Chapter Two

Lisbon's apartment was small and cosy. There was just enough room for one person to live comfortably, maybe two people who didn't have many belongings and who had a healthy respect for each other's personal space. There was one bedroom and one bathroom, all that was needed for the singular person who occupied the space. There was a rack in the shower that held her shampoo, her conditioner and her body wash – the same brands she no doubt bought every week, loving the familiarity, not quite daring enough to experiment with a new brand that might not be up to par. There was a shelf in the kitchen that held several jars of the coffee brand she favoured when she was at home, choosing to stock up in advance rather than be caught short in a morning of desperation. That was Lisbon, always prepared – except in the case of her laundry. The smart clothes that she wore to work would always be cleaned, ironed and hung in her closet, while her casual clothes were thrown in various places – dirty ones in the kitchen by the washer, vaguely clean ones over the back of the couch, and completely clean ones on top of her dresser. It was the one way in which she was messy, other than the occasional coffee mug on her kitchen worktop where she'd been called into work early before having time to wash up.

Jane knew all of this from having been inside her apartment once.

Now, he stood outside the door, and knocked before he had any idea of exactly what he was going to say. He knew the general idea of what he wanted to talk to her about, more specifically the ominous declaration she had thrown at him outside her office earlier, but he didn't know how he was going to word it. He had some ideas, but he needed to test them, he needed to see her reactions to his theories, to figure out if he was correct. She was the hardest person he'd ever attempted to read, not even in the same field of comparison as Van Pelt, who was incredibly easy to read.

When she opened the door, she was definitely pissed off – a combination of the exhaustion she had refused to feel for most of the day and the fact that Hightower had forced them home to get some sleep. As this was still only a 'suspected' Red John case in the meantime, then they were still libel to rest, and while they were to report to duty at 7am rather than the usual 8am, they still had to leave the office. "What are you doing?" she asked him, miserable from the moment she saw him on her doorstep.

"Hello to you, too," he said, slightly put out at the abrupt greeting.

"Jane, we were sent home to sleep," she reminded him. "I intend to do just that."

"I don't," he shrugged. "I'll stay at the office, wait for any calls."

"Then what are you doing here?" she asked with exasperation.

"You were trying to tell me something earlier," he reminded her.

"No, you were trying to distract me from the case earlier."

"Teresa, please."

The use of her first name surprised her, he could tell, and at that, she appeared even more tired than she had before. "What do you want me to say, Jane?" she asked him.

"Can I come in?" he asked. "For longer than two and a half minutes?"

She sighed, stepping back and allowing him to enter her apartment. When she closed the door behind him, he was pleased to note the familiar aspects that had remained from before – the photo frames on the mantelpiece that he hadn't invaded her privacy to notice before were still there, and he thought he might pay attention to them this time. The laundry was scattered all over the room, that days work clothes joining them on the kitchen floor; he could see them through the open kitchen doorway.

"Am I actually going to get any sleep tonight?" she asked him.

"You wouldn't have anyway, or you'd already be in bed," he told her, glancing towards the photographs.

"How do you know I wasn't?" she asked.

He looked at her, taking in the sleep clothes that she wore. They weren't suitable for the heat that night would bring – long trousers with a large sports jersey. She was always the first of them to shed their suit jacket when the Californian heat got to her, so he figured she'd be the sort of person that slowly undressed during the night, losing the trousers then the shirt in her attempt to be cooler, yet also keep the bedclothes. That, and her hair. If she moved around that much to keep shedding her clothing, she obviously moved around a lot, and at the moment her hair was still perfectly flat against her scalp, not tousled in the slightest. "I just know," he shrugged.

She sighed. "Just ask what you came here to ask so I can get to sleep," she told him.

"You've been where I am. Where I was," he prompted her.

"I have," she told him honestly.

"You lost someone," he guessed, watching her reactions. She responded by avoiding his eyes and taking a seat on the edge of the couch. He remained standing. "No, you had them taken," he corrected himself.

"Yes," she whispered.

"Who?"

"It doesn't matter who," she shrugged. "What matters is that I know that vengeance isn't the best option. It hurts to turn the power over to the law, but sometimes they can punish people better than your own hand could."

