AN: Thanks again for your continued interest in this story! I read all your comments even if I can't answer them all individually, and they never fail to inspire me.
Happy Mother's Day to those who are celebrating today!
Jane slips in and out of sleep for the rest of the night—whenever he wakes, he catches a glance of his phone, and knowing that Lisbon is still on the other end of the line somehow calms him enough to be pulled back under. So at a quarter 'til seven, he finds himself blinking his eyes open. He throws back the covers and sits up, reaching for his cell.
His finger hovers over the red button.
"Morning, Lisbon," he whispers, then he ends the call.
Forty-five minutes later, he gets a call from Cho just as he's leaving his motel room to head to the CBI—there's a body waiting for the team across town. Scowling slightly, Jane hangs up and opens the door of the Citroen.
Before starting the ignition, he sends a text to Lisbon. Though she's still on recovery leave, she'll want to be kept in the loop.
We caught a case. Can I stop by tonight with food and fill you in?
Jane backs out of his parking spot.
His phone buzzes about halfway through the drive to the scene, and Jane finally reaches for it when he arrives at the address Cho sent him. After pulling into a parking spot in the lot, Jane shuts off the engine and does a double take, staring out the windshield, his hand still extended for the phone.
He's just pulled into a parking lot of one of Sacramento's city parks. There's a shimmering pond in the distance, reflecting the morning sunshine, and rows of weeping willows line the trails.
Jane's eyes narrow.
He knows this park.
It's Lisbon's favorite place to go running when they don't have to work on the weekends. When he doesn't know where she is and needs to track her down, he usually heads here first. Shaking himself mentally, he grabs his phone to read Lisbon's response.
I'll take care of dinner. Just bring yourself.
Jane cannot help but smile softly at Lisbon's reply. She's never cooked for him before—will she start tonight? He thinks it's more likely that she'll order delivery. Not that he cares. Just having an excuse to visit is more than enough for him.
He tucks his phone in his suit jacket as he steps out of the Citroen, and he immediately catches the glimmer of Grace's red hair from across the parking lot. He hurries to catch up with her.
"Hey," he says as he approaches, and she turns around.
"Hi, Jane," she says, her voice slightly monotone. She begins walking down the trail toward where he can make out several crime scene techs swarming around, and he thinks he sees Rigsby's tall profile in the distance. Jane grabs her arm.
"Grace," he says in a low voice. "What are you doing here?" She's just shot and killed her fiancé, after all.
She gives him a steely look for a few seconds, then her mask breaks. "I need to work," she whispers, her voice trembling slightly.
He nods, looking at her for a few seconds. "I understand," he says finally.
She stares at him, obviously debating whether or not she should continue. Eventually she begins to speak again. "Will it get better?" she asks quietly. Jane waits patiently, and Grace elaborates. "I'm so tired of being angry and sad and a million other things I don't have words to describe."
No one's watching them, so Jane steps forward and wraps Grace in a bear hug. He'll be the first to admit that he cannot understand exactly what she's going through, will probably never understand—but he lives every day in the twin shadows of grief and anger, and these things he does understand.
"It'll take a while," he says. "But I swear it will get better." He steps back quickly, and she nods. He gestures for her to lead the way, and together they walk down the path underneath the weeping willows.
Rigsby looks up as they approach. "Hey," he says. "Victim's name is Antonia Sutton; she was a student at Sac State." As Grace pulls on a pair of gloves, Rigsby hands her the victim's student ID card. Jane follows him around the techs and toward the victim, who's lying on her back in the center of the trail, her eyes wide open and her long, light brown hair mixed with pebbles from the path. She's wearing blue jeans and a bright yellow top, but the yellow is marred in several places with blood from the numerous stab wounds in her abdomen.
Jane glances at Grace, but she appears to be holding herself together. Jane examines the victim's shoes as he waits for Cho to finish talking with the head tech.
Eventually, Cho makes his way over to Grace, Jane, and Rigsby. "Anything useful, Jane?" he asks.
Jane is now hunched over the victim's neck. He takes a deep breath.
Nothing.
Jane begins to answer him, but the words die in his mouth the second he gets a closer look at the victim's eyes.
They're bright green.
And what's more, they're exactly the same shade as Lisbon's.
Jane stands up quickly and turns away, forcing himself to dispel the sudden wave of nausea he's feeling. He reaches out to the nearest tree trunk, feeling like he needs something to ground himself, to keep him steady.
He feels Grace's cool fingers on his wrist, and he turns to look at her. "What is it?" she asks.
Jane shakes his head. "N…nothing," he says. "It's nothing. It's just…her eyes are the same color as Lisbon's. After the events of the past week…well, the last thing I needed was to see Lisbon's eyes all vacant like that."
Grace's brow furrows, and she squeezes his hand before letting her arm drop.
Jane turns around. "She was a chemistry major," he says, trying to pull himself together.
Rigsby arches a brow at him.
Jane sighs. "There are acid burns on the sleeves of her shirt near the wrists," says Jane, pointing to the victim's yellow top. "Most likely, she was headed to a lab session—hence why she'd be wearing the shirt again. It's already ruined, so why take the chance at burning holes through another?"
"Anything else?" asks Cho.
