A/N: Well, it's been an age since I last updated this, nearly a month. I'm sorry. I don't know how long the next chapter will take either as I'm predominantly focussing on Army at the moment. I'll try and update it again sooner than that but hm... anyway.
Thank you to: boutondor, yaba, lisbon69, AlternativeRocker, mwalter1, anthropologist, Frogster, Famous4it, The Mentalist Rules, autumnftw, Chiisana Minako (oi, get up you lazy so and so :p), phoenixmagic1, Madaboutthementalist, Divinia Serit, forthecoast, 2shy the Shippy and springdreaming for reviewing part one. You guys are amazing. And especially so to lisbon69, who signed in anonymously and therefore, I couldn't reply.
Oh! I also managed to find a beta for this little thing. Thank you so much to boutondor for doing such an awesome job. And no doubt, you'll start hinting that starting part three would be a good thing to do soon.
x tromana
Part Two
They cut their honeymoon short because of Red John.
It hadn't even surprised Lisbon. If anything was going to interrupt what was supposed to be the most romantic vacation of her life, it would be a serial killer whom her husband had spent the best part of a decade trailing. Part of her just didn't care, it was to be expected. If Red John turned up, they simply had to drop everything to attempt to bring him to justice - it was just the way of the world. The other part, however, was jealous, angry and more than a little bit hurt. Jane was meant to be moving on with his life, with her, and yet he still kept clinging onto the ghosts of the past. Couldn't appreciate what he had here, and now because he was so fixated on his hapless cause, he seemed to forget that she was now a major part of his life at all.
Not that it was much of a honeymoon anyway. More like a vacation being shared by two friends, with the intention of sightseeing in Europe and exploring other cultures. Lisbon hadn't been sure what she had been expecting from marriage, but it certainly wasn't this. She'd explicitly tried to keep her expectations low; Jane was damaged goods and she knew that there wouldn't be miracle transformations overnight. However, when she was lucky, she had received an occasional brush of the lips against her own and a gentle, somewhat affectionate hug and that was it. They hadn't consummated their relationship, not even before the wedding band had joined the engagement ring on her finger and certainly not after. She knew it was not necessarily wrong, but it was different at least. Her doubts were still yet to dissipate, but she also knew why she had said yes on that sunny day on the beach.
Whatever she did and however hard she had tried not to, she still loved him. And that was despite his continued obsession with Red John.
Jane had been the one to pay for flights back, out of some reserves of cash that she hadn't a clue about. As soon as he received a text message from Cho, he started packing their belongings back into a suitcase. A drowsy Lisbon had walked out of the bedroom, the one she'd been sleeping alone in for the duration, to see him in a state of panic as he tried to locate their passports.
Eventually, she managed to calm him down, explained that they had been safely shut in her purse all along. She even managed to keep her mouth firmly shut as he hailed a cab and had them driven to Heathrow airport at three a.m.
Within forty-eight hours and both severely jet-lagged, they were back to work. Lisbon could already see that it was going to be a hapless task, that Red John was more than likely to slip through their fingers once more. Because of the delay in leaving England and actually flying over, the trails were already going cold and the serial killer was disappearing back into the shadows.
As it happened, her husband continued to withdraw back into himself. To be entirely honest, she expected it to happen, though not to the degree that it was. It had happened every time Red John had reared his ugly head before they were wed and she simply assumed it was something that would continue to occur. Lisbon respected Jane's promise to his first wife, the one which he vowed to catch Red John. She was just relieved he'd toned it down, for her sake, from maim and kill to simply apprehend.
But that didn't make watching him disappear into himself and knowing that there was very little she could do about it any easier. If he wouldn't even listen to her, his wife (albeit for only just over three weeks), then what else could she try?
She really was the Queen of Hopeless Causes and she didn't know why she did it to herself.
When it became clear that she was right, that they had lost Red John yet again, she tried to set him down, to talk to him. To tell him that it was okay, that there was always next time. That time and location had been against them.
And yet again, she felt as though she were fighting a losing battle.
000
There was no question other than to leave England when Jane found out that Red John had struck again.
He felt a little guilty, when he saw Lisbon's tightened expression and her attempts to put a brave face on it all. It didn't stop him from knowing that it was hurting her, from realizing that she was still second best. Though he wished, more than anything, that he could confirm otherwise, it was simply out of the question. This was Red John they were talking about and she was just Lisbon.
She and her team were a group of special people and were it not for them, he wouldn't still be here today. Life without his wife and daughter was hard enough even with the support network they provided. And Lisbon, especially, was special. She stuck with him through thick and thin, tolerated him whenever he caused her problems and rarely complained.
