And so it ends (sad face). Thank you a million times over to everyone who's reviewed, and to In The Name who provided the quote (again!) for this chapter. I had a blast writing this story, bless you all. Also, I'm going to Cambodia for two weeks on Saturday, so I won't be starting anything new for a bit but I have many ideas..very exciting. For now, enjoy this last chapter! It was a challenge to write, but I hope you like it.

Disclaimer: Wait, hang on...damn. Still no.

Chapter Ten

'Tears are the safety valve of the heart when too much pressure is laid on it.'-Albert Smith

When the call came it sliced through the silence of the CBI, formed by a caseless morning which had held them all in similar states of boredom. Lisbon raised the phone lazily to her ear and listened, politely at first but then with interest as she picked the man's accent: a conversation later, forensic photographs had appeared in her inbox and she sent them to the printer. It was a minute or two, spent staring at the images in her hands, before she found the will to face her team.

She felt Jane's attention bind itself to her the moment she entered the bullpen. 'Guys, listen up,' she ordered and as the others turned their heads she glanced discreetly in his direction, sending a premonition through her eyes, watching as he read her and his expression hardened.

'At nine thirty this morning,' Lisbon informed them, pushing through the words, 'a woman named Beth Sanders was found murdered in her apartment. London Police confirm a smiley face painted on the wall behind her in blood.'

Cho decided to state the obvious. 'Red John's killed again.'

'Why weren't we…' and then Rigsby fully processed her words. 'Wait, Boss, did you say London?'

Van Pelt looked baffled. 'As in, London, England?'

'Relax, it's probably just a copycat, but I had them email me the crime scene photos just in case.' She passed around the images, waiting nervously for them to reach Jane and holding her breath when they did. His eyes flickered from detail to detail (Lisbon imagined the scene coming to life around him, able to be walked through, able to be judged) and she swallowed hard as his gaze turned cold.

A few minutes later she trudged into the kitchen for coffee and he was there waiting, pointing the handle of the steaming mug at her whilst stirring his tea. She accepted the coffee wordlessly, took a sip and waited for the liquid's shuddering warmth to leave her system before asking the question.

'Is it him?'

Jane slowly nodded and she sighed, not bothering to ask how he knew, having followed him around enough crime scenes to learn that his judgment was worth trusting.

Instead, she took a long gulp of caffeine and wished that the silence, which she'd loathed only half an hour ago, would go on forever so that he wouldn't say the words.

Jane would have liked to say that it had been a tough decision to make; the truth, however, was that it had been a natural decision, a choice that had essentially decided itself the moment he'd seen the style of slashing on Beth Sanders' body and known it was Red John. And so this absolute certainty was the reason that he glanced sideways at Lisbon, her gaze fading into the floor, and felt confident that she would understand. That she would know why.

'I have to go to England,' he muttered and winced as she closed her eyes against the announcement, not in shock but in sad confirmation, her fingers turning white from their deathly grip on the mug, her breath quivering. 'Lisbon,' he continued reluctantly, 'I'm sorry, but I have to do this. It's a test. Red John wants to see how far I'm willing to go to catch him.'

'Not every murder he commits is aimed at you,' she said suddenly and her claim startled him.

'This one is,' he defended.

'Prove it.' Lisbon followed her challenge with a long, unnerving stare, and Jane wished he could silence her doubts but found that the kind of evidence he had was neither physical nor observational. It seemed highly unlikely that she would accept his honest reasoning, that there was a strange, dark anticipation deep in his stomach and it wouldn't let him go.

In the midst of his pause, Van Pelt drifted innocently into the kitchen and hesitated when she noticed them. Lisbon, an argument vanishing from her lips, abruptly set her half-empty mug down on the bench and strode from the room, but not before he'd glimpsed the sudden fury in her eyes. Grace froze as she swept past, and now shot Jane a look of confusion. 'What did I do?' she asked, but by the time her question hit the air she was already behind him, and he was tailing Lisbon's shadow as she headed for her office. She promptly shut the door in his face and Jane was irked by her immaturity; when next he saw her, she was pacing away from him, and the moment the doorknob clicked behind him she spun around.

'So you're leaving, then,' she stated flatly, her coldness confounding him. 'Just like that, you're going to England. You're taking his bait.'

'Lisbon, I….'

