For the record, writing this entire chapter terrified me. It's the chapter I've had the most mixed feelings about ever, out of all of my stories. Thank you to Alex. for actually putting me in the mind of a serial killer - she's great at writing this kind of stuff, and I'm not. The fact that I've put so much angst and crime procedure into this story shocks me because I'm usually a first and foremost fluffy romance writer. Mentalist fics have changed me (for the better, hopefully). So I'm really anxious to see what you think about this chapter, because I have butterflies in my stomach just posting it up.

Chapter Seven

Silence.

He wasn't expecting silence.

He'd expected many things, keeping an open mind but not wanting to assume. The last time he assumed something Red John related it had ended in a massacre of everything he considered to be his life. It did no good to assume anything pertaining to Red John, but things needed to be sorted out. Things needed to end.

Tonight, they would end.

But for now, they would proceed in silence.

He'd entered his home, preparing himself for many inevitable outcomes. He prepared himself for Red John being there the second he opened the door. He prepared himself for seeing a smashed window, an open patio door, anywhere he could have entered. He prepared himself, chillingly, for the presence of another body, though he couldn't prepare himself for the possibility of that being a person that he knew and cared for.

Yet he opened the door, and Red John was nowhere in sight. In hindsight it all made sense – he would not be so obvious as to be waiting in full view. There were no smashed windows or opened doors, because if there was one thing that he had never understood it was how Red John gained access to so many places. More comfortingly, there was no sight or odour of another body. No, he was alone in this big empty house. He was all alone, nothing to accompany him besides the deafening silence stretching from the front hall to his bedroom, upstairs at the far side of the house.

Though he knew Red John wasn't there, he still systematically checked all the rooms. He saw the memories forming in front of his eyes, as if the belongings and the people in them were there as clear as day. In the living room, he saw his wife and daughter decorating a Christmas tree, he saw his daughter taking her first steps towards him, and he saw colouring pens and paper shapes littered across the floor, his glitter-covered daughter in the middle. He even saw when his little girl, at three years old, had taken those colouring pens to the wall, back when she thought she was writing her name by drawing squiggles along the whitewash walls – and he remembered getting scolded more than his daughter had because he was laughing at his daughter's act of graffiti instead of explaining to her that it was wrong.

The kitchen held some stronger memories of his wife. He could see her standing at the sink, washing dishes – she'd never use the dishwasher that he bought as part of a kitchen remodelling, because she found the soapy water and cleansing movements to be therapeutic. He could see her walking around in a huff one night, when he promised he'd be home on time and he was hours late without calling, shouting at him for being unreachable when something could have happened. He could see how it had escalated into an argument where she had accidentally dropped a glass on his foot, a broken shard piercing his left foot quite dramatically and landing the three of them in the emergency room for the remainder of the evening. He could see her singing along to the radio, dancing in a random manner as she put away plates with the dishcloth hanging over her shoulder.

It was when he was halfway up the stairs that he wondered whether this was him saying goodbye to his home. He'd never considered the option of not being in this place, of not coming home and walking the same rooms that his family had done, of not returning home to them and every time wondering if this time they would be there to greet him. But one of two things would ultimately happen tonight, and each involved another body falling to the ground of this house. Either his, or Red John's, preferably the latter – his own body meant that he had failed, and that Red John would go on to kill someone else...Lisbon. If he succeeded, and Red John died tonight (not by his hand, he'd promised Lisbon that) then he would have no reason to stay here. He wished that he could say that he was still in this house because he wanted to feel close to his family, but he knew he was really here out of guilt. Guilt for not being here when he should have been, for not being here when he should have protected him.

He needed to leave this place behind now.

So when he went into his bathroom, he stared at his own reflection in the mirror, seeing behind him the forgotten image of his wife brushing her teeth, complaining with sleep-filled eyes that the alarm went off way too early, that she had a mountain of things to do during her day, that the baby had kept her awake half the night. He remembered with a more passionate nostalgia the time when her morning mood had clashed with his wide-awake restlessness and he had interrupted her complaints by silently pulling her into the shower with him. There was the chipped tile on the bathroom counter that had occurred when he had dropped a hammer onto the surface after putting the mirror up, taunting him with the amount of times his wife had bugged him to replace it.

