Title:Another world
Author:Little_firestar84
Rating: T (to be on the safe side)
Characters: Patrick Jane, Teresa Lisbon
Summary: They call it the butterfly effect. Just one small, random adjustment, and all changes. And here there is, another world. A world where his daughter has never been, his late wife is an ex and he is still a psych. And yet, few things just can't change. Some things are written in the stars, just like love at first sight.
Disclaimer: Uhm. well, my father is called Bruno, but since it's Negro and not Heller, I'd say tha t I don't own the rights to the Mentalist.
Notes: Extented version of "In this life", published around mid-September.

Thanks to:wantingmore,sorchauna, teresa l jane,bringerofjoy, 66bloodyhell666 , and everyone who vaforited me and the story.

a/N: seen? I've been good! A new chapter already! keeps reviewing, and you'll get new chapters...(well, at least the finale)!

7/8

Their little game had gone on for far too long for his liking.

It wasn't like he wanted to give up, he was just losing his patience. It had been six months, and still Teresa barely talked with him about what it really mattered (aka, themselves, and her life before him).

Well, at least he knew they were kind of moving towards a certain direction.

Nothing had happened between them, nothing of the sexual kind, at least, and yet, everything had happened at the same time. They hadn't had sex, they hadn't even kissed properly (lingered pecks on her face were his favorite pastime), but still, their whole worlds had changed.

For starter, they touched, a lot. Nothing dirty, but all things very, very innocent, but that every time send shivers through his whole body. Simple things such an hand on the small of her back, or taking her wrist to check the time awoke in him sinful visions concerning the two of them. Every time, the visions got stronger and stronger, more and more realistic, and he felt like he would just lose his cool and take her there and then.

And then, they were spending more and more time together.

In 99% of the cases, they were partnered in the field. Lisbon said it was because she was the only one who could handle him, but he knew that, deep down (and not even that deep) she wanted his company. Said company meant that, if the fact they were sort of dating-not dating out of work meant something, it was that she liked staying with him.

It was yet another step in the direction of relationship/marriage/family (a boy, a girl, a dog and a cat and a white fence, pretty please with cherry on top).

There was only a problem: he was the only one doing the talking.

It wasn't because he was so self-centered he didn't gave her space. It was just that she just kept it quiet, always finding a way to avoid meaningful conversations.

At first, it had hurt, badly. He thought she was doing it because of him, that she didn't trust him, that she hadn't changed her mind about him, but it didn't took Jane too long to figure out the truth.

She wasn't keeping the truth at bay because of him, but because of herself.

It wasn't just a matter of treasuring her privacy. It was more a matter of not wanting to deal with it. Talking about the past would mean open old wounds, it would mean suffer and remember all the rage and hate she had felt for so long, and he knew she didn't want to feel that way. Lisbon considered herself to be Saint Teresa, savior of all things. and to be broken... she just couldn't accept it. Like she couldn't accept the pity she knew she would have received.

"Are you all right, Jane?" she asked, a bit unsure and shy, biting her own lips. She was close to pouting, and he didn't want to think about all the fantasies her pout awoke in him. No, he wanted to be mad with her. She deserved it, plenty.

"No, I'm fine. Do you want me to drop you somewhere? I could drive you home if you like." He kept driving, looking at the road right before his eyes, just few lights every now and there showing them the road ahead, guiding them. His tone was void, deadpan.

"You know Jane, you may not believe it, but I become a detective for a reason. So don't play dumb with me and tell me what's wrong."

He almost grinned, for he could feel in her voice those flames that kept him awake all night long, flames that had doomed his very existence right from the start. "Is it something that I did?" she asked, a bit tentatively, a bit sweeter, her voice low and broken, even scared. Scared of losing him before they could become something more, before it could actually begin? He didn't know. It wasn't like he was a strong man. He was small, and scared.

Her words, though... she was dooming him, she had hurt him, and she didn't know it, she didn't have any idea. It wasn't fair. He stopped the car abruptly, and then turned the engine off, staring at her with hands on the wheel, knuckles white. "What you did? You ask me what you did? Why don't you try the other way around, Teresa? Why don't you ask me what you didn't do?"

"What I... sorry, but when did it become my fault? You're the one moody here, Jane, not me!" she hissed, hitting him on the shoulder. Quite strongly. He even...well, he stopped a second to do everything- he was almost positive that his heart wasn't beating, his breathing dead in his throat - because the only part of his body working was his brain. To be more accurate: that part of his brain conjuring images of feisty Lisbon in bed. Naked.

"Ah! Glad you come to your senses and decided that it's not my fault! You can ask me to forgive you, now, and say that you're sorry." oh, her smug arrogance as she recollected herself. She seemed one of those old divas, like Ava Gardner.

"I wasn't thinking that. Trust me, I still think it's your fault."

