Dear Diary, ch3

Disclaimer: I own no rights to the Mentalist and make no money from fanfiction.

Thank you to Sue Shay and Cumberland River Relic for their kind critiques of an earlier version of this chapter. Check out their recently completed and heartwarming stories, 'White Out' and 'Baby Blue Skies'.

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13th December, 2013

Dear Diary,

I thought it was time to pick you up again.

The last week has been quiet. It felt like the Sacramento morgue after hours. But I've kept myself busy. I cleaned the kitchen and the bathroom. And then I cleaned them again. I pulled everything out of the closet, thinking I might sort it all by colour. But then I didn't. Just stuffed everything back in again.

Pointless really.

Though the time goes by. Too quickly in some ways. I catch sight of the date and wonder where yesterday went. Still, doesn't look like I'm going to run out of my leisure hours anytime soon. I'm so damned tired and I don't know why.

I go for a run. I shop. I watch TV. And then I shop again. My cupboards have never been so well stocked – except for when Jane came round to cook, laden with half the supermarket – but now I have foodstuffs in and I can't think what to do with any of them.

Jane…. Was there nothing that man couldn't do? His lasagne was to die for. Not to mention the desserts. Like the homemade tiramisu that he lavished on me last time. One advantage of his mentalist skills. He never had to second guess what it was that I really wanted.

I hope beyond hope that he's OK. That he found peace. And he'll find a reason to live again, now McAllister's dead.

Jane could always ground himself in the small things – the taste of ripe strawberries, the morning sun's first rays, or the smell of the ocean. It's one of the things that I love about him and the reason that I think he'll be able to carry on. He made me really look at the world sometimes, in a way that I never did, and appreciate the beauty and wonder of life. And I know he'll have that still. It's part of the essence of Jane, along with the ability to infuriate any authority figure in a 20 mile radius. Though he needs to remember that he no longer has armed backup at his shoulder now.

I wonder where he is. I bet he made for the coast. I can imagine him standing on some distant shoreline in his shirtsleeves and vest, the afternoon breeze slicking his curls back as he watches the waves surge. Does he even still wear a vest? He must. Jane without a vest is unthinkable.

Where would he have gone? I don't know. Could be a tropical paradise island, or he could have headed off to the wilds of Canada to watch grizzly bears in their natural habitat. Or rented a remote cottage on the cliffs of Maine. Or even headed out on a tour of Europe and Australia.

When you can bend the whole world to your whims and will, as Jane could expertly, it doesn't seem to matter where you are. Penthouse or prison. He proved that more than once. I'll never forget going to see him in the County Jail after he shot Timothy Carter. He sat there in the visitors' room, almost unfazed by the thought of a life sentence in prison or a lethal injection. He seemed more concerned about me discharging myself from the hospital. In fact, scrub that. What he really cared about was the prospect of a blueberry muffin.

Ugh, Jane. I'm doing it again. Babbling on about Jane like he's the sun that my little planet is orbiting… And I used to have self-respect!

I wish I could do something about the ache in my soul. He was more than a friend or a partner to me. In our own idiosyncratic way, we were bonded. And I feel like I've been disembowelled without him beside me. And I never can see him again.

No wonder that bottle of tequila is calling my name.

Just one drink. Just one.

There's still half a bottle in the fridge, though it looks like both my shot glasses need washing again.

One day later

Whoever said that tequila didn't give you a hangover was joking. I pray that the absence of liquid in the bottle means that I spilled it all last night rather than drank it. That would have been acceptable...

But sadly I know better. I blame it on the radio. I was driving back from Walmart listening to KZHC and of all the things to play, they had to dig out "More than words". You know, my favourite song from that stupid high school reunion, where Jane asked me to dance? When he pulled me into his arms and held me close - up against him, where I could rest my head on his shoulder and absorb the subtle masculinity of his cologne. I remember the way his arms wrapped around me and the heat that radiated from his body. And I could feel his soft humming as it reverberated in his chest. I felt like I could stop fighting the undertow and just float free in an ocean of Jane, letting him support me and soothe me. Safe.

I'd never felt like that. There was attraction and there was sex. Things I know well. But I'd never known them to be tempered with this all-accepting calm.

Even if he didn't mean anything by it, that was the day I realised something. I wasn't just attracted to my consultant. I was in love. Not as I let myself believe it at the time, but subconsciously I can see now that I knew. It would just take a lot longer for my rational mind to succumb to the truth.

The ball was in play in the ultimate roulette game. Because loving Jane wasn't just loving him as a woman can love a man. It was also about embracing his past and his obsession with Red John. Always coming second to a dead woman and a dead child. And that was the least of it. Jane and McAllister had become a package deal. Locked onto each other in a death grip, like a pair of heat-seeking missiles. It was never just about vengeance or escape. It long ago became about proving who was the smarter person in the room. And that kind of challenge fuelled both of them, more deadly and more addictive than a pure batch of crack cocaine. Bosco and his team were swept away as collateral damage, at least by McAllister. Jane did have some limits.

And speaking of limits. To his credit, Jane didn't try to develop my feelings for him further. Apart from the infamous 'Love you' before he pretend shot me, and then let me be blindsided by his new 'lover', and that night he left me on the beach by the road to Malibu, he never suggested that he may return my feelings. We remained friends. Companions. Partners. And he needed that as much as I did, I think.

Some days I miss him so much that I want to scream. To grab an amplifier and turn my pain into a wall of sound that's strong enough to knock whole buildings down.

Aaarrrgggghhhhhh!

But I must stop being maudlin. Self-pity is not going to help me or Jane. He would expect better of me.

I will phone Tommy tonight and take him up on the offer to stay with him and Annabeth for a few days. It's high time that I went to see them. They've been living in Pheonix for two years now and I haven't visited once. I was too busy with work to get to their housewarming, or spend Thanksgiving with them. Much good that did me in the end.

I wonder if Annie will still want to be a cop when she hears about everything that went down.

I find myself smiling as I think about it. The smile of the damaged and disillusioned. She probably knows anyway. It must have been all over the news whilst Abbott had the team and me in detention. There's still enough of it now. I can't stomach watching current affairs programmes anymore. Every day more and more corruption is unearthed. It's never ending.

Rationally, I know that I have every reason to feel proud of what I, and the team, achieved. We stopped a prolific serial killer and bust open the extensive dry-rot in the heart of Californian law enforcement. But every morning when I wake up with nowhere to be, I can't help but feel like an abject failure.

Not the way to get through this I know. I've been through rough patches before... and all that.

I'll head over to Pheonix on Wednesday. Spend tomorrow deciding what to pack.

You know, I wonder if Abbott's tame lapdogs will follow me to my brother's. They could put a tail on him too. The FBI evidently has money and resources to burn.

And God forbid that they use them to case out real criminals.

To quote a Jane-ism…. "Meh!"