He was silent when he continued to read her, taking in not only the too-calm expression on her face but also the distance in her voice. "You don't want to tell me because you think I'll figure out too much about you."

"Is that so wrong?" she asked him.

"In this case, yes," he nodded. "See, you lost someone. There's a blue photograph frame on your mantelpiece with a young boy in it. So I would guess you lost a brother, seeing as I know you wouldn't have a child portrait of your father. Your brother was taken from you, and you knew who did it."

And then there were tears in her eyes, tears that made her duck her head and avoid his eyes so that they didn't spill out. "I don't want to talk about this," she whispered, suddenly like a child confronted with a frightening issue.

"We're going to," he decided. "You can't give me that much then expect me accept half a story. You know me better."

"Do I?" she challenged him.

He stood before her, looking down at her ducked her head. He was so close, than when he spoke he didn't need to raise his voice to get his point across. "I walked into my house, my own home, up to my daughter's bedroom and I saw my wife and my little girl mutilated on her bed. My wife. My daughter. You don't come back from that. Red John came into my home, he hurt them, he tortured them, he killed them, and then he painted his mark on my daughter's wall with their blood. The whole room stank of blood, of bodies that had been there for hours because I was too busy telling the world what kind of monster Red John was to be at home with my family. If I hadn't been doing that, I could have gone home, kissed my little girl goodnight, and told my wife that I loved her, but I can't do that anymore. I won't get that ever again. I'll never celebrate my wedding anniversary with my wife, I'll never decorate a Christmas tree with my little girl, I'll never get to see her grow into a beautiful woman just like her mother. I've lost all of that, because Red John took it from me. That's why I have to have vengeance. That's why when I find myself close enough to him, I will kill him, and yes, it will change everything for me."

Lisbon took a shaking breath. "Jane-"

But he cut her off, continuing his chilling, haunting speech. "My daughter was butchered in her own bed at five years old. Five. She was five years old. Her biggest concern was whether she wanted to a princess or a fairy when she grew up, and that sick bastard went into her bedroom and killed her just because she was mine. You don't come back from that, and you can't possibly understand that kind of pain."

"Jane," she whispered. He looked at her, finally seeing just how strong the tear flow from her eyes was. "Look at that photo again," she told him

"Lisbon?"

"Look again," she told him. "Look closer."

He went to retrieve the photo, taking the frame in his hands and going back over to where Lisbon sat. Looking closer, he could see that the baby was not much older than newborn, probably only recently taken home from the hospital. It was a boy, you could tell from looking at him. He had bright green eyes, large and staring at the camera. He was wrapped in a blue blanket, the first clue that he had been a boy. He had a no scowl, no newborn wrinkles. He was a perfect, pristine baby boy. He observed the ridges of his eyes and nose, the shape of his lips, the contours of his face. But the eyes, they were captivation. They were beautiful, and familiar, and they were Lisbon's.

"He wasn't your brother, was he?" he realised softly.

"He's my son," she nodded. "Was," she corrected herself. "He was my son."

"Oh, Teresa..." he whispered, not taking his eyes away from the photograph.

"Do you think it's worse to go into their bedroom and see what you saw, or to go into their bedroom and see nothing at all?" she asked him.

"When I said he was taken from you..."

"Yes, he was taken," she nodded. "Literally."

"And you know who did it," he understood.

"Yeah, Ben's father actually." She touched the photo frame softly. "Ben. That was his name."

"His father took him?" Jane asked, astounded.

She nodded, and sighed. "This stays between us?" she checked in a moment of panic.

He nodded in reply, looking up so that she could see the guarantee in his eyes. "Of course,"

"I was so tired," she started. "Ben'd had a cold for weeks, always coughing and crying...and then it just stopped, it cleared away and I realised how exhausted I was. I put him down for a nap in the middle of the day, a bit earlier than usual. I slept for an hour, went to check on Ben...and there was nothing. Absolutely nothing. He was just...gone. And your heart just stops."

"Yeah," he agreed in a strangled voice, remembering the feeling well. "Yeah, it does."

