Author's Note: Imagine the sound track for this as the Scissor Sisters song "I Can't Decide" - familiar to Doctor Who fans as the song The Master sang while pushing the aged Ten around in the wheelchair. I strongly encourage you to search YouTube for it - it's such a cheerful, happy song. The lyrics do have words we consider naughty in the U.S.

I can't decide
Whether you should live or die
Oh, you'll probably go to heaven
Please don't hang your head and cry
No wonder why
My heart feels dead inside
It's cold and hard and petrified
Lock the doors and close the blinds
We're going for a ride

They stopped to eat in Kettleman City, then took CA-33 to avoid LA traffic. Seven hours after they started out, they arrived in Malibu. He pulled into his driveway, got out of the car and went into the house. He didn't look at her as he went upstairs. She followed. Walking into the bedroom behind him, she heard him say, "This is where I live, Lisbon. Every minute of every day. I've never left. I was hoping to, after I killed Red John."

At first she was so focused on him that she did not see the abomination on the wall. When she did, she breathed out, "Oh God, Jane," and moved to put her hand on his shoulder. He shrugged her off. Turning to face her, he grasped her forearm, pulled her across the room, then sat down on the mattress, bringing her with him.

"You took that from me, and now I don't know how to leave," he said, a worn, defeated look on his face. "I want, wanted to make you feel like this - stuck like a ghost tied to the place it died. All the ways I could think of to get my own back, I can't. I just can't. The worst thing I can do is make you look at it. Misery loves company, Lisbon. And I'm going to make you live here, too. We're going to sleep now." He took his jacket off and hung it in the closet, then kicked off his shoes, took his cell phone, keys and wallet out of his pockets. He put them on the floor and lay down on the mattress, next to the wall. He stroked the back of his hand up the wall and closed his eyes.

There was scant room for her next to him. She lay down on her side, watching his face as his eyelashes steeped in tears. Occasionally her gaze wound up on the dried blood on the wall, but she could not look square at it without waves of sickness gripping her. Time passed. His breathing evened out, and when she was sure he was asleep, she carefully got up, taking his phone and keys with her, and went downstairs.

First, she checked in with Cho, to let the team know where she and Jane were. Then she called Hightower. Her, she told more details to, explaining what a bad way Jane was in, that she was committed to either staying with him until he got through it, or getting him help if need be, arranging to use vacation time until she came back. Next she explored the house a bit, using the bathroom, finding that tap water was almost the only thing available to drink. Jane did stock tea here. She found a pitcher, filled it with water, hung several tea bags over the side of it, and put it in the refrigerator. Himself would not likely approve, but she did not have such a discriminating pallet. There were a few cans of soup, condensed milk, a bottle of olive oil, and a half empty, stale jar of peanuts in the kitchen cupboards. In the drawers, she found an assortment of little condiment packets including lemon juice, duck sauce, and some rather unappealingly darkened dijon mustard. Filling two glasses of water, she went back to the bedroom.

Without opening his eyes, he said, "Making yourself comfortable? You didn't sleep."

She heard that smooth, hard tone of voice he used when baiting pet suspects who made the capital error of believing connections, money, or their own cleverness might insulate them from him. Chilled to hear it turned on her as never before, still she hoped it meant he might be coming back to himself. "Do you really think that's possible?"

"Why not? I do it."

"What do you think?"

"I think you called the CBI to prevent them from coming after us in an armed frenzy to rescue you. I think you used the downstairs bathroom. And I think you committed refrigerator tea."

"Is that a sin or a crime?"

"Sin and shame. There's a lot of that going around."

"I brought you some water." She tried to hand a glass to him, but he did not take it.

"Stop that," he said.

"Stop what?"

"Stop acting like you're here to take care of me. It's not why I brought you here."

"You may think you brought me here to be punished, but I came with you to bring you out of the woods you've lost yourself in."

"What if your punishment is having to go so deep in to find me, that you get lost in the woods yourself?"

"What if that's the way to save you?"

Hearing that, he got up and faced her, standing just a bit too close. He said, "It won't work like that, Lisbon. Drink your water and go to bed." He took the glass she had offered him, and walked out, shutting the door behind him, shutting her into that room.

