A/N: Well, here we are at the end. Thank you all for being such lovely readers. You have made this such a positive experience, and I am very grateful. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I do not own The Mentalist.

2013

Tuesday, May 14

8:59 pm

The car rattled in a small earthquake as Grace sped up the gravel driveway. The darkened house was invisible against the equally black outline of the woods behind it.

The engine was cut off abruptly, its tinny ticking filling the silence.

"There should be lights on," Grace said to no one in particular. "They don't go to bed this early. They would have stayed up and waited for us."

She was out of the car and striding up the driveway before Lisbon could think to stop her.

"Grace!" she yelled out over the insistent pinging of the open driver's door. "Grace, wait!"

But the young agent had already been reduced to a barely discernable shadow moving against the night. Shaking her head in frustration, Lisbon shoved her own door open and rushed after her, Jane following at her heels. "We should call for backup," she said hurriedly, taking her cell phone from her pocket with one hand and her sidearm from its holster with another.

Jane shook his head, a stiffening fear visible in his voice if not in his eyes. "There's no time. Whatever is happening, it's happening now."

The front door banged open. "Mom? Dad?" Grace's voice echoed through the eerily empty house. A light flicked on in one of the front windows, spilling down the porch steps as Lisbon and Jane took them in twos.

They rushed through the door only to see Grace standing by the small table in the front hall, eyes scanning the paper she had clutched in her hand. After a few frozen seconds, her face crumpled and she seemed to melt right into the wall behind her.

"What is it?" Lisbon demanded.

Grace pried her eyes open, a staggering relief in them. She held the paper out. "They're ok. They just went for a walk." Grinning, she pushed herself from the wall and walked briskly back across the hall. "I should have remembered. They've been going for walks every night since Mom's been a little better."

She opened the door and half-jogged down the steps. Lisbon and Jane, who were still trying to come to terms with the drastic shift in events, stared for a moment before Lisbon called after her.

"Grace! Where are you going?"

"I'm going to find them and tell them about Wayne. I'll be back," was the distant reply that seemed to originate from the end of the driveway.

Lisbon found Jane's wary eyes and gave him a weak smile. Of one mind, they made their way to the living room and plopped heavily onto the couch.

"So that was…anticlimactic," Lisbon sighed, feeling her heart finally settling back in her chest.

Jane's lips twitched obligingly, but his face remained impassive.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, the temporary truce seeming to stretch thin now that there was no immediate danger. Lisbon let her gaze drift around the room, taking in the faded floral patterns and framed photos. After rearranging her phone and the box of cards on the side table and folding her hands several times in her lap, she sighed and ventured a glance at Jane.

"Do you want some tea?"

Jane stood. "I'll get it."

He left the room and found his way to the kitchen, trailing his fingers along the walls as he navigated through a maze of doors he had only seen once before. Suddenly, he paused. A light shone from the end of a hallway, a sliver of yellow blooming under the thick wood of the kitchen door. As he drew closer, he recognized the outline of a piece of paper taped above the handle. His eyes adjusted more quickly than his mind, and he read the words before he could decide not to:

Dear Mr. Jane,

There is a power in writing one's own end. It cannot help but meet expectations.

Red John

His hand was turning the handle before he could register its movement or gather his wits enough about him to be afraid. Instead, all he felt was an acidic anticipation as the door creaked open to reveal the black-clad figure of a man standing, his back turned, in the far corner of the room in the dim orange light of the stove lamp. At first, Jane entertained the notion that the man hadn't heard the door. By this time, Jane's fear had caught up with him. His hands shook in a tremor that spread through his chest and soured the breath in his lungs as he fought to expand them. As if he could sense the emotion, the man in black turned slowly around, the leather of his clothing rasping hoarsely in his wake.

The man's face was hidden by a hood that was somehow fastened into his suit. But Jane could tell he was smiling. He held his breath and waited for the tide of fear to ebb from his mind. It didn't.

There was another creak of leather as the man reached into his pocket. Jane flinched back. The man chuckled, but it was so muffled by the cloth over his face that it sounded more like a wheeze. Black gloves clasped a small box.

"Deus ex machina."

A scrape. A hiss. A burst of flame. A match had been lit.

The man was on fire.

Jane realized several things at once. Belatedly, he noticed the tang of gasoline in the air. He also realized that the lit match had hit not only the man's gasoline-soaked cloak, but the floor as well. Most importantly, he realized that, unless he was able to remove the mask before it was consumed by the spreading flames, he would never see Red John's face.

He leapt forward, dodging the hedge of fire that was growing around Red John's burning body, and made to grab for the mask.

