Disclaimer: Not mine. Which is probably for the better.

A.N. Okay, it's been a long time since I looked at this. I think it's safe to say that this is now most defiantly AU. Still, I hope you enjoying it nonetheless.

Chapter Seven

Rigsby entered the interrogation room less than ten minutes after Lisbon had settled herself there. He walked almost hunched over, as though he was trying to conceal his massive size and he refused to look her in the eyes. It was though he had regressed to the Agent who had come to the CBI six years previously- the affable Agent who shied away from the spotlight and watched Jane's tricks in awe from the background. The Rigsby from before Lisbon (and Jane, though she loathed to admit it) had gotten her hands on him and started to mould him into the confident and assertive Agent he was today.

He sat, still not talking nor looking her in the eye. Lisbon would swear, though she couldn't see clearly as Rigsby's head was ducked, that his cheeks were red. Finally, she somewhat lost her patience.

"So, Miss Lisbon," she decided to start for him. "Where were you around between 11am and 2pm on Wednesday the twelfth of April, 1989?" She cleared her throat as he looked up, startled. "Well, Agent Rigsby, I was at school- Lowell High School." She paused as Rigsby continued to look bewildered before prompting him again, "Carry on, Rigsby."

Finally getting his act together and acting like the Agent she knew, he continued the line of questioning. He started with all the normal questions; Can anyone confirm this? Isn't it true that you could have left the school during your lunch hour and returned before classes without anyone noticing? When did you arrive on the scene?

When his eyes focused on the table again she knew exactly what he was going to say. "Your brother, Michael, had been hospitalised the previous evening. Can you tell me how that happened?"

And she did. She recounted exactly what she knew and what she had found when she had returned home that evening as bluntly as she could manage, elaborating where necessary. And she said it all whilst focussing firmly on Rigsby's ear, refusing to look him in the eyes or look at the mirror behind him where she was sure Cho and Hightower were watching avidly. She hadn't, however, expected to appeal to Rigsby's impulse to protect injured women.

"Was this a one off thing, or a regular occurrence?"

She still wasn't looking at him, missing completely the fire in his eyes which had finally turned towards her. "In the year or so prior to his death, yes, it was regular," she tried to keep the words as blunt as possible. The silence in the room after her statement was only broken by Rigsby's harsh breathing. One of his hands was hidden beneath the table but the other was clutching the file in front of him so tightly that his knuckles had turned white.

"And can you think of anybody who would have a motive to kill your father?"

Lisbon answered honestly. "Myself and my brothers, though one was only a child at the time and another was hospitalised on the day of the-"

"You were all children at the time!" She hadn't expected the words that came out of Rigsby's mouth to contain such venom. He sounded positively livid. Lisbon wanted to console her Agent, to tell him that Arthur Lisbon was no longer able to hurt anybody. But she couldn't. At least not until the interrogation was over.

Why couldn't it have been Cho doing this instead?

"Yes," she agreed with Rigsby's statement, for once looking him in the eyes. "We were all children. But I meant that Tommy was only seven years old- he had neither the means nor the opportunity to commit murder." Her next words slipped out before she could stop them, "Besides, we tried to shield him from what our father was capable of. I'm not sure he really understood everything that was happening- so he didn't really have a motive either."

The look of rage on Rigsby's face had turned to one of abject pity and she turned away from his gaze, unable and unwilling to accept that as a child that pity would have been well placed. Noticing her reluctance to continue down that particular path on conversation, Rigsby concluded the interview.

"Anyone else that would have wanted him dead?"

Lisbon had thought about it all weekend. The question had plagued her thoughts when she was awake and when she was asleep. "He may have owed money to a loan shark. I was the one who managed the finances but he always seemed to get money for alcohol somewhere."

Rigsby got up to leave, taking the file with him. He held the door of the interrogation room open for her and allowed her to walk though it ahead of him. As he followed her back to the bullpen she got the distinct impression that this particular interview would never, ever be mentioned again.