'Do you have any idea how selfish you're being?' Her voice had become louder than the office walls could possibly suppress, and Jane felt himself being taken with it.

'What are you talking about?' he asked, frustrated, and she glared.

'There are people here who need you,' she told him fiercely, 'and you spend every day oblivious to this because all you can see is Red John. He doesn't deserve a damn second of your time…'

'He killed my…'

'I know what he did,' she cut him off. 'For God's sake, Jane, I know what the bastard did. But you've been chasing him for over a decade, and he's still faceless to you. He's effing invisible. Honestly, how hard can it be to see past an invisible man, just this once?'

There was a stunning fragility in her eyes, and for a moment Jane was unwillingly stolen away into one of his more recent memories, a night which both he and her had resolved never to speak of again. It was still vivid, the sight of Red John's latest (at the time) victim, of thirteen-year-old Amy Johnson's bloodied yellow ringlets plastered to her face, and the intense grief that followed almost as if it were his Charlie lying there on the ground. Home that night was a horrible place, and in turn Lisbon's apartment door had been a warm and comforting thing to knock upon early in the morning. Jane also remembered through tender eyes the moonlight sifting on her cheeks as she slept, the softness of her fingers through his hair as she kissed him. And so now, as he stared at her, he realised suddenly that her anger had to have a deeper meaning, and the pieces slowly began to align themselves.

'There's something you're not telling me,' he said. As Lisbon's eyes skirted to the floor, he stepped forward until they were only a few inches apart and he was able to gently tilt her chin up with his thumb. She refused to look at him, but even in her diverted gaze he could see fear.

'It won't change anything,' she mumbled.

'You don't know that,' he assured her, but under the surface he sensed that they'd both called the lie. Nevertheless, he felt her neck swell and then deflate against his thumb as she swallowed, mustering her courage, and all of a sudden she was staring him straight in the eye and there was nothing in between them. The moment she opened her mouth was the moment that the pieces in Jane's mind came together.

'I'm pregnant.'

His hand dropped from her face, and within an instant the feeling in his fingers faded, and up his arms, through his body, until he was completely numb save for an emotion that could not decide whether it was shock or anger, or both. Jane slowly stepped backward and the hurt on her face made him regret it immediately: without meaning to, his eyes drifted down to her stomach where he imagined a tiny life form growing, a thought which only made everything worse. He wanted to say something to her, anything, but he found himself incapable of grasping anything that would pass for a word, let alone a sentence.

And so, silence won, and as he dazedly traipsed out of her office a furious war began inside his head, two futures laid out to be appraised, black and white possibilities if ever there were. Jane led himself past a curious Rigsby and dropped onto his couch with the grey realisation that whatever he did, he was going to hurt someone: closing his eyes, he suspended all thought of Red John momentarily to the side and thought only of Lisbon. He began to recall more and more observations from that fateful night-the smell of her, the feeling of their toes intertwined-and suddenly, the image of a dark-haired little girl, blue-eyed, staring up at him from her arms, and Lisbon's soft smile sending a warmth over his skin…

But then he stopped. And he thought of Red John.

Abruptly, the warmth evaporated to a sweeping cold darkness which took every memory he had of Lisbon and replaced them with Ange and Charlie, their lifeless bodies looked over by that mocking red smile, and Jane no longer felt anything else but his own rage. It burned so painfully that he had to place a hand over his stomach to keep the anger from bursting out, and it dawned on him with a sinister resignation that his need for revenge was never going to leave on its own. His night spent in Lisbon's bed had not been the beginning of something new, but rather a comfort in the face of the something he already had, and there would never be anything else until he could first let go of his past. And if he stayed, attempted to lead two lives at once, the darkness would only become more and more powerful until it tore out of him and destroyed whatever family they'd been able to build.

He had to go, so that later he'd be able to stay.

Jane stood and stepped over to the computer that was supposedly his, though he'd barely used it in his life, and began to search for a cheap flight to London. Reassuring himself, though he loathed it, that it was the only decision he could ever really have made. However, as the minutes trailed on his actions became less and less certain, and when Van Pelt saw his screen and gasped from behind him he stopped typing completely, and closed his eyes. Sitting completely still was the only thing he could think of to do that didn't hurt anyone. In the space of ten minutes, all his noble reasons had deserted him and he'd fallen from clarity back to mental chaos, back to square one, with the memory of Lisbon's hurt expression dancing in his mind's eye, and his self-hatred increasing by the second.