Initially, Red John was able to duck out of the way. But as the flames continued to spread, he fell first to his knees, and then onto his side. Jane, struggling to see through his choking panic and the rising smoke, fought his way to the sink, snatched up a dirty coffee mug, and threw its murky contents at the fire. The flames only leapt higher. A gurgling issued from the depths of the man's chest. He was laughing.

Fighting the bile growing in the back of his throat, Jane stumbled back across the kitchen. Only then did he notice the small form resting on a pile of blankets in the opposite corner of the room. Rosie. A wave of horror finally jerked his mind into actual thought.

"Lisbon!" he screamed, and immediately choked on a mouthful of dry, hot smoke. "Lisbon!"

Not waiting for a reply, he ran to the pantry and threw open the door, shoving boxes and cans from the shelves in the vain hope of finding a fire extinguisher. As he darted back into the main kitchen, he caught sight of Lisbon's face as she sprinted into the room. He had never seen that look in her eyes, except perhaps once before. Terror and resignation fought for dominance before receding into cold calculation of fact.

Not sparing him more than a passing glance, Lisbon hurried to Red John's body and threw her blazer over it, attempting to pat down the flames before giving it up as hopeless and heading to the sink, yelling for him to get her phone and call 911.

He shook his head, pausing to cover his nose and mouth with his sleeve before shouting.

"I can't."

Lisbon whipped around with a pasta pot full of water and threw it at the body. The flames on one leg hissed out. "Dammit, Jane! Now!" she shrieked, her hair sticking in mats to the moisture running down her face.

"I can't, Lisbon. It's Red John. I can't."He tried desperately do get her to understand. "I have to stay here, but you can get Rosie out."

The wild blaze in Lisbon's eyes grew impossibly at his words. "Rosie! Jane, what the hell!" She darted back across the room, her eyes finding the pile of blankets that held the unconscious child, assessing the situation even as she struggled to refill the pot with water.

Jane felt himself choking again as he watched her frantic movements, as he saw Rosie's face begin to disappear behind rippling waves of heat, the little stuffed lamb blackening with soot. This was how it would end. His gaze fell on the still-burning body of Red John, half hidden behind a wall of flame. Maybe there was still a chance…

He picked his way through the fire that was now eating its way through the kitchen floor. Kneeling down by the body, he reached his hand out to try and snatch the mask when he felt a stinging heat across his cheek. Lisbon had slapped him.

"Get up. Get up right now."

Jane shook his head desperately. "He's making me choose, Lisbon. I—I can't. He knows I can't."

Suddenly, Lisbon was kneeling in front of him and gripping his shoulders. "Jane, you listen to me. Yes you can. Yes you can. You can get up right now, you can take that little girl, and you can carry her outside. He doesn't know anything about you, do you understand me? Nothing."

His eyes drifted unconsciously from Red John's body to the bundle of blankets and back again.

"I—"

"Jane. I'll get him out. Jane? Look at me."

He did.

Her eyes were burning with a desperate intensity. "Jane. I'll get him out. Trust me."

After a tense second, he nodded sharply, snatched her blazer from the floor, scooped Rosie up, and jogged from the room without looking back.

Lisbon's eyes only followed him for a moment before resuming her search for the fire extinguisher. She thought she remembered seeing a red shape under the sink before dinner. Making her way once more through the patches of flame spouting from the floor, she pulled hard on the cabinet handle. It wouldn't open. She tried again and again, but the thickening smoke was clouding her mind and her lungs. Every breath scorched her throat and threw her into a renewed bout of coughing until tears streamed down her grimy cheeks. The metal handle grew hot under her touch and she shifted her grip to the top edge of the door. Her fingers caught on something plastic. A baby lock. Fumbling to disengage it, she finally pulled the door open. And there, behind several bottles of dish detergent and a pile of dried sponges, was the dusty red cylinder of the fire extinguisher. The cloud temporarily lifted from her mind, she snatched it up and pulled the pin, aiming the gushing foam first at the body, and then at the patches of flame scattered around the room. As the haze returned and the world grew dark around the edges, she felt a wave of relief comparable only to drawing the first breath after being trapped underwater.

...

The sun rose that morning in a pale blue sky, the heartbeat of its rays thumping across the waves of dewy grass that spread along the edge of the woods. Jane stood on a hill looking over the thin aspens, watching the clear, cool sunlight filter through the lace of the interwoven branches, a pattern of light and dark like the stained glass of cathedrals. If he looked closely, he thought he could see each vein as it traced its way through the crimson leaves.

Everything seemed so much shaper this morning. It was as though the answer to life itself was in the rustle of damp grass, in the color of the sky, in the wetness seeping through the soles of his shoes and into the hem of his trousers. He could feel every breath as it rumbled through his chest.

The smell of smoke still hung in the air. If he turned around, the muted glare of flashing lights would still color the white walls of the farmhouse.

