Lisbon threw her jacket down on the arm of the sofa and kicked off her shoes. She didn't really care where they landed; all she wanted to do was sit and relax in front of the TV.

It had been yet another long day at the office, during which they had finally closed the Dalton case. Not without Jane pulling one of his usual stunts to catch the suspect of course. This particular stunt had involved arresting the victim's father for murder, so that the real killer (the valet) would try and escape. What the valet didn't know was that Rigsby and Cho were waiting nearby to apprehend him.

For Lisbon, the results of this stunt included a pile of paperwork as high as Everest for her to fill in, a law suit filed by the Dalton family against the CBI and a very angry Hightower. As a result Lisbon had spent the rest of the day scaling the paperwork mountain. In contrast, Jane had spent the rest of his day lying on her sofa, trying to get her forgiveness by bringing her closed-case doughnuts.

In the end she just gave in to his constant barrage of apologies and joined him on her sofa. There they spent two hours discussing everything from past cases to books they'd read recently. She knew she should have made him suffer a little longer, but for her trying to resist Jane, for very long, especially when he was actively trying to get back in her good graces, was as difficult as trying to give up coffee.

Now she was getting ready to curl up on her sofa at home when something on her coffee table caught her eye.

An envelope.

A white envelope with Senior Agent Teresa Lisbon scrawled across the front in blood red ink.

She picked it up immediately. The sight of it filled her with apprehension and fear over what she would find inside. Her quaking fingers fumbled as she tore out a piece of white paper covered with several lines of neat, blood red handwriting.

Dear Agent Lisbon,

You shouldn't cross me. I would have thought that your lover would have taught you that. You've pulled him out of the darkness Teresa, and that was never part of my plan. Now I'm afraid that I will have to put a stop to your interference, so in 7 days time I'm going to come and visit you. I'm very much looking forward to it as I have longed to meet you for so very long. And I know you will enjoy finally meeting me.

7 days Teresa.

Lisbon didn't need to see the smiley face signature to know who it was from.

Red John.

Suddenly her legs felt like they could no longer support her weight and buckled beneath her; she collapsed onto the couch. She re-read the letter over and over again, trying to take in its contents, trying to find some loophole, some way out of this. By the 5th read through her hands were shaking so much she found she couldn't even make out the words.

Lisbon took a deep breath and tried to calm herself, as a lone tear snaked its way down her cheek.

She wasn't going to cry. Crying would be weak and what good would it do her? She'd learned a long time ago that crying didn't solve anything, in fact in made everything worse. She needed to keep a clear head as her mind processed what she'd just read. She was going to die in seven days time. Red John was going to kill her.

No one could stop it happening. She'd been working the Red John case for 5 years now and he'd never made a mistake, never gone back on his threats. Why would this time be any different?

She would try to stop it. Of course she would. She wasn't about to just roll over and let Red John kill her. But she knew that no matter what kind of a fight she put up, no matter how strong her protection was Red John was going to get past it. He'd done it several times before. He'd even done it to CBI Agents. The serial killer had proven very effectively that no one was safe.

Surprisingly, she wasn't scared or worried about her own life, she had come to terms with her own mortality when Bosco had died, Lisbon had also realised that at some point Red John would come after her. Now that he'd taken that step, she was prepared to face him.

She knew why he had. She didn't even pretend not to understand who Red John was talking about when he referred to her 'lover.'

Jane.

Because she'd realised a while ago that she was falling for her consultant. And maybe she'd started to notice that sometimes, when they were alone, his smile would actually reach his eyes. He wasn't the same man she'd met for the first time 5 years ago. The man she now knew to be Patrick Jane had learnt to care, at least a little. Learnt that maybe there was more to life than his quest for revenge. And maybe some of that was down to her.

She'd never given up on him, not once, and she never would. Even on his darkest days, the days when the only thing in his eyes was desolation and sadness. She'd never given up on 'fixing him.'

It was ingrained in her, that need to fix people. She'd tried to fix her father, to pretend that he didn't have a problem, tried to make him better. But it turned out he was unfixable. That one failure was what had made her want to be a cop. She wanted to be a cop so that sometimes she could make people better.

And now that was going to cost her her life.

She wasn't sorry. She didn't wish that she'd given up on Jane and left him to slowly go insane. She was glad she'd started to fix him, even if it meant her dying. If Red John could see a change then she knew she'd succeeded.

And therein lay the problem.

If Red John murdered her, Jane would break all over again, and this time maybe irrevocably. He would drive himself mad with guilt. As soon as he saw the letter he'd blame himself. And that was exactly what Red John wanted.

So maybe Jane didn't have to find out about the letter. She wasn't going to tell him. She could just allow him to be happy for 7 days more, god knows he needed it. He'd be devastated enough if Red John killed her. The last thing he needed to read was a letter taunting him as well.

But how could she stop him from finding out about the warning?

Okay, so she'd planned to take some sort of protection, but maybe if she went straight to Hightower and asked that only her team be used to protect her Jane might not get suspicious. Yes, it was a long shot but she had to try, not just for Jane but for herself. She couldn't bear to spend her last days watching him destroy himself. Not to mention she didn't want to be scrutinized for her last week. She supposed it was a little selfish of her, but she didn't want to remember him as a guilt ridden wreck thanks to her

And yes knowing that she lied to him would hurt him eventually but still…

The more she thought about it the worse it sounded. But she also knew that she wasn't going to tell him.