He left his bathroom behind, closing the door behind him. His own bedroom was directly opposite, holding so many memories that his hand hesitated on the doorknob. The furniture was exactly as they had left it, completely untouched from when he had gone to the television studio that day. There was the bed, pristinely made by himself and his wife together in the mornings, the sky blue and gold embroidered comforter still laid perfectly on top of the sheets – sheets they had laid together in, sharing whispered nothings and sweet caresses into the tiny hours of the morning many nights. There was the lamp on her bedside table, the book she'd been reading lying beside it, still dog-eared on the corner of the page she'd stopped reading at the evening before she'd been killed. He knew her clothes were folded in the drawers, just like her laundry was still in the basket in the bathroom. He knew that it was his inability to deal with his grief properly was because Red John still lived, their murderer still breathed, and that once he was gone, Jane would be able to lay their memories to rest along with their bodies. He'd grown somewhat used to the idea of his wife's spirit walking along the halls of their home, complaining to his still-there body that he wasn't doing her laundry, that he should sleep in their bed, that he should put his clothes in the closet beside hers again.

And there, at the end of the hall, was that fateful room. His daughter's bedroom. The pale pink walls were faded, the smiley face present and even more ominous above the plain mattress that laid there. This mattress was from the spare room. Claire's bed had to be destroyed, because of the evidence it held, her mattress alone had soaked up most of his wife and daughter's blood. He'd found it impossible, considering so much of it had been scattered across the room, but the human body did wonderful things, and one of those was how much blood it really held. The toys were gone, the clothes, the furniture...it was all gone. Red John had removed the little girl's spirit from the room, and without that, the room was as hollow as he had made it to be. The furniture and belongings were all crowded into the spare bedroom, the one he never went into. He couldn't keep it in this room. He couldn't allow her memory to stay in the room she'd been slaughtered in.

But though the worst memories took place in this room, so had the best. He could see them remember them clear as day even though all that was in the room was a bare mattress and a daunting red face on the wall. This was the room they had bought baby Claire home from the hospital. This was the room they had laid her in her crib for the first time, both of them watching over her for hours just to see this tiny creature sleep. This was where Claire had proved her leg strength was developing by holding onto the bars of the crib and holding herself in a standing position. This was where Claire had gone from a mumbling 'da' over and over to calling 'daddy, daddy, daddy' directly into the baby monitor to attract his attention one morning. This was where she would point out of her bedroom window and watch the sea birds that she loved so much. This was where she had first told him 'love you, daddy'. This was where he had fought back so many happy tears, because when Claire saw tears of any kind, she would put her tiny hand on his cheek and ask 'why sad, daddy?'. This is where his daughter had lived, had thrived, and had died.

He went back to the kitchen, passing by the guest room on the way and selecting a single item of his daughter's. If he was going to die tonight, he wanted a part of her with him, a part of her that reminded him so much of every day life that it could guarantee that he would end up near her. His wedding ring would take him to his wife, and his daughter's plush unicorn would take him to her. He tucked the furry pink unicorn under his arm as he made himself a cup of tea, and then he went to the kitchen table and sat down, toying with the strands of glitter that were laced into the braids of the mane.

And then he waited to die.

He waited for his life to be over.

He waited for his life to be taken like that of his wife and daughter's.

Right up until he felt the blade of a knife graze along his throat, when he decided that he wanted to live.

"Fool," came the spat insult.

"Not foolish," he insisted, pushing his cup away from him and setting the unicorn on the counter beside it. "Clever."

Red John gently traced his throat with the knife, his hard breath beating down on the back of his neck. "Your Agent Lisbon's plan was quite ingenious in comparison to this."

"I wouldn't have let her do it," he insisted.

"She's a very determined woman," he pointed out. "She'd have defied your wishes, as you have done with hers many a time."

At this, the anger and fear he'd been struggling to keep under wraps started to unravel. "You've been watching her," he realised.

"She's a fascinating woman," he confirmed. "I can see what draws you to her so much. Strong, resilient, and yet, so incredibly feminine. Captivating."

Jane took a shuddering breath. "How long?"

"An irrelevant question."

"Not to me."

Silence. And then...

"Mr Jane, this isn't about you."