"Ben's father, Mark...he hadn't been around since Ben was born. We were both young. I was nineteen and he was twenty-one. It was a mistake, we never meant for me to get pregnant, but it happened and I like to think that I made a mature choice to keep him. I loved my son, and I supported him in every way I could. After Ben was born though, it turned out that Mark didn't want the hands-on-dad approach that he told me he did, so I did it all on my own and he turned to drink. When Ben started walking he kept bumping into things, as kids do, and he spilt one of Mark's beers when he bumped into the table and he really shouted at him, and I remembered what my father's drinking did to me and my brothers, and I swore I wouldn't have that life for Ben so I asked him to leave. He did, and we didn't hear from him again."

"So why did he take Ben?" Jane asked.

"A few days before Ben went missing, Mark turned up saying that he needed a place to stay. He was in trouble with the cops, so I told him no, but he stayed outside all night until they picked him up. Then Ben went missing and when I reported it, they told me that Mark had escaped custody that morning. I knew it was him. I just...I knew. He wanted to hurt me for choosing my baby over him, and Ben was the one way he could hurt me the most."

She ducked her head again as fresh tears threatened her, and Jane took one hand from the photograph and used it to hold hers. She didn't drop it. If anything, she held it tighter.

"It was three days before they heard anything. All my brothers spent the entire night looking for Mark, for any sign of Ben...I never slept in case someone called with information. The police told me to stay home, that it was the best thing I could do. Three days later they called me, asked me to go to the police station and suggested that I should bring somebody with me. I took Jack, my eldest brother. He was nineteen at the time, two years younger than me, but he was all I had. Jack and I went to the station and they told me that they had Mark in custody again. I asked them where Ben was and they didn't say anything for the longest time, and I kept asking them the same question but in the back of my head, I knew...and then they told me that they were sorry, and I fell apart. I knew that my little boy wasn't coming home."

Jane released a shaky breath, feeling sick. "He killed his own son?"

"Mark was messed up," she told him. "But my Ben was a beautiful, sweet little boy. He was two years and eight months old. Two. And Mark...what he did to my son was unbearable."

She started to get more upset, and he held her hand tighter. "Teresa, you don't have to-"

"They found things in his apartment," she choked out, her voice becoming higher and shakier. "Awful things. Pictures of him, doing awful things to children. He had photos of little boys being abused..." she started to sob at this point. "...and one of those boys was my Ben."

"Oh, Teresa..."

Without caring, he pulled her up from the couch and into his arms. The photo was caught between their chests as they embraced, Lisbon clinging to him as she cried for what must have been the first time in years for her little boy. He was overwhelmed with what she had shared with him. This was the last thing he'd have expected, even from her clues. It wasn't long before they were both crying for their lost children. For a little boy who had been abused and murdered by his own father before he was even old enough to understand that anything of what happened was wrong, and for a little girl who was killed because her father pissed off the wrong man. Both of them victims of disgusting murderers, neither of them deserving their fates.

"He cried for me," Lisbon wept. "He kept asking for me, and that's why Mark killed him."

"He's sick," Jane choked out.

She buried her head against his shoulder. "You know, I might have been young, and I might have been naive and stupid with the whole thing, but I was his mother. I was his mom and I couldn't protect his own father from hurting him. I was so tired that I slept deeply enough that I didn't realise my son was being taken from his bedroom. And it took me a long time to stop blaming myself and start blaming him."

"And you wanted vengeance," Jane realised quietly.

"He abused and killed my two-year-old son. He shook Ben so hard when he was crying for me that it left him brain dead, and then he abandoned his body in a ditch so that he died alone when his body forgot how to breathe. He was two. And Mark went to confess to what he'd done while my son was dying alone in a ditch. And I wanted to kill him and I got close enough that I could have strangled the life out of him...but I stopped."

"What made you stop?" Jane asked her.

Lisbon shook her head in his arms, pulling back to look at him. She'd realised that telling Jane about her son was the only way to stop him from killing Red John and jeopardising his own freedom. He had to understand why. "The person that was strangling Mark wasn't the same person that had been Ben's mother. I liked who I was when I had Ben with me. He made me happy, even if I was so tired from doing it all alone. He smiled, and he laughed, and he said 'love you mom' when he hugged me. He liked dinosaurs and he sang along with music, and he hated taking a bath even though he loved playing with bubbles. I thought it was the mother in me wanting to avenge my child's suffering, but it wasn't. I couldn't liken that hateful side of me to the person I'd been for Ben. And so I stopped, and I ran, and I let the state execute him three months later. I stood alongside the four other mothers whose boys had been in those photographs he had, boys who had survived, and I watched him receive the lethal injection."