But when he opened his eyes, the transaction was complete-he was flying to England at five thirty, whether he regretted it or not.

Jane spent the next four hours outside his body, watching himself drive home and pack a full suitcase, frozen between keeping silent and stepping forward to shake himself by the shoulders and yell, 'what are you doing?' In equal measures, he wanted to pretend that he wasn't going but he also wanted to consider his first moves after he stepped off the plane in London. After all, the intention was not only to pass Red John's test but to beat him at his own fatal game.

When it came to be four thirty, he shook the hands of both Cho and Rigsby and let Grace throw her arms around his neck with a soft 'good luck' in his ear. Lisbon had not emerged from her office since their last conversation, and so Jane trudged alone to the elevator, wishing more than anything for things to be different.

As he pushed the button on the wall, there was movement behind him.

'Please don't go,' she murmured, and when he turned he not only saw her but that same imaginary little girl, standing with her arms around Lisbon's left leg and her wide blue eyes looking up at him. When Jane blinked, the illusion was gone but its confronting meaning remained-if he left, he would miss everything. The pregnancy, the birth, perhaps even the early years. The beginning. And for what? Becoming a twice murderer, avenging people who-though precious-didn't exist anymore?

Yes, he was, and he didn't expect her to understand that it was for her sake as well as his. But they couldn't end over a decade of working together with this agonising silence: he couldn't simply disappear without leaving some of himself behind, so that she'd know he was coming back.

'I'm not leaving forever,' he told her.

'How do you know?' Lisbon spread her hands in exasperation. 'Who says he's going to come back to the States? You could spend the rest of your life chasing him all over the world. It might never stop.' For the first time, Jane noticed the utter helplessness in her eyes and felt the edges of his heart tear apart: and suddenly, against the will of his dark side, an idea occurred to him.

'Are you keeping the baby?' His question surprised her.

'I don't know yet,' she replied after a moment, but he knew that she would. Having another relative taken away from her was not something she would willingly put herself through.

'If Red John isn't caught in eight months,' he heard himself say, 'I'll come back. I'll be there for the birth.' There was immediate disbelief in her expression, which he understood, not knowing whether he'd be able to give up the chase if the time came to choose. The lure of vengeance was a near impossible thing for him to resist, but he had to at least try. He had to give them both some sort of hope.

'You'd give it all up,' she stated, almost a question, almost sarcasm. Jane nodded firmly, but inside he could already feel the weight of his words hanging over him like a conscience.

'I promise,' he said, and hoped that in eight months time he would be brave enough to keep it.

Lisbon hadn't believed him for a second. She'd known Jane long enough to be able to tell when he was uncertain, even when he thought he was hiding it, and so didn't take his words as a promise but as a simple representation of the fact that he'd tried.

She'd considered abortion, but only until she re-counted the number of people death had already banished from her life, and promptly refused to add to the list. Of the next eight months, however, she would remember most clearly not morning sickness or the slow expansion of her stomach, but watching the news religiously for any news at all on Red John. During her seventh pregnant month (in which she'd eaten her supermarket entirely out of yoghurt) smiley faces had been painted in two houses-one in France, the other in Ireland-and at two thirty in the morning she'd watched a news feature on the investigation. She'd heard his voice-distinctly American and so very familiar among the European accents-immediately turned off the TV, and sat there in the dark for a long time, truly certain for the first time that he wouldn't be coming back.

Lisbon wasn't all that sure what she'd expected him to do, when she told him he would be a father again. But she couldn't bring herself to judge him for his shock, seeing as her reaction had been to throw the pregnancy test hard against the wall, and then spend three hours at the shooting range. She couldn't really blame him for leaving, either: after all, he had lived and breathed the footsteps of Red John for over a decade, and such a path could not simply be turned away from. He had another family to care about, despite that they were dead, and she'd long since accepted that this left no room in his heart for anyone new.

So she went to the ultrasounds and saw the pulsing heartbeat on the screen, the tiny life accompanying her everywhere, and yet felt more alone than she'd ever been.