"No, this is about you," he growled. "Everything you've done, everyone you've hurt, it's all part of a personal shrine you've built to yourself. The world is your alter, and everyone in it are your sacrifices."

There was laughter behind him, and the blade stilled its dance across his skin. "You do not know me," he insisted. "You try to, but you don't."

"But you want me to know you," he pointed out. "Red John, the Tyger himself. What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?" he quoted.

There was an intended silence, but Jane heard the unmistakable sound of frustration behind him. "You've become brave since our last encounter."

He was disappointed, Jane noticed. He preyed on the weak, the powerless. "And that worries you, because I've figured you out."

He covered the fleeting reveal from moments before with a laugh. "It would take more than the likes of you to worry me. You are weak."

"In what distant deeps or skies burnt the fire of thine eyes?" he continued to quote. "On what wings dare his aspire? What the hand dare seize the fire?"

"The girl was not planned," he revealed. "She was a complication. It should be a warning to you that complications result in punishment," he warned.

"She explained her view of a poem interpretation to me," Jane explained, as if that were no complication at all.

But the knife pressed tighter to his throat, and though it was not enough to break the skin it was more than enough to cause discomfort. "And in doing so, she signed her death warrant."

Pacing her office, Lisbon attempted not to let her imagination get the better of her. It would do not good to entertain what ifs, so she should focus on the facts, she told herself. Facts were what she was good at, what would close cases...Jane, her mind came up with her. Jane closed cases. No, facts. Focus. Jane was missing – no, Jane was at his house. Jane was at his house. Red John was potentially watching him – and her – and could strike at any moment. Jane was essentially off the grid, and Red John was after him.

"Agent Lisbon."

Hightower's voice interrupted her internal monologue. Her stomach instantly dropped. "Agent Hightower, ma'am-"

"Did you forget about our meeting?" she asked abruptly.

"No ma'am."

"Is there a reason why Jane and yourself aren't in my office?" she asked.

She sighed. "Jane's AWOL."

"In the middle of a Red John case?"

"Yes, ma'am," she mumbled heavily. "We've tracked his cell phone to his home, Cho's gone to get him."

But Hightower's concern didn't falter. "Red John stages a murder inside our own facility and Jane goes AWOL the next day. This isn't suspicious to you?"

"It is, but Cho's perfectly capable of handling the situation," she insisted. "If any back up was needed he'd have called it in."

Her boss stared her down. "The second he's back, I want the two of you in my office."

Lisbon nodded. "Understood, ma'am."

Hightower disappeared, and Lisbon ended up frowning, looking again to her cell phone. No messages.

"Damnit, Patrick," she shook her head. "What are you playing at?"

The taunting slice of the knife against his skin kept Jane motionless. Red John never moved from behind him, never giving him a chance to catch a glimpse of the serial killer. He put up no fight as his hands were bound behind him, even though it took away one of his few defences. Now, all he had to keep himself alive were his words – which usually got him into more trouble than they did help. He could hear the footsteps pacing behind him, but he kept his eyes trained on that pink unicorn his daughter used to trail around constantly. The footsteps were even, four steps then a one-eighty turn and the process was repeated.

"You're awfully confident that your Lisbon will put me away," he taunted.

"Death sentence, actually," Jane corrected him. He wanted to keep him talking for as long as possible. He'd promised Lisbon that he wouldn't kill him, which meant that he had to keep Red John here, and himself alive, long enough for Lisbon to become suspicious about his absence, track his phone, and send someone over – he just hoped it wasn't herself. If she were to come herself, alone, then it was only going to lead to her death, and he would have to sit there bound to the chair and forced to watch. "People like you are the reason we still have that in the state of California."

"So simple," Red John dismissed. "It would be the perfect end to the story, were this a fairytale. Unfortunately for you, this isn't as simple as your Lisbon would like it to be. If it were, I'd have been caught before now but, alas, it seems I'm not behind bars, nor am I dead."

"You will be," Jane insisted. "Soon."

"Not before your Lisbon," he countered.

So possessive, he noticed. But possessive on his behalf. He was constantly referring to her as 'your Lisbon', branding her as one of his ameneties. It was obvious now that Lisbon was his next target – Jane's weakness, so the ultimate way to hurt him. "She isn't my Lisbon," he growled.

