Scarlet Psychosis
Summary: He wondered sometimes when he stared at his reflection in the mirror, if he was insane and then he'd forget until he didn't even know who he was staring at anymore.
Disclaimer: I absolutely love The Mentalist, but at the end of the day—I'm thankful I don't own it, and I only write the fan-fiction.
Spoilers: Set after "His Right Red Hand"
A/N:
I find this absolutely hilarious, but every time I go to update one of my stories and check my inbox apparently I'm on my own "author alert" list. Honestly, I'm pretty sure I know I just updated a chapter—after all I'm the one writing them and turning around to post them.
Anyway, thanks for the awesome reviews, reads and alerts for the past few chapters! Enjoy this one, because we've got three more one-shots to get through still!
Paranoia:
Extreme and unreasonable suspicion of other people and their motives.
He used to be fine, he supposed.
It's hard to say, especially when you've never really known yourself in the first place—but one morning, after the death of a whole CBI unit he just woke up and felt different—different in the way that he carried his lunch, different in the way he had to check that the bolt to his apartment was latched shut before he could fully relax and even after that, he had his windows boarded up to feel safe.
He couldn't invite her over, he couldn't let her see what he had become—he was supposed to be their safety net, and he couldn't even seem to gain enough courage to unbolt his door at night, or sleep without his gun under his pillow (when he actually could sleep). He couldn't even tell her that he trusted her, because what if she turned out to be one of his? What if she ended up standing over him one night, knife in hand pointed at him or someone else on their team, on his "family" but what if it was one of his so-called "family" members whom stood over him with the knife in hand?
What if he was the one who would stand over them with a knife?
He shivered, hands shaking slightly in fear that he might just be the one to pull the knife on them all. He couldn't let her get close, he couldn't let any of them get close—and he started pushing them away, one by one until they'd all be safe from him, and he'd be safe from them in return.
So to keep them all safe, he'd spend another sleepless night—huddled in the armchair, gun in one hand and eyes trained on the door—just to make sure that he didn't end up like so many others had in the past:
A giant red smiley with three rubber kitchen-gloved fingers in blood and a clockwise movement splashed upon a white wall.