-on the drive back to Sacramento, after...-

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Change Your Mind

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Not the first journey they have spent, wrapped in thought and wracked with indecision. Something curiously comforting in the very awkwardness of it.

Her voice jolts him.

"You'll have to see the CBI psychiatrist..."

"What?"

"I'll have to see him. It's just policy after a shooting." She keeps her voice deliberately off-hand, does not look at him. "You go in, you tell him a few appropriate things, he writes it up, and you're done."

"You know how I feel about psychiatrists." Beginning to burn.

"Don't fight me on this. Minelli will not let you continue in the field without it."

"I'm not an agent." No longer that pale, silent shell, returning spark in his eyes.

"You're...part of a team. Even if you don't act like it." Acid snap.

Alive in their anger, because it is warm and vital, and so much better than cold despair. He wants to rage, wants to tell her not to waste her time on him, and then dreads her answer, that she no longer will. She wants to beat her fists against his chest, and scream at him for even daring to think of leaving her, for being so honest. A deep breath.

"Killing someone changes you, Jane."

"I'm the same man I was yesterday." Even he doesn't believe that.

"No. You're not." Flat conviction.

He remembers...a motel room in Napa, two people dead and her green eyes wide with shock, himself turning from the sight, horrified and unable to find words. Cold chill, the unknown number of times she has faced this thing before, now vivid in his own experience.

Blood on his hands, slick and cooling, as that laugh bubbled away to nothing...

(It could have been her, and what price your vengeance then?)

Eating an orange on an empty stomach was not wise.

"Lisbon...?"

One look, and she pulls the car over.

He has comforted her through sickness before, and how can she do less? As much as she dares, fingers against the weave of his jacket, light touch.

Ache in him, as she draws her hand away, but she is rummaging in the car, finds him a bottle of water. She is still looking after him. He's a cruel, selfish idiot, and he does not deserve her, but he's damned if he'll let her go.

"Still watching my back."

"It's my job."

Quietly, firmly, she is putting up her barriers against him, and pain lances across him before he is prepared for it. He cannot have found her, only to to have her leave him in the same moment. He will not accept that. One quick step, and his hands on her shoulders.

"I nearly lost you." Words come fast and hard, voice low. "I can't let that happen. I won't."

He could hold her with a fingertip, his gaze alone. The fight goes out of her, leaves a small, tired woman with over-bright eyes.

Not as simple as asking forgiveness. What has he done to be forgiven, except not be ready to take a step neither of them are quite prepared to face yet? And for her – she betrayed his trust, but could he really have expected her to let him die?

It is a quick, hard embrace, assurance of life and warmth, a thing of surprise and joy and pain. One brief moment where they let the barriers down. He shouldn't do it, and she shouldn't let him, but for one instant, she buries her face in his shoulder, as he rests his cheek against her hair.

Then she pushes him away, but gently, smooths the lapels of his jacket.

"I'm still here." She says.

And that is all he dare ask for.

Can she really put herself through this? The fact that she needs to ask, answers her own question. In too deep, now. She cares for this wretched, broken, arrogant, stupid mess of a man. For her own sanity, her own dignity, she should take a step back from the brink. But she fears that she has already taken a step too far, and she's falling, now, nobody to catch her.

So suck it up, woman. Join the ranks of the unrequited. You have a job to do, a world to be in. You still have to work with him, and you cannot let one unguarded sentence wreck you. He needs you, not the way you wish he would, but he has nobody else. If he can move past it, so can you. Just be what he needs you to be, and keep your stupid mouth shut in future.

He wonders if he ever truly meant to drive her away. Can no longer trust himself, or his actions. His body and his subconscious have ganged up on his conscious mind. Filled his dreams and his unguarded thoughts with her, and now he may have wrecked it before it could even begin. Even if he could define what 'it' is. Or could be.

He can't promise to change, tangled in his web of loyalties and confusion, but he has been jolted rudely from his single pursuit, presented with a consequence he does not ever wish to face. Dragged back into the world, into the light, made aware of his body, of simple pleasures he thought he'd lost, of the fact that, try as he might to deny it, he was a man who wanted a particular woman. Wanted to live, after all.

He has no words, does not know what he could say. Both too soon, and too late, for what needs to be said. But she is still here, still his Lisbon.

She will persist in her belief that he can be fixed, push him and nag him and harass him, keep him alive with anger and hope. Lay those small, strong hands on him and keep him with her, keep him from destruction. If he can't believe in himself, perhaps he can believe in her.

Not the first journey they have spent, silence between them filled with unspoken and complicated thoughts. Things to repair between them, reassessment and readjustment. Something curiously comforting in the very awkwardness of it. It's just how they are, together.