"So naive," he noted. "You know better. I know what she means to you even more than you do," he insisted, returning the knife to his throat again. "I thought you would have learned the first time. Someone who so publicly slanders people he doesn't know doesn't deserve such pretty things."

He was riling him, and while Jane fought to keep in control of the situation, he was failing miserably. "They didn't deserve what you did to them," he shook his head, making sure to keep it away from the knife's blade.

"But you did."

"They were innocent," he argued.

"But you needed punishing," he told him. "You made a grave error of judgement that day, Mr Jane."

"I told the truth," he defended.

"Truth hurts," Red John reminded him. "Although, it's never specific as to whom it hurts. In this case, your perception of the truth was incorrect and people are much more willing to accept bad traits to be true than good traits, so you had to experience that first hand so you could understand."

"You took my daughter from me," he spat, his eyes fixated on the unicorn.

"They were all somebody's daughters," he excused. "Though yours...she was very young. Not my usual, I admit."

"She was innocent," Jane said, his voice sounding like pleading.

"Yes, she was," he acknowledged. "She was perfectly innocent, perfectly oblivious to the way that her father provided false hope for hundreds of other innocent people. Tell me, Mr Jane, how would you have felt if a con artist had scammed your daughter the way you had scammed so many others?" he proposed.

Jane didn't even entertain the thought. "My wife..."

"That was a miscommunication error, sadly," he admitted. "She would never have had to die, had she not walked in at the wrong moment." So his wife had walked in to see what was happening. She had walked into their little girl's room and seen her being slaughtered. Anger burned so high in his veins that he could feel his eyes burning. "Still, she was beautiful, wasn't she?"

"You took my family from me."

"And you took my humanity from me."

"I exposed you for what you really are," Jane defended himself.

This time, it was Red John who quoted William Blake. "When the stars threw down their spears, and watered heaven with their tears, did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb, make thee?" he taunted, leaning in close to Jane's ear from behind him. "Do you really want to know what made the monster, Mr Jane?" he asked. "You did."

"The monster was already there," he claimed.

"But you bought him out," he continued. "You bought the monster to your doorstep, to your daughter's bedside. You may as well have bought that knife down on their throats with your own hands. And now you'll do the same with your Lisbon's. Because of you, she's been bought into this...feud, shall we call it? Yes, that seems apt. It seems unfair, to me, to call it a chase, considering I have to bait you every step of the way," he stopped his insult of their intelligence and continued his chilling speech. "Because of you, your Lisbon will have her throat sliced open, her toenails painted in her own blood. Her hair colour is perfect, really, for the scheme. She does look beautiful in red, especially blood red-"

"You won't get close to her," Jane cut in, his resolve finally crumbling as he rose to the comments.

"Ah, but I already have," he pointed out, his pleasure in Jane's responding to his taunts obvious in his tone. "I got oh-so-close to her. Close enough to smell her perfume when she walked through the hall, right before I killed the girl. An alluring scent she has. Cinnamon, yes?" Jane was silent, struggling to take even breaths. "But you already know that. You've been close to her yourself."

And he snapped.

"Don't hurt her," he pleaded.

"Is that begging?" he noted. "My, we are desperate this evening."

"Just do what you came here to do," Jane told him, tearing his eyes away from the unicorn to try and see over his shoulder. "You want me to suffer."

"Taking your life isn't going to make you suffer. It's going to take you out of the game," he pointed out. "And I'm enjoying our game slightly too much to end it now."

He stepped in front of Jane, finally revealing himself to him. No mask. No cover. Just the man himself. Jane observed the bushy eyebrows, the menacing glint in his eye, the protruding cheek bones. Just as he had expected, a man slightly older than himself, perhaps early-mid forties, with dark hair and matching brown eyes. Dark in every way imaginable. This was the man who had killed his wife and daughter. This was the man who had taunted him, tortured him mentally.

This was Red John standing before him, knife in hand.

This was the moment, he supposed, that Patrick Jane died.

"I hope you rot in Hell," Jane growled at him.

The man before him twisted his thin lips in a sickening smile. He could imagine his daughter being so terrified if she had woken to see this man at her bedside. "Alongside your family, I assure you."