A thought occurred to her. Letting the bloody smile and the horror that it represented stay in the forefront of her mind, she would not last long, not with sanity intact. But if she focused on the persons, Angela and Charlotte, who had died there rather than on the killing, she would not break as easily. She decided that the immortal souls of Jane's wife and child would be accepting of her, even friendly toward her, because they love him, and she was trying to help him. She also suspected that if he could not break her with that horror, she would be able to surprise him into revealing a vulnerable spot in the horned reaction he wore as emotional armor. He had already nursed it for too many years. It had to be pried off, and she could only help him do it - he was going to have to do most of the work himself. She walked up to the mattress, looked full on at the face on the wall, and said, "I'm sorry, I'm not sure I know how to help him. I'm doing the best I can. Pray for him - pray for us." She turned around and went in search of him. She found him downstairs in the kitchen, heating water for tea.

As she came into the room, he said, "I thought I told you to go to bed, Lisbon."

"I haven't had a bedtime in decades."

"You chose to come here. If you don't want to do what I tell you, leave. I'll call a cab, you can go to the airport, or find a hotel, whatever you want. If you stay, well, you stay on my terms. You don't have control here."

"That's what this is all about, isn't it, Jane? Control." She moderated her voice, keeping it neutral so she didn't reveal her precarious perch between wanting to give as good as she got, and mollifying him. "You couldn't control what happened to your family. But to make sense of the pain, you make believe it was your fault, because at least that makes you feel more powerful than accepting how helpless we humans are, as individuals, in the face of evil. You wanted to control Red John's end, so you could feel you had power over him, not because your wife and daughter would have wanted you to avenge their deaths. But you couldn't control what happened to Red John, so now you want to control what exactly? Don't answer that out loud, just think long and hard about the kind of dirty satisfaction you will get out of having that kind of power over me, what good it will really do for you. This is like something out of a Greek tragedy, only you're doing it ass-backwards - calamity happens and then you grow your hubris to disastrous proportions."

"Enough talk - either do what I tell you or go."

She looked at him, held his eyes for several long moments then went back to the bedroom. She sat on the mattress with her back against the wall and waited to hear his footsteps approaching. She said a prayer out loud, timing it carefully so that he would hear part of it. "Eternal rest grant them, O Lord, and may perpetual light shine upon them. May they rest in peace. Amen"

Coming into the room, hearing the end of her prayer, he said, "No, you don't pray for them. Just lie down and go to sleep."

"You come here partly to punish yourself, and partly to be close to them, Jane. You can't give me the one without the other. Since I never met them, this is the only way I know to get close. I asked them to pray for you, earlier."

"Why are you making me repeat my instructions? I've told you what to do. Now do it."

"What goes around, comes around - think of all the times I gave you instructions that you completely ignored."

"Lie down, by the wall." She finally obeyed, and he lay down next to her.

She rolled onto her side, facing the wall. She put her hand on it, and whispered, "You can be at peace now. We caught your murderer. He isn't going to hurt anyone ever again. And somehow or the other, I'll help your Patrick to be at peace, too."

He shot his hand over her mouth. "That is enough. You aren't here to make friends. Go to sleep."

Grabbing his arm, she pulled his hand off her face. "Jane, I'm willing to put up with a lot from you right now, but if you put your hand over my mouth again, I will break your fingers. You. Do. Not. Do. That. To. Me. Ever again." He had only heard her use that voice with the worst of the worst. Masking the conflict between his urge to deny any line she might draw and his qualms against stripping the woman of all her barriers, he moved his hand off of her. He had not yet done any irreparable harm to her. And by virtue of her commitment to salvaging him, he had yet to do irreparable damage to their relationship. The rage in him wanted to know where those last lines were so he could savour crossing them deliberately. The last shreds of trust in him wanted to know where they were to help her defend them. It was a long time before either of them were calm enough for the weariness of the day to drag them under.

