familiar, part of the routine. It was how the dream always went; strangely enough, he loved these moments just as much as all the other keepsakes he had of Ange. Defined as a silence, yes, but it was neither awkward nor expectant; it merely existed. Not as a symbol of words that weren't spoken, but words that didn't need to be said. He cherished it.

It was a short-lived quiet, however, because the road their silence would continue down was closed off by cones and yellow tape. Beyond this two cars were almost fused into each other, such had been the force of their collision; wrecked metal and scorched tyres and an ambulance that had turned up far too late. Three or four policeman were attempting to restrain the small yet animated crowd of onlookers. Jane's confusion mounted. Compared to its counterparts, this was one hell of a strange dream.

'Oh, that's horrible,' Ange said.

'Sure is,' he heard himself reply, braking to turn onto a side-street. 'Teenagers. They don't learn until they're dead.'

'ME's going to have a boring evening,' she commented. 'Four hours of autopsies, and all he's going to discover is that cause of death was sudden impact. What a waste of time.'

Jane let himself stare. He knew there was no use in keeping his eyes on the road. He knew the car would drive itself, with the safety and softness only a dream could provide. What he didn't know was who sat in the passenger seat beside him. She looked like Ange, but her words most certainly did not belong to her; she'd been far too wrapped up in the affairs of the living to know anything about death. In fact, Jane could almost swear he was now having a conversation with Lisbon. And that just threw everything out of proportion.

'Are you sure you're feeling alright?' he asked eventually. She turned and met his gaze with a raised eyebrow.

'Of coure, Jane. I'm absolutely fine; in fact, I feel amazing.' Ange ran a hand over her stomach. 'Charlie's been a little restless lately, though; no time for rest, just kick, kick, kick.' She laughed. 'I think she's going to be a soccer player.'

'She probably knows it's nearly time to…' his words trailed off as he backtracked and re-read her words. The confusion became utter bewilderment.

'What?' she asked. He swallowed.

'You called me Jane.' The familiar warmth in Ange's eyes suddenly melted, as did her smile, and for a few moments it was as if she didn't see him. Without a word, she turned her back on him and began to stare out the car window at the houses gliding past. As if hoping that a silence would act as clarification, would make him forget.

'Ange…' he began, but then his eyes flickered down to her neck and he was hit by the necklace, falling gently from her neck to a dainty gold cross. And his words shattered.

Slowly, she turned to him and he gasped. Her eyes were green. Not just any shade of green, which he could cope with, but a piercing emerald he knew so very well from the world that succeeded hers. Suddenly, the confusion wrote itself into some sort of sense, or so he vaguely supposed it to be, because it certainly made no sense to him. Nothing did.

'If it was me and her dying in that crash,' she said, 'but you could only save one of us, who would you choose?'

'What?'

'Patrick, please. Answer the question.'

'You, of course,' he complied, refusing to acknowledge who the 'her' was. It didn't matter, anyway. It was Ange over anybody. But she looked no more reassured at this, her smile bitterly sad, and he felt his heart beginning to tear.

'But that would be pointless,' she told him. 'I'm already dead.'

Before he was even able to string together a sentence, able to think, Jane felt himself being pulled back, out of the car, up and away from Ange…he fought it, but he had little strength and was occupied with his heart which threatened to burst through his skin, refusing to leave the person who made it whole. Yet at the same time, it pulled him upward, desperately searching for the surface. He could do nothing but let himself be taken, closing his eyes…and a moment later, the darkness stopped spinning and he began to think again.

As his eyes flickered opened, Lisbon leant back on the edge of his desk and tilted her head.

'We got an ID on the victim,' she informed him. 'Valerie Stevens, 31 years old. She's a freelance journalist.'

'Told you she was a writer,' he mumbled and she rolled her eyes. The green of them blinded him and for a moment all the confusion of his dream, coupled with the confusion of reality, pushed a question into the air. 'Lisbon.'

'Yeah.'

'If you were one of two people in a car crash, and I could only save one life, would you want me to save yours?'

Her lips parted in surprise, but she gave the matter a few seconds thought.

'That depends,' she eventually said.

'On what?'

'On who you leave behind.'

There we go. Please R&R! I have a couple of quotes/oneshot concepts, but I'd love some more.

TAJ :)