Hello again! If you've been waiting for an update from me before then you'll know that six days is absolutely insanely fast, for me. So I'm proud of myself, haha. I've forgotten what Lisbon's house looks like so please don't take too much notice of the details, I made them up.

Again, if I owned the Mentalist I would not be here.

The moment Jane parked in the driveway, Lisbon retreated without a word to her living room. He'd assumed that she would be calling one of her brothers, having noticed that the phone was not on its holder in the kitchen. The clock above the sink depicted near seven, but between the crime scene and here time had lost much of its relevance, and so he gave her a little privacy. She deserved that much. Jane poked around in the cupboards for tea, irritated when there was none and he realised that this was probably her way of rebelling against him.

It occurred to him that there was silence from the living room, and it was only then that he saw the phone on the bench.

On first glance, it didn't look at all like a living room. Granted, there was the couch, the television in the corner and a small shelf of books lined up like soldiers along the wall. But they'd been pushed aside, forgotten. There was a scattering of files across the couch; he wondered how they'd found their way here from her office. A large red photo album lay on a small coffee table, its contents open to the ceiling. Lisbon stood in the middle of the room beside a large whiteboard, deep in thought; the name of her brother was scrawled in black across the stark white surface. She'd drawn a handful of lines like spiderlegs, her hand poised at one of them now, about to write.

'Lisbon..' he began, but she cut him off.

'Time of death was, at the latest, six thirty am,' she informed him. 'Today is a Tuesday, so he would have been on his morning jog, and the crime scene coincides with his route…'

Jane tried again, a little louder this time. 'Lisbon, you can't solve a murder running on nothing but oxygen and rage.' He was all too aware of the thin ice under his feet, so kept his voice gentle. 'Please don't try.'

'…which means that most of California had opportunity.' She bluntly ignored him, refusing to even acknowledge his presence. 'No wife or children, lived alone, his house is four blocks from where he was killed.'

'Lisbon,' he tried again. 'Teresa.' But even the use of her first name did not startle her into submission, as it had before.

'Cause of death, blunt force trauma to the head. There's a sports equipment shop on the same street as the alleyway, so there's a chance the murder weapon could be a baseball bat or a hockey stick.' Lisbon added this to the board.

He knew exactly what she was doing. During the last ten minutes of the drive home, he'd glanced over and the change had saddened him, but he'd almost been expecting it. Lisbon's grief had evolved into anger; what she saw in her day was not a dead brother anymore, but a murderer. Her weaker traits-love, sorrow, guilt-had disappeared to make way for the bigger picture. She was an emotional zombie, and he couldn't do a thing about it.

'I'll go make some coffee, then,' he told her. She didn't reply.

Over the next four hours, Jane put the kettle on more times than he could count. Lisbon was scribbling furiously every time he opened the door, but the mug was always empty when he came back. Outside the window, the sunset had evaporated and a moonless night faced them both, timid stars and silence.

He spent the time wandering around Lisbon's house, trying not to trespass too much. She'd always drawn her walls tightly around her, and here, the only place where she let them down, was a place of incredible temptation. If she'd been a stranger in a case, a relative of the victim or a potential suspect, then he would have been in her sock drawer without a second thought. But she wasn't that; she was more than an insignificant name in a case, and he kept well clear of any closed doors should they lead to her bedroom. The photos on the wall, however, were another matter. After all, why would she put them up if she didn't want them to be seen?

She was so like her brothers. The observation threw itself at him; they had the same hair, the same piercing green eyes. He recognised Tommy, though it took him a second, quite good-looking without the blood glistening in his hair. Tommy's sister he couldn't recognise either, because in these moments without a gun or a badge Lisbon didn't exist. It was Teresa who smiled out at him, who appeared so small and fragile beside these three men who could break her neck in an instant. And suddenly, he felt a raging need to protect her. To walk out of her house, find the son of a bitch who'd killed her brother and use so many bullets that it wouldn't even be a body on the ground, just a pile of bones and retribution.

The feeling left as quickly as it came. Jane backed away from the photo until he found the opposite wall, his eyes on the ground. He wondered where the surge of protectiveness had come from, and confusion found him when he realised he didn't have an answer.