Red John lifted the blade, dragging it back with such force that it would undoubtedly pierce him with a staggering strength. Jane didn't close his eyes, but he did move his gaze slightly to the left so that he could see the pink unicorn on the kitchen table again. He did, however, wince, as he saw the movement of Red John's arm begin to descend towards him, time slowing down as Jane waited for the cliché montage of his life flashing before his eyes. However, he saw nothing. He saw no clips of moments well spent or minutes regretted, he saw no insatiable meaning of life, he saw no indication that there was an afterlife awaiting him where he could be forever at peace with his lost family. He saw nothing, but he did hear something that changed the game considerably.

Gunshots.

Five of them.

The strength in his arm vanished, and instead his entire body began falling onto Jane. Pain seared at the right side of his torso, causing him to instinctively cry out as Red John's body collapsed against him, sliding to the floor. The blade, now bloody, he noticed with confusion, fell to the ground along side him with a loud clatter. Jane looked up in the direction that Red John had been standing, seeing a new person standing in the kitchen doorway, somebody that neither of them had anticipated.

"Cho?"

The agent rushed over, kicking the knife away from the fallen body. Then, he crouched below it, putting his fingers to his neck before uttering words that made Jane choke on whatever emotion was clouding his throat. "He's gone."

"He's gone?" Jane repeated, bewildered.

Cho nodded, releasing a deep breath. "He's dead."

Jane's breathing increased, his heart suddenly pounding in a way that it hadn't done when he was convinced. It was over. "Red John's dead..."

"Yeah, it's all over," Cho confirmed.

He felt dizzy as the words washed over him. Red John was dead. Thirty seconds before now, Jane had been prepared to die – for his wife, for his daughter, and yes, for Lisbon too. But now...he was gone. He tilted his head to the side, to see it again for himself. Sure enough, Jane could see blood leaking onto his kitchen floor, blood that was leaking from Red John's torso. He was face down on the ground, so he couldn't see his face, just his lifeless body, his unmoving limbs, and that back of that evil, twisted head.

"You're an idiot, you know that?" Cho told him, bringing his eyes away from the body.

"Yeah..." he acknowledged weakly. He tried to move, then remembered his hands were bound. "Can you...can you get me out of here?" he asked, suddenly feeling incredibly tired.

Cho moved to his side, untying the knot that bound his hands together. Jane bought his arms back round, wincing audibly at the movement. "You got sliced," Cho noticed, inspecting his side briefly. The fabric of his shirt moved easily to show the cut skin beneath it. "You need to go to the emergency room, hold this on it," he said, reaching for Jane's nearby jacket and pressing it against his side.

Jane pressed it there, then looked at the blood that was dripping from his shirt onto the floor by his foot, not that far away from Red John's steadily growing pool of blood. "Wow, that's a lot of blood," he observed, his voice higher than usual. Apparently blood loss was the cause of his lethargy. That made perfect sense.

"He must have got you when he fell," Cho noticed. "Go get in the car, I need to call Lisbon."

Cho reached for his phone, but Jane shook his head, taking it from him. "Uh...I don't think that's a good idea," he told him.

Cho just stared at him. "Jane, Red John is dead," he pointed out.

"Yeah, but...she'll get mad," he pointed out. "Call a back-up team, get this cleaned up. Then I'll tell Lisbon."

Cho shook his head, rolling his eyes. "Just get in the car," he said. "Wait for me there."

"Unicorn, please," he said, reaching out his hand to the kitchen table. Cho looked at him as if he were insane. "C'mon," he whined. "I'll go sit in the car like a good boy if you give me my daughter's unicorn."

Cho took hold of the unicorn and passed it to Jane, who took it from him with the hand that wasn't pressing his jacket into his side. Then, as he requested, Jane went to sit in the car, limping slightly with the pain, but feeling marginally better for the pink plush toy tucked under his good arm. When he turned to see Cho making a phone call, he realised that he wasn't calling Lisbon, and something he hadn't been expecting to do – he smiled.

The murderer who had killed his wife and daughter was dead.

He could take steps to building a new life, knowing that his love and his little girl were finally at real peace.

He could leave that house behind, never look upon that daunting smiley face again.

He'd kept his promises to Lisbon, too – he'd promised that Red John wouldn't hurt her, and that Red John would not die by his hand.

And he had his daughter's pink unicorn tucked under his arm.

So, Patrick Jane smiled.