"Four days," Nolan muttered, more to himself than to the inmate sitting across the table from him. "Don't get me wrong," he faced Jane, "I'm delighted that you want to change your plea. But finding evidence that will be admissible in court to prove you not guilty and get you released on a reasonable bail charge is a little steep." The young lawyer started suddenly, realising that the man he was talking to had shot someone just over a week ago. "Not that it's impossible, or anything."

Jane tried to wave a hand, as though wafting away any doubt, but ended up dragging the other hand that it was cuffed to along with it. "Not at all! After all, a trial is really nothing more than an elaborate con." Before Nolan could voice his offence, Jane continued, "All you have to do is convince twelve people that when I shot Red John I was acting for the greater good. And as it happens," he grinned, "I made a fortune telling people what to believe."

Jane reached out and patted the lawyer's hand, holding it lightly, "By the time I'm done with you, you'll be able to win every single case you take for the rest of your career. Trust me."

Rigsby was trying to get a hold of old bank records and Cho was attempting to contact the Medical Examiner who had performed the autopsy on her father when Lisbon left for her hospital appointment that afternoon. She had loathed leaving the two Agents to do all the legwork on the case by themselves, especially when she had more background knowledge of the case than they did, but it couldn't be helped. She had a hospital appointment to keep and keep it she would. She needed to keep Doctor Schafer sweet until he signed her off so she could go back to work again, officially at least.

She had spent less than five minutes in the waiting area before she was called into a small consultation room. A nurse helped her take off her shirt before carefully checking and redressing the wound on her arm, carefully taking notes on her clipboard all the while. After that, Lisbon was left on her own for a brief while to wait on the Doctor.

She hated the waiting. It was too similar to what they did to criminals in her own line of work. Leaving them to stew, to ponder, to panic. It softened them up, made them more willing to answer the questions posed to them.

Not that Lisbon was comparing herself to criminal or anything.

But she knew that Schafer would ask her if she'd been following the instructions he'd set out for her the week before and while she'd swear blind that she had, she'd know that she was lying, even if he didn't. And that bothered her.

So lost she was in her own musings, she didn't hear the door behind her opening and Schafer entering the room. So when he cleared his throat, Lisbon started so badly that she nearly fell out of the seat that she was perched on. Way to look innocent, she thought sarcastically as she greeted the Doctor.

"I see your team's been given a new case," he began with as he took a seat from her across the desk. It wasn't the conversation opener she'd been expecting. "I saw you on the news."

She nodded, "Yeah, they had to bring me in to answer a few questions about it."

Schafer nodded sympathetically, "I'm sure it was something of a shock to you, Agent Lisbon. For what it's worth, I am sorry about your father."

More uncomfortable with his concerned manner than she'd care to admit, she simply nodded again, thanking him for his condolences, no matter how many years before the death had occurred.

"Anyway," he continued, now seeming a smidgen more cheerful, "one Madeleine Hightower called me this morning," he smiled as Lisbon started at this piece of information, "and apparently she'll have no problems making sure you follow my restrictions on you going back to work."

Lisbon barely managed to suppress the smirk that threatened to make itself known on her lips when she heard that particular remark. So Hightower really had spoken to her doctor and now she was helping Teresa dupe him into believing she was following his medical guidelines to the letter. Either Madeleine had had her own experience with inconvenient medical rules and sympathised with Teresa, or she had predicted the younger woman's stubbornness and decided to not even bother trying to contend with it.

The rest of her visit to the hospital was fairly routine. Apparently her arm was healing up quite nicely and the nurse who had checked it had commented on the neatness of the dressing. In a week, Schafer told her, she would need another brief check up and then, all being well, she would be able to begin light physiotherapy to get back its full range of motion.

Overall, she thought as she left the hospital and hailed a cab, the check up had gone better than she had expected. She only hoped her next appointment went as well.

Grace looked terrible. She looked as though she hadn't slept at all in the week since the shooting at Hightower's hideout. In fact, Teresa seriously doubted that she had. Her hair was lank and unwashed and when she had opened the door she had been wearing heavy sweatpants and a sweater that was too large for her thin frame. She was shivering despite the sweltering weather outside.