On the day that she progressed from pregnant to mother, Lisbon found herself introduced to a new level of pain beyond anything she'd ever thought possible, an agony the drugs did nothing to save her from. She had the briefest moment of painlessness-in which she wondered whether God hated her, whether Hell was filled not with fire and pitchforks but with women forever in labour-before the feeling of being torn open from the inside continued, and she could think no more. In the corner of the room one of the nurses had turned on a television to calm her, but suddenly a red smiley face caught the corner of her eye. Immediately she turned her head, drenched in sweat, to discover that Red John had killed again-this time in Sweden.

'Turn it OFF!' she shrieked suddenly, and one of the nurses almost dived for the remote. A small part of Lisbon was well aware that she was being a horrible patient, but the torture had made her blind and the sudden reminder of him only made everything worse, only convinced her more that she would rather take a thousand bullets than continue to be cut in half.

'You've got to keep pushing, Teresa,' she heard as if from a distance. 'Just once more, the baby's half out.'

'I can't…I don't want…' Lisbon didn't want to have the baby anymore, wanted it gone, wanted it never conceived in the first place. Boy or girl, whether it looked like him or not, it would always serve as nothing but a reminder of the hollow promise he failed to keep and the moments he missed. As the pain surged once more, she threw her head back and screamed louder than she ever had before, hearing nothing but her own voice, feeling nothing but the breaking of her own lower body. And so it was that Lisbon didn't hear the swinging open of the door or the pressing footsteps, didn't know a thing until suddenly she was gripping a hand, not the edge of the bed, and gentle fingers were pushing strands of hair back from her face.

At first, she thought he was an illusion, but then one of the nurses asked him wearily, 'can you please explain to her that one push is not going to deliver a baby?' Jane turned to her, leant forward until she was the only one who could hear him and told her simply, 'Lisbon, you're being lazy.' The statement was so arrogant, so utterly condescending that her first instinct was to punch him, but simultaneously it also gave her the strength to deliver the very last push, grasping his hand like it was the only thing holding her to the world. One last shout, one last rush of pain and then the pain was gone, all gone, and a high-pitched cry pierced the air. As Lisbon fought to get her breathing back, Jane tenderly pressed a kiss to her forehead and uttered a soft 'well done' in her ear: in any other moment, she would have been irritated by the fact that he'd known exactly what to say, but now she felt only pure disbelief as she looked at their still entwined fingers, and then back up to him.

'You're here,' she voiced stupidly.

'I promised,' was his gentle reply, as if it were an obvious thing.

'Oh,' she said, because she didn't know what else to say, and almost began to hope but then she remembered the television report only five minutes ago. No longer able to look at him, she studied the edge of the bed and asked quietly, 'when are you leaving for Sweden?'

'I'm not.' When she snapped her gaze back up to meet him, he was smiling.

'But, Red John is there, he's…'

'I don't care.' He breathed in deeply. 'Chasing someone invisible,' he told her, 'you eventually learn to see past them.' Their conversation from the day he left floated back to her, and all of a sudden there was a lump in Lisbon's throat, an almost suffocating pressure on her heart that grew more with each moment she allowed herself to hope. Jane had kept an unkeepable promise. Vaguely, she supposed that there had been bigger miracles than this in the world but decided in the very same instant that she really didn't give a damn about the others.

'Congratulations, Teresa,' smiled a nurse, 'meet your daughter.' She had barely registered the words before there was a wet, slippery little girl in her arms, wrapped partially in a blanket. As Lisbon watched, her eyes flickered open to reveal pools of pure blue, distant with the blindness of a newborn. Carefully, she reached down to run a gentle line from the baby's elbow to her hand, and the delicate fingers closed around her thumb like flower petals.

And suddenly the lump in her throat was too large, and the pressure on her heart too great: the tears began to fall down her cheeks like rain on a window, and when she finally glanced over to Jane he was closer than she remembered, and he was crying too.

One day, she assumed, this weightlessness would fade just enough for her to touch the ground and remember how much she hated him for leaving. And they would finish the fight they began eight months ago in her office, eventually piecing back together their dysfunctionality but this time with a dark-haired, blue-eyed daughter along for the ride, the best of both of them.

It was a day that never came.

Thanks for reading! My goal from the beginning for this was 55 reviews, so if I get those last four I will be ecstatic, seriously, and I will be literally tracking you all down and hugging you all.

Oh, and I'm curious to know, if you've read every chapter, or even just a couple (I honestly don't blame you if you haven't, there's a fair few) I'd really like to know which one was your favourite and why. Curiosity of a writer.

TAJ :)