That was why he started dating her, to give her something back. Ultimately, it was why he married her too.
He liked her well enough - there wasn't really too much to dislike, if he thought about it hard enough. He just didn't love her.
But that was something he could work on. It would come, sooner or later. Probably after they caught Red John so he could finally, finally, close that chapter of his life. If he lived through that, of course. Love was just something that required a little work on his part. He'd always been a bit slow on the uptake whenever it came to caring for somebody else, anyway.
Once back in Sacramento, and once it was clear that Red John was managing to evade them yet again, Jane didn't know what to say or do. Each time they came across him, he felt that this time, they might just get lucky. That Red John may become too cocky or complacent and slip up somehow. That they would finally make that little connection to stop him from tearing apart the lives of others.
Jane had told Lisbon, for her sake, that he would be willing to hand him over. To let them apprehend him in the legal way. To find out that he had no intention of doing just that would break her heart. The fact that he still couldn't commit fully to their relationship was bad enough. There was only so much grief one person could handle and goodness knew that Lisbon had more than her fair share.
And he was only adding to it.
Then again, provided he survived that final incursion with the serial killer and actually managed to kill him, he was unlikely to go to jail for long. They would be sympathetic. It wasn't as if he was out to kill anyone else, he had been severely provoked and besides, he closed cases for them. That had to hold some sway didn't it?Lisbon would be mortified though.
Lisbon.
How would Red John react to that? Any sight of happiness in Jane's life and Red John seemed intent on putting a stopper on it. He must have known about his relationship of sorts with Lisbon, but why did he let it continue to flourish and grow? Did he know they had married already?
Was the timing of this latest murder entirely coincidental or because they had been out of the country and a ruse to lure them back?
When would he attack the brunette woman, currently pouting over case files in her office? Or did Red John know that their marriage was still essentially a sham?
000
"C'mon, Patrick. Let's go home."
"Mm. I think I'll stay here for the night," he murmured, staring aimlessly at the ceiling. "Think over the case some more."
Lisbon crossed her arms and tapped her foot gently against the wooden floorboards. This was the third night in a row that he'd done this. The third night since they had been absolutely certain that Red John was out of their grasp once more.
Rigsby, sensibly, ignored the silent war of wills going on right underneath his nose. He knew who would win though. Lisbon may have been famed for her stubbornness, but even she wasn't a match for Jane when he'd set his mind to something. It wasn't any of his business if his boss and the consultant were already suffering from marital woes. There was nothing he could do to change that; it was something they would have to work through themselves. He did realize that it meant Lisbon was more inclined to be in a foul mood, more inclined to harsher punishments and to be irritated by little things though. That meant he'd have to be on his best behavior so as not to incur her wrath. Or, at least until they'd sorted out their problems anyway. He hoped it wouldn't take long simply because of that.
But it wasn't something for him to really worry about until morning. He had a date with Conny to prepare for.
Neither Lisbon nor Jane noticed him leave. They were both too wrapped up in their own worlds to even care about him scurrying away. And both feeling terribly uncomfortable in one another's presence. During working hours they managed to act like civilized beings, to get through work as colleagues would.
It was just now that Jane was too busy being wrapped in the past while Lisbon wanted to drag him kicking and screaming into the present, that they were having problems.
Jane found it difficult to compartmentalize his emotions, especially when it came to Red John. For her it was just a matter of worrying about the fact the case was still, irritatingly, open and a blemish on her closed case record. For him, another matter entirely.
Besides, it was exhausting acting the loving husband when the woman you still thought of as being your wife was six feet under.
Lisbon just couldn't see that.
It wasn't that she was naïve, far from it in fact. It was just that she saw what she wanted to see - a Jane that was moving on with his life. A Jane that had found a new love, a new life. A Jane that had managed to mostly put old ghosts to rest for the sake of his new living arrangements.
However much she said or thought otherwise, deep down, it just wasn't true.
Eventually, she realized she was fighting yet another losing battle and bitterly, she stomped out of the bullpen, leaving him staring at the cracks in the ceiling. Both of them knew just how little sleep Jane was going to get that night, but it was too tiring to fight anymore. Lisbon wanted at least one of them awake and alert in the morning, ready for whatever California had to throw at them.
When she arrived him, she forgot about dinner, too tense and angry to even care about eating. Instead she headed straight upstairs to bed. When her head hit her pillow, she knew sleep was unlikely to come for her as well. It wasn't because the left hand side of the bed was conspicuously empty; he rarely shared it with her, even when they were getting on well. It was because her husband was not in her house at all and she wished more than anything that he was.
TBC…