She woke with the sensation of a hand on her breast over her shirt, a warm body against her back. Remembering who was with her, she pushed his hand away. His shallow, even breathing clued her in to his state of sleep. She rolled her eyes, and tried to relax. Minutes later, the hand caressed at her waist where her shirt had pulled out of her pants. There was no sign of him waking, so to keep the hand from wandering any more, she put her arm over his, intertwined their fingers and guided his hand to more neutral territory. She was uncomfortably warm stuck between Jane and the wall. But knowing how little sleep he got, compassion made her hesitate to wake him. She determined to stay where she was as long as possible. Eventually out of boredom, she dozed, only to find herself roused again, their hands moving back toward her breast. He softly mumbled something she could not make out. She nudged her elbow at his arm, saying, "Hey, watch the hand!" He kept mumbling and pressed himself closer. "Jane, c'mon, give me some space." She rolled half way over, trying to use her shoulder to push him back. His hand held her firmly, though not painfully. She raised her voice, "Let go, Jane!" and jabbed at him with a foot and elbow.

He woke up enough to let go of her, rolled back, and said, "Ahn... Oh, Lisbon, no, I... that wasn't... I'm sorry." A kaleidoscope of competing guilts shuttered through his mind as he stood up and quickly exited the room.

"That was one of the most impersonal gropes I've ever received, Mrs. Jane. I'm pretty sure he wasn't trying to get a handful of me. Not sure if that makes me feel better or worse. And why am I picturing you laughing your little spirit head off?"

He only went about ten feet down the hall as he left the room, and had not closed the door behind himself. It was absurd, feeling the need to apologize to someone he so wanted to punish. He heard Lisbon addressing his wife. She had no right to be making herself free with his ghosts, metaphorical or otherwise. It only made him more angry that she appeared to be so comfortable doing so. He clung to the anger, and ignored the other dozen things he had felt waking up with his arm around a woman on the poor mattress that had replaced his marriage bed. The forefront of his mind had been so fastened on retribution, that he had failed to see the other clews binding him to the purpose of bringing Lisbon to this place. A rational mind would have seen the obvious perils of putting a male body in such close quarters with a female body together with so many strong, wild emotions; his had skipped right past it, and he was not ready to face the error. So when she followed him into the hall, he paid out the understanding expression she wore with a salvo of coldness.

"Lisbon, stop talking to my wife. She's not here. You are not helping. There's no ghost. There's no spirit. She's gone. She's gone because I'm such a bloody fool, I might as well have killed her myself. You are here because you deprived me of my way of making peace. Don't try to get comfortable with Angela's memory - if I don't get that luxury, you for damned sure can't have it, either."

"Maybe if you would forgive her for dying, you could forgive yourself, and me."

He punched the wall with a fury Lisbon had never seen him express in a physical manner. "Do not try to talk for her. Do not talk about her. Do not talk to her. Do not make me repeat these instructions the way you did earlier. You pushing my limits, that is done. Make up your mind now whether you want to stay with me so much that you are willing to obey me, or not."

She looked away, thought, "I'm so sorry my tit got in the way of your hand," then carefully schooled herself to a less provoking demeanor. Instinct made her shy away from displaying her own anger to him. She dropped her voice to a gentle, low pitch and said, "Is it possible that you are feeling so angry because it is easier than sorting out which woman you feel more guilt toward?" and retreated to the bedroom without waiting for a response.

Watching the transformation of her normally assertive, even (with him) confrontational mien transform into a more subdued one, Jane relaxed toward her slightly. But his rage returned as she asked her question. He punched the wall again, and stalked off downstairs to put space between them.

In the bedroom, she picked up his cell phone to check the time. It was only 1:36 am; this was going to be a long night. She had not had the stomach for food when they first arrived, and she was introduced to Jane's method of punishment for them both. But the In-N-Out Burger in Kettleman City had been a long time ago, and now both hunger and thirst came to the forefront of her mind. Calculating the possibility that another confrontation would make anything better, she decided against going down to the kitchen for food. Instead, she took her glass into the en-suite bathroom, and drank a couple glasses of water. She then settled back onto the mattress, with her back against the wall. Having a stomach full of water did not stop her from thinking longingly of the jar of peanuts in the pantry. She found some games on the cell phone to keep her mind occupied and played until she was sleepy enough that she could contemplate lying down. She fell asleep while debating whether it would be harder to sleep with the light on or off.

Jane stayed away from the bedroom the rest of the night.