At eleven thirty, he pushed open the door to the living room, his hands empty. Lisbon had stopped writing, and the whiteboard was covered in her typical cop scrawl. But there was frustration bubbling underneath the determination; she stared at her words with hard eyes, the gears of her brain visually spinning. There were a lot of words on the board, but it was easy to see that she was getting nowhere. Granted, it was difficult to solve a murder without interviewing suspects or even leaving the house. Jane stepped towards her, choosing his words carefully.

'It's nearly midnight.' He expected her to ignore him, vaguely wondering what he would then do. But then she spoke, her jaw clenching in toleration.

'There's a couch in the other room.' She talked to the whiteboard. 'Blanket's in the cupboard.' He took another step in her direction.

'That's not what I meant,' he said, and for the first time in hours she turned to him, a defiant posture and a harsh loudness.

'This is my house, Jane,' she asserted, meeting his gaze directly. 'You can't tell me what to do. Go home.' There was the same anger in her words, but he sensed something else just below the surface that he couldn't pinpoint. Unsure of its danger, he softened his expression and spoke lightly.

'I can't.'

He'd tipped her over the edge, that was clear; the fire leapt to rage in her eyes and in that moment he wished the steely grief was back.

'Well, I can't go to bed.' She was close to yelling now, her voice hoarse. 'Not yet. You of all people should understand.'

'Yes, I do.' He raised his voice to match hers, dismissing something which told him he shouldn't. 'But you've got to stop.'

'I can't, Jane! What don't you understand? There is a bastard out there who killed my brother.' No hint of sadness; she'd converted it all.

'Cho has the case under control.'

'How do you know?'

'Because I trust him. You do too.'

'Not with this,' she spat, and the change in her was more evident in that moment than it had ever been. Lisbon would trust Cho with her life, given the opportunity. But death had darkened her, erased the light Jane had never noticed until now, and she stood unrecognisable before him.

'Revenge doesn't suit you, Lisbon,' he told her.

'And you think it suits you?' Her accusation was quiet, and it was a moment before Jane realised what she'd said. He had no answer, aware of the stunned expression on his face but unable to wipe it clean. A tense silence hung in the air and he suddenly realised what it was that he'd been unable to define in her expression. Exhaustion, deep in her eyes; he could see her struggling to keep it down, but the day had been long and not even this shade of Lisbon was immune to the simple need to sleep.

She realised this as he did.

'Fine,' she muttered. He wondered if he'd imagined it but then she snapped the lid back on her marker and set it down on the table. He mumbled something about the blanket in the cupboard, and left the room.

Lisbon's words still echoed painfully around his head. And you think it suits you? The image of her shouting at him was vivid, and as he traipsed along the hallway he wondered if she spoke the truth. The thought that she did frightened him slightly; he thought back to the Red John cases, the confrontations, the shootouts. Did he really look like that? Were his eyes that wild, his defence that misguided? He tried to remember but the memory of those moments had always been blurry for him. It was only now, looking back, that he realised the blurriness may have been because he was blind.

Jane found the cupboard easily enough and the blanket was soft in his arms. Lisbon, he knew, could not be trusted to get to bed by herself, so he returned to the living room, bracing himself for the process of re-talking her out of her resolve. What he found instead surprised him.

She lay on her side on the small couch, her eyes closed and one arm hanging over the edge, the fingers grazing the floor. Her stomach rose and fell with the gentle slowness of the asleep. She was more exhausted than he'd originally thought; he could not have been gone any more than two minutes, and yet here she was. Jane quietly crossed the room and lay the blanket over her, an almost paternal smile on his face when she sighed and snuggled down deeper into the couch. The dim light fell across her face, softening her features, and Jane stood for a moment just watching her.

He couldn't help but marvel at how unconsciousness changed her. The anger was gone, the drive, everything. Irrelevant to her now. She was no longer the Lisbon he'd tiptoed around all evening; no longer the Lisbon he worked for every day, unbreakable, strong. She was Teresa from her photographs, soft and vulnerable.

And of all the Lisbons, he decided that he liked this one the best.

Hope you liked it...please review! Comments, nice words, mean words, whatever.

Jess :)