"Sorry about the mess," Grace muttered as she showed Lisbon into the living room.

"Believe me," Lisbon lied flawlessly, "my place is worse." She surreptitiously glanced around the room and found nothing that she felt she should be overly concerned with. Nothing to suggest that Grace, while definitely consumed by her grief, would go over the edge, so to speak. She did notice a dent in the wall, under which she spied a broken picture frame, but she could guess whose picture it had housed and she certainly didn't blame Van Pelt for destroying it. She would have.

"How's your arm?" Grace called from the kitchen as she fetched the both of them a mug of coffee. Lisbon waited until she returned to answer, pleased to see that while Grace may not be sleeping well, her hands were steady as she handed Lisbon the mug, indicating that she had at least gotten some rest.

"Getting better," she opted to answer honestly. Grace didn't need more deception. "Doctor doesn't want me back at work for another week but I was going insane at home. What he doesn't know won't hurt him."

That prompted a smile from the younger woman. "Got a new case yet, or are you guys still dealing with..." she trailed off, uncertain how to continue.

"The Jane fiasco?" Lisbon completed for her. Grace nodded, grateful that the words made no reference to Hightower or O'Laughlin. "La Roche is dealing with Jane, though it goes to court on Friday. As for us," Lisbon considered how much to tell her, "we've been given a cold case. Not really our area of expertise," she paraphrased what Hightower had said to her that morning, "but all the other teams are busy." No need to tell her that this particular cold case was personal. Grace had her own demons to deal with and Lisbon didn't want to the young woman to add problems that weren't hers to deal with to the pile.

"It was the situation with Jane that I needed to talk to you about, actually," Lisbon tried to phrase it delicately but Grace flinched all the same. "A lawyer from the prosecution needs to speak to you about what happened."

"When?" Grace had put her mug down and was fiddling with the edges of her sweater.

"Before Friday. When and where is up to you. You want him to come here, he'll come here. If you want to do it at headquarters, that's fine too. But," she paused, leaning over to try and meet Grace's eyes, "I'll be with you the entire time. He doesn't come near you unless I'm there, okay?"

It was only then that she realised she had taken Grace's hand at some point during the conversation and was squeezing it gently. She usually shied away from contact with people- that was Jane's job.

But Jane wasn't here now.

Grace was looking at her, eyes wide and wet with unshed tears, "Thank you," she all but whispered, the words heartfelt. Teresa nodded with what she hoped was an encouraging smile.

"Would it be okay if I did the interview," Lisbon noticed the slight hesitation before 'interview' and expected Grace had swapped it in for 'interrogation' at the last moment, "at the CBI? Tomorrow afternoon? I'd rather just get it out of the way."

"Sure, I'll let O'Donnell know and ring you with a time tonight, okay?"

Somehow the two women managed to while away another hour with completely meaningless small talk that avoided death and murder altogether. Cooking, books and lamenting the loss of the yoga instructor with the nice bum at the gym they both frequented all made an appearance in the conversation however. It was only when she was about to leave that Lisbon made a personal plea to Van Pelt to call her or visit her if she needed anything. Even if it was just to talk.

Grace sat quietly for a moment after Lisbon finished speaking. Then, "Boss? Can I ask you a personal question?"

Damn. "Sure, go ahead."

"Your cross." Grace's hand drifted towards Lisbon's neck where the sliver cross lay, almost, but not quite touching it. "Are you religious?"

A flashback from just over a week before- Lisbon clutching the necklace so hard it left an imprint on her hand as she prayed feverishly for her life and for the life of the one foolish enough to stick by her when she had a bomb strapped to her chest. "Yes," she answered. "Though, sometimes I'm more devout than others."

"Will you pray with me?" Grace's plea was so lost, so broken, that Lisbon's heart nearly broke with her.

"Of course."

Together they recited off the familiar words, and as she did, Lisbon prayed for Jane, for her father, for Grace and finally for herself.

A.N. Well, I hope you all enjoyed this chapter. I'm finding the trial stuff the most difficult bit to write but once the trial actually begins it should go a bit more smoothly.

~Sweetdeath04