4.15 War Of The Roses
You don't know what you are more scared for. You're not on top of your game right now, and this is scary, it's something you hate, always have, but that's not the worst, scarier part. What's worst, what's scarier is the reason why you're not on top of your game as usual.
A woman. You are upset because of a woman, because a woman who's not your wife, a woman who's not connected with Red John.
Erika Flynn, she just kissed you, and not a friendly peck on the check like Sophie Miller did. She kissed you, on the lips, a real kiss. One like the ones you haven't received in a long time.
Wanting a woman is something you've not consider after losing Angela. In a certain sense, you put your own life on hiatus. Everything that was supposed to happen, it could wait until Red John was gone. You told it to Carter, or whatever he was called, yourself, that day at the mall. You have every intention of moving on, finding a woman to love, rising children together. But it can wait, it could wait.
Not that you actually believe it, were completely honest when you said such a thing. You know there will be consequences after you final encounter with Red John, you always did, and you are ready to face them, whatever happen, will it be death or a life destined to end in prison.
Wanting someone is a risk. Caring for someone is a risk. You told it to Lisbon, and you keep repeating it to her. everything who comes too close to you, they get hurt, they die, they suffer, it's either because of you or Red John. He doesn't want you to be happy, he wants you to be miserable.
And you are pretty ok with it.
You deserve it. You deserve it because you have the blood of your family on your own hands, and because you're not the good man you claim to be, the good man you may look like. You are what people call a demon, maybe not of the religious kind, but a real one, one more dangerous, because you are alive, you are like them, a human being in disguise.
That you suffer because of the pain you caused and still causes, it doesn't mean you're better, that you deserve kindness or forgiveness, because you don't. You shouldn't, because what you did can't be undone. Your crime will live in the centuries to come, and so should your punishment. Everything you get, you deserve it, according to your own personal philosophy.
Erika Flynn kissed you, and you… you liked it. Not that she kissed you, but that… that you got kissed. And it's strange.
It's a strange thing, because that day, at the mall, you didn't tell Carter the truth, but yet, here you are, thinking about wanting a woman, wishing for human contact, a contact from someone who'll not be the woman you promised yourself to, can't be, but yet… yes, you feel guilty, but less than you did when you tried to date Kristina. The ring on your left hand weights a little less, and this is probably one of the scariest thing you've ever experienced in life.
Maybe you're not so dead after all.