Cho had gotten there just in time. While he had been scouring the local hospitals for Rigsby, he had gotten a frantic call from the man himself, demanding that he immediately go and check on Grace and Rosie. Without waiting for an explanation, Cho drove off in one of the squad cars and had arrived just as Grace and her parents were returning from their walk. Upon seeing the smoke, the Van Pelts called 911 while Grace and Cho entered the house. They found Lisbon lying on the scorched kitchen floor next to the body of Red John and Jane on the back porch, Rosie clutched in one hand, Lisbon's phone in the other.

Jane could still remember the shadow of Cho bursting out the screen door, his silhouette stretched with the weight of Lisbon in his arms. He could still remember the way the sirens screeched and the rough hands of the man who had pried Rosie from his grip. He could still remember the fear in Grace's eyes as she ran, smoke-soaked, from the gurney carrying the dead body of Red John to the EMT carrying her daughter, the child's blank face covered in a too-large oxygen mask, half hidden against the young man's strong chest as she slept off the last of the sedatives. He could still remember Rigsby's voice on the phone as they each took turns reassuring him of their continued existence, and themselves of his. He could still remember how pale Lisbon's face was even under all the soot, and how her coarse voice seemed to echo distantly as she told him that Red John's body was fine and not to worry. He could still remember telling her not to be an idiot and hoping she knew what he meant.

But everything seemed to fall away in the clarity of this morning. It was still there, but as a memory stored behind glass and not an inhabitant of his mind that haunted his every thought.

Soft footsteps fell behind him. Lisbon drifted to his side, wrapped in a grey woolen blanket. Traces of ash still clung to her cheeks, but her eyes shone with a wary lightness.

Feeling again the finality of the moment, Jane searched the blue sky. The color had intensified over the last minutes into an almost painfully vivid cobalt. A bird trilled in the trees.

He let his chest expand once more only to find that the air had become trapped within it. He forced it out again. "Lisbon…"

She looked at him with the same quiet resolve that had stood there all these years, steadfast despite his wavering. But there was a new truth in it.

A breeze moved strands of limp hair across her face.

He drew another breath. "I'm sorry, Lisbon. It's my fault—I didn't…I couldn't…"

He was saved the burden of putting his resolution into unstable words by the feel of a smaller hand slipping into his and gripping tightly.

"Don't be an idiot, Jane."

The smile was tentative in its movement and rusty with disuse, but electrifying in its presence. It radiated through his chest and resonated to the tips of his fingers wrapped around Lisbon's.

"We did it," he breathed, just realizing it himself.

Lisbon's startled laugh burst forth with such abandon that he turned to her in alarm, only to see the unadulterated joy written in every line of her face. She grinned up at him.

"We did."

Red John was dead.

And they were very much alive.

August 8

Something was tapping his shoulder. He hummed his disapproval. The something tapped again, and he pried his eyes open just enough to catch a flash of red hair before clamping them shut once more.

"Jane, Lissa says you have to get up now."

"Hmm."

Rosie poked him in the arm. "She says she knows you're not really sleeping."

"Hmm."

"She says don't make her come out here and get you herself."

"Hmm."

Rosie fell silent for a few moments. He felt the couch dip as she clambered onto the leather cushion near his feet.

"Jane?"

"Hmm?"

"Who's 'Charlotte?'"

His eyes opened. Rosie was sitting at the end of the couch, her auburn hair tied back in a blue ribbon. It was her birthday. They were going to the park, like they did every year. He and Rigsby would buy her a vanilla ice cream cone from the vendor while Grace wasn't looking. Then they would swing so high that the chains jangled and Lisbon would shout at them to be careful. And then, as the sun set, he would hold her hand as they walked across the boardwalk and counted the beach umbrellas. The record was a hundred and fifty three, but only when they counted Cho's golf umbrella twice.

He looked into her waiting blue eyes and decided.

"How do you know about Charlotte?"

She gazed at him contemplatively. "You talk about her, sometimes, when you sleep."

Sitting up, he maneuvered so that he sat next to her and studied his hands before replying. "She was my daughter."

Rosie tilted her head, thick locks of hair falling over her shoulder. "Oh."

Jane turned to face her. She looked at him with a striking sincerity.

"Can I tell you a secret?"

Rosie nodded solemnly.

"Do you promise not to tell?"

"I promise," she whispered, eyes wide.

Jane leaned in close and whispered back. "You smile just like her."

"Really?"

"Really."

They sat in silence for a few moments, Rosie obviously processing the information she had been given. Then, without a word, she hopped down from the couch and left the room.

She returned a few minutes later with a ceramic cup. It was a bit cool to the touch, and the tea bag was still wrapped in paper, but as Jane took it and sipped appreciatively, he thought it was the best he had had in a very long time.