"Oh really? You know what I think? You're too proud to admit that I am right and you are writing! That's why you don't want to tell me what you were thinking about."

"Trust me, you don't want to know what I was thinking" he mumbled, just to change topic as he saw she was listening in. 'I was saying that it's your fault because you don't open up with me."

"What? I do open up with you! You know of Greg, of Annabeth and Tommy..."

"Oh, please the only reason I know those things it's because we met both Greg and Tommy on a case! And it's Annie!"

She didn't reply. It wasn't like he was wrong. It was true that she had never shared a lot with him, but, at the same time, she had never hidden anything. All he had to do was ask, and she would have answered in kind. The fact that he didn't know it, that he didn't understand how she worked, him, the mighty Patrick Jane, fake psych, mentalist, it didn't simply unnerved her. It drove her crazy. She saw red, with rage. She felt... She felt like she could say anything in that moment, and she already knew that she would have eventually regretted every word.

"Well, you know what? It's not like you share plenty with me! There is still a lot that I don't know about you!"

His knuckles turned white. He almost told her that it was what a relationship was about- everyday, everlasting discovery- but he kept it quiet. First, they weren't into a relationship, and sometimes, he wasn't so sure there was any working chance for them. Second, she knew what it mattered, and because he had told her. Without that she had to ask. "You know plenty about me. I always talk about me. I share" He underlined the last word. He almost hissed it.

He didn't know how the atmosphere had changed so much. Couple of hours before, they were having dinner and enjoying themselves. He was almost positive that he would have ended the evening with a kiss of the French kind.

And now, this...

"Right. I know that you were married and that you've been a fake psych almost your whole life. That's what I know."

He clenched his teeth. It wasn't true, but they just wanted to hurt each other, the both of them. After all, she knew of the carnie, she knew that he had escaped, married young, that he had been really in love with Angela, but that he had understood that it wasn't worth it in the end.

And mostly, she was supposed to know that he cared. That he thought he had fallen for her, hard.

"You want to know something? Ok, let's see if this is good enough. My mother escaped with my father when she was 16, and married him shortly after, when she was already pregnant with me. She went back home when I wasn't even 2, begging her parents to take her back, and when they asked her to let it go of me to be brought back to the family, she accepted. I escaped with Angela when I was 18, and until that day, daddy dearest kept saying that I should have begged for mercy, kneed before him because it was all my fault my mother had left." he hissed every word, almost shouting. All she could do was making herself as little as possible, a scared, pained bundle with teary eyes against the door. "I hope you'll be happy now. Now you know everything there is to know about me and my sorry excuse of a life"

They didn't say another word for the rest of the trip, they didn't even dare to steal glances at each other. But when they finally reached her home, once the car stopped, she didn't left. She stood inside, motionless, rigid. It looked like what people referred to, he assumed, as the quiet before the storm.

They didn't utter a word, they didn't move. They were motionless, and surrounded by silence, like they were the last humans on earth.

"My dad turned to alcohol" she simply said, looking in front of her, at the houses she knew so well. It was few years that she was living there. She knew them. But they didn't know her. Not like he did.

Jane was right.

"He had never been strong, but he had always had someone to rely on. His family, mum... and besides, I don't think he even considered the chance of actually outliving her. He was a firefighter while she was a nurse. He walked with danger side by side. Hell, he walked side by side with death! But when mum died... he had us, but we were just children, you know? Tommy was just 2, and I was barely 12. We couldn't be strong for him and he knew it. And instead of fighting for us, he turned to alcohol. And... it was up to me, you know? By the time I was 14, I went to school, looked after the boys, looked after him and I even had a job. Two more years, and I had 2 jobs and I spent my weekends in the hospital, either because he had been too drunk or because he had hurt one of us. Every night I would pray that they wouldn't discover that he was hitting us, because otherwise they would have separated the 4 of us, and as the eldest I was supposed to keep the family together. I told myself that I just had to wait until I would be 18, then I would be able to ask for my brothers. I could be an adult." she paused. "by then, he had already killed himself, and all I thought about was that, what if they had found who did it to mum? Would he have gotten closure? 3 more years and Greg wanted to get married. I just... James was already working, and both he and Matt were adult. I could finally live my life. I couldn't get married in that moment, just when... once I was finally free to be myself and discover who I wanted to be."

They stood there for another long time, this time, though, he took her hand in his own, he held her thigh. But always in silence.

"Jane, would you..." she asked. He nodded, because he knew her (he didn't need to red her) and he knew what she wanted, what she needed.

She needed to be that little, lost girl that no one hugged, she needed a shoulder- or a chest- to cry on for all the things she had suffered and never talked about, always alone and on her own.

That night, he didn't get the kiss, but he slept with her in his arms, drawing indivisible patterns on her back, lulling her into sleep. And falling asleep himself, to the steady rhythm of her heart and breathing.