"And that...that was enough?" he asked.

She nodded. "I always insisted that for Ben's sake, I'd always do what was right. Even though he couldn't understand, I would tell him that I made daddy leave because it was the right thing to do. And...and legal justice was the right thing to do. How could I possibly hurt him as much as he hurt my son? And the other mothers deserved justice for their sons too. If I took a life with my bare hands, I'd be as bad as Mark. I'd have deprived him of oxygen like he'd done to Ben, and then I'd be just as bad. How could I bear to think of my son, knowing I'd sunk to the level of the man who took him from me? So I thought...if Ben had come to me as an older child and told me that somebody had hurt him and that he wanted to hurt him in return, I would have urged him to go to the police, to let the law handle it...and so I had to be the same."

Jane sighed, shaking his head. "I never realised..."

"No one ever does," she said sadly.

"Teresa, who else knows about this?" he asked.

She shrugged. "My brothers, and then they told their wives over the years."

"You never told anyone," he stated in disbelief.

"No," she said simply.

"Not even Bosco?"

She shook her head. "He was a great mentor, but he'd have thought I was working for the wrong reasons, removed me from certain cases..."

"Like you do to me?" he pointed out.

She shrugged again. "It's all about protection, I couldn't protect Ben, so-"

"So you want to protect me, s o that I don't go as far as you almost did," he realised.

She nodded, wiping the remains of tears from beneath her eyes. "Yes."

Jane looked down at the photo again. "My Claire...she'd have loved Ben."

"Claire was your daughter?" she asked.

He nodded. "Yeah. She adored little ones, especially boys. There was a boy next door a year younger than her, and she tried to put glitter on his cheeks before so that he could become a butterfly. She...she had this mothering instinct, even at five years old. Probably would have ended up having ten kids of her own, always running up to friends with babies at parties, asking if she was allowed to play with them. She would have...she'd have been eleven last week."

"Ben would have been thirteen in June," she whispered.

"Who knows," he mused. "Maybe in another life, they would have been friends. They may have gotten married. We may have been in-laws together, had grandchildren together..."

Lisbon sucked in a deep breath. "Perhaps in their other life, they are friends," she suggested. "I believe there's a heaven, and I know my mother is there with him, but I'd like to think that Ben had somebody to run around with, somebody to play with, somebody to be his friend."

"I hope they are together," Jane agreed. "Taking care of each other. I'm sure...if my Violet saw him, wherever they are, she'd have taken care of him too."

They were quiet for a moment, and she surprised him by leaning back into his arms. It took him a moment, but he soon wrapped his arms around her once more. "Promise me you won't do it," she asked him.

"Teresa..."

"No, I need you to promise me," she told him firmly. "I didn't tell you this story for the fun of it."

"I need them to be avenged..." he told her.

"And I will make sure that he gets the death sentence, if you promise me that he won't die at your hand," she swore. When Jane was silent at this, she raised her head to look at him. "Jane, you have to promise." Still, he was silent. "Patrick, please."

At that, he snapped back into life, gazing down to meet her eyes as he muttered the two hardest words he'd ever said. "I promise."

"You promise."

"I promise," he repeated.

They remained there for several minutes, too afraid to move forwards and too close to move away. They were definitely standing too close to each other though. The miniscule distance between them was not a safe one, and could only end in a disaster. It was Lisbon that moved first, breaking this new connection they'd found as she returned her sons photograph to the mantelpiece.

"I should go," Jane fidgeted. "You should get some sleep."

She was quiet, but stopped him when he reached the door. "Wait," she called out, facing the photo still, taking in the still familiar sight of her son's cheek. "Do you...do you want to stay?" she asked him. "I'm close to the CBI than you are. It's easier if we get a call in."

"Teresa, I doubt I'll be sleeping," he whispered back to her.

She turned, meeting his eyes with a sight in hers that he'd never seen from her before. "Neither will I."