"Yeah," says Jane. "Something feels off about this."
"What do you mean?" says Grace.
"You think this is Red John?" asks Rigsby.
Just as Jane opens his mouth to respond, the head tech walks up to Cho, holding out what appears to be a white business card in his gloved hands. "Agent Cho," he says, handing the card over. "One of my men just found this in the victim's backpack."
Cho glances at the card for a second then immediately looks over at Jane. Jane walks around the body to peer over Cho's shoulder at the business card.
It is blank save for a large, scarlet smiley face.
"So he's advertising now?" asks Rigsby in disgust. Grace looks down at the card in silence, her gaze steely.
"Damn it," says Jane, turning away to look through the willows. A bird chirps somewhere above him and flitters away, its shadow cutting across the crime scene. Jane takes a deep breath, turns back to the scene, and forces himself to look at Antonia's eyes again.
But it is Lisbon, not Antonia, who looks back at him.
He knocks on her door just after eight that night.
She takes longer than usual to respond, and by the time she finally opens the door, he's about ready to gather her into his arms.
But he restrains.
Instead, he looks into her eyes—her bright green, very much alive eyes—and begins to feel all over again like he did at the hospital.
That is, slightly intoxicated.
"Hey," she says, stepping aside to let him enter, and he notices that she moves hesitantly, as though she's in a great deal of pain.
"You feeling alright?" he asks.
She nods, shutting and locking the door behind him. "I had my first physical therapy session today," she says by way of explanation. "It wasn't terribly pleasant." She grimaces.
He notices an enticing smell coming from her kitchen. "Lisbon," he says, smiling. "Did you cook for me?"
She chuckles. "Not really. I wasn't feeling up to much, so I put some chicken, peppers, and onions in a crock pot earlier. We're having fajitas."
"It smells fantastic," he says, grabbing her good hand and pulling her after him into the kitchen.
After dinner, they sit down on her couch, and Lisbon peels the sling away from her arm, scratching slightly at her irritated skin.
He wants to ask her if she got any sleep after she called him last night, but he's afraid she'll be embarrassed by the reminder of what she probably considers a moment of weakness, so he avoids the subject.
Instead, he tells her about Red John's latest victim. As he'd thought, Antonia Sutton had been a chemistry major at Sac State. He and Rigsby had talked with her professors and classmates that day, but none of them had been of much help.
"So, really," Jane says finally, "you didn't miss much."
Lisbon frowns. "I should have been there. I don't like the thought of you working a Red John case alone."
He gives her a look. "I'm not alone. I have the team."
"You know what I mean," she says. She holds his gaze for a while. "I'm sorry," she whispers eventually. "Every time we get one of his cases, it must feel like opening that door all over again."
A sudden image of a dark hallway and a door with a note taped crudely upon it flash through Jane's mind.
He doesn't respond, instead shifting his gaze away from her to focus on her knee.
She moves closer to him, scrutinizing him. "There's something you're not telling me," she says.
He looks up at her.
Oh, so very many things, he thinks. If only you knew.
But he's tired of keeping secrets from her. And if he can't tell her his biggest secret, at least he can let her in on what's troubling him about the crime scene.
He looks up at her and moves his arm to rest against the back of the couch. "The victim had your eyes," he says, his voice steely.
Her bottom lip drops a fraction of an inch in surprise. "She…she what?"
"Her eyes were the exact same color as yours," clarifies Jane. "I nearly had a panic attack when I looked into them because it felt like you were looking back at me."
The color drains from Lisbon's face. "Surely it doesn't mean anything," she says, laying her hand on his upper arm. "It's just a coincidence—after all, there are lots of people with green eyes. Like you, for instance."
"But she didn't have my green eyes; she had yours." Jane swallows. "And I don't believe in coincidences, especially where Red John is concerned. She was also found at the park where you like to run." He pauses for a beat. "You still think all this is a coincidence?"
Lisbon squeezes his arm. "I have to think that," she says. "Besides, after last night you were probably bound to find something about that woman to remind you of me," she points out softly. "Her eyes and the location at which she was found—those just happened to be the things you noticed. If I'd been there and the victim had been male, I'm sure it would have been the same for me thinking about you."
But her tone lacks conviction, and Jane can tell she's not convinced.
She looks down at her hand on his arm, and he follows her gaze.
What would it be like, he wonders suddenly, to be able to sit with her like this every night?
The thought is warm and comforting, a very welcome change from thinking about blood and death and Red John.
Suddenly, the warmth disappears, and an image of those lifeless, bright green eyes appears in his mind again.
Without thinking about it, Jane reaches over to Lisbon, placing his fingers underneath her chin and tilting her face up slightly.
"Jane?" she asks, concerned.
He knows his fingers are shaking—and he knows she can feel how they quiver against her skin.
"Could you just…" he begins, his voice slightly raspy. "Could you just look at me?" He moves his hands to the sides of her face, and his thumbs brush over the edges of her eyelids, coming to rest at the outside corners of her eyes. "I can't get that image out of my head."
She leans into his touch, tilting her head to the side slightly, and he's almost frightened by the intensity of her gaze.
"Burn this into your memory palace," she says, her words barely audible.
He complies.