AN: Thanks again for your reviews! They keep me motivated, and I love reading what you guys think so far. And now, onto the next chapter...
She offers him her guest room.
He refuses, preferring the couch. He doesn't tell her that this is because the couch smells like her.
He grabs his overnight bag from the car—stashed there in case they are called away at the last minute on an out of town case—and looks around at the darkened neighborhood. Somehow, every lurking shadow seems sinister, and he walks a little faster back to her door.
He's lying on the couch, eyes closed and hands folded together on his stomach, a few minutes later when she descends the stairs. He smiles when she lifts his head up to slide a pillow underneath, and a few seconds later, he feels the warmth of a soft blanket cover his legs and torso.
He opens his eyes and smiles all over again at the sight of her in a Chicago Bears shirt that's about four sizes too large.
"Thank you, Lisbon," he says.
She smiles at him. "You would really be more comfortable upstairs, you know."
"I'm fine right here," he says, reaching out to grab her hand. He pulls her toward him, and he's surprised when she lets him. She sits down on the couch next to his elbow.
He watches as she looks at him, her eyes revealing everything and nothing at all.
"I've never seen you like this before, Jane," she says. "I can't remember ever seeing you scared."
Too late, he realizes his hand in hers has tensed, and she surely has felt it.
He takes his time in answering. "When you first met me—and for a long time after that—I had nothing to lose," he says quietly. "I can't say the same is true anymore."
Her brow crinkles. She doesn't ask what he is afraid of losing.
Instead, she reaches out to run a hand through his curls, and he closes his eyes at her touch. "Goodnight Jane," she breathes, and he watches her walk up the stairs, every cell in his body wishing he could join her.
He wakes in the middle of the night, grateful that he cannot remember any of his dreams.
After a few minutes of staring at the ceiling, Jane flings back the blanket Lisbon had tossed over him earlier and turns on the lamp beside the couch. It bathes the room more in shadow than in light, but it illuminates enough for Jane to navigate.
He walks over to the shelves lining the wall and begins scanning the spines of her books.
He hadn't been an insomniac before his wife died. But now, thousands of sleepless nights later, he wonders if the reason for his erratic sleeping habits is if he hadn't ever been able to get used to sleeping alone—if this is the reason why he can never sleep.
He dismisses the thought and kneels down to examine the bottom shelf.
Like any insomniac, he knows the worst thing he can do is to lie in bed and worry about getting to sleep. He's better off trying to occupy his mind.
His fingers brush over the spines. He's somewhat surprised to find no crime novels—perhaps she sees enough death at work—and very few classics. Rather, most of the books on these shelves contain poetry, as he discovers when he pulls one out and opens it.
Jane smiles.
He wouldn't have pegged Lisbon for a closet poetry enthusiast.
Tucking the book under his arm slightly, he makes to turn away from the shelf before something catches his eye. One of the middle shelves has a cherry-colored wooden box crammed between books on either side. Curiosity gets the best of him, and he reaches over to open the lid.
He drops the book in surprise and swears under his breath when it makes a loud thump as it connects with the ground. He looks over at the staircase, breathing silently, but there is no movement from upstairs.
Ignoring the fallen book for the moment, Jane reaches inside the box and picks up a photograph.
Jane remembers the day this picture was taken. They were at a crime scene near the state line, and Grace had been photographing the evidence. He hadn't realized Grace had also photographed himself and Lisbon.
He smiles slightly as he takes in the image. Lisbon is looking at something off camera, and he is looking at Lisbon.
The intensity of his gaze in the picture makes Jane wonder—how had he only just now figured out his feelings for her? It must have been obvious for years to anyone who'd been paying the slightest bit of attention.
Jane wonders how Lisbon had gotten the photograph in her possession. He can't say he blames her for keeping it.
He stares at the picture for a long moment before realizing that the box is not yet empty.
Lying on the velvet lining of the box is a set of hand-drawn tarot cards.
His breath catches.
He'd drawn these cards years ago during his very first case with Lisbon. He had no idea she'd kept them.
He flips through them, wondering if there's any significance to the fact that The Lovers was the card on top of the deck. Then he turns the cards over so that he cannot see the sketches, and he begins to shuffle them. He picks a card at random and nearly drops it when he flips it over.
The Hangman.
That card had been picked by the killer on Jane's first case. And Jane can't help wondering, however ridiculous it sounds, what it means that he has drawn this card now.
An image of Lisbon's corpse appears, unbidden, in Jane's mind.
And suddenly he knows—he will ultimately be responsible for Lisbon's death. His attention has marked her.
He will kill her because he cares for her.
He has the sudden desire to rip the card into pieces, but instead he quickly puts it away along with the other cards and the photograph. He stands there for a while, his hand on the closed box, breathing deeply as he tries to get his pulse back to normal.
It doesn't mean anything. You were never a psychic. There are no such things as psychics. You make your own future—you don't follow a script given to you by a conman.
But no matter what variation of this he tells himself, the image of the hangman he'd drawn all those years ago seems to etch itself into his brain, and he spends the rest of the night counting down the minutes until sunrise.
Lisbon comes back to work full time the following Monday, sans sling, and he can't help the goofy smile he sends her way as she walks into the bullpen. He stands up from his couch to greet her, and the rest of the team comes over to welcome her back. In a few minutes, however, they've disbanded, and Jane stands with Lisbon alone.
She leans into him slightly. "You wouldn't happen to have any idea why Bertram wants to see me, would you?" she asks in a hushed tone.
Jane shakes his head slightly. "No," he says. "I haven't heard anything. But surely it can only be good news, right? I mean, I've been trying to keep out of trouble."
Lisbon grins at him and elbows him in the ribs softly. Though normally he wouldn't be so thrilled with this, he notices she'd used her injured arm to touch him, and he smiles. She must be feeling better if her arm has healed enough to allow her to return to abusing him.
"I'll see you in a bit," she says, walking toward the elevators, and Jane grabs some files from their open cases to peruse as he waits for her.
Lisbon returns far too quickly for the meeting to have gone well.
Jane reads the set of her shoulders as she walks from the elevators and into her office, and he immediately sets down the file he's holding, not noticing that some of the pages have floated to the floor in his haste to move to her. Though Cho and Rigsby are out running down (what Jane suspects to be dead-end) leads, Grace looks up at his abrupt movement, startled.
Jane knocks and waits for her to look at him through the glass and invite him in before he enters.
"What happened?" he asks.
She's standing beside her desk, with every appearance of Agent Lisbon—sensible shoes, a dark blazer, her hair in a bun, her cross necklace catching the light. But she's not acting like Agent Lisbon.
She's acting like Teresa.
Jane watches as she searches for words, looking very lost. Finally she looks at him as though he is the only person who can find her.
"I've just been demoted," she says, sounding shell-shocked.
Jane moves away from the door to stand in front of her. "What?" he asks. Surely he cannot have heard that right.
She shakes her head in disbelief, evidently having just as difficult a time as him in grasping this. "The powers that be reviewed the Hightower situation while I was on leave," Lisbon says. "They determined that it was a severe lapse in judgement for me to have let O'Laughlin anywhere near Hightower and her children. They're saying it's my fault I was shot—I should have made sure he was clean."
Jane has to turn away for a second before answering her. He paces over to her couch in agitation then turns back around. "And I'm assuming they're not blaming the FBI for failing to notice that Red John's mole was one of theirs the whole time? O'Laughlin was supposed to be clean—Grace told us he was. Everything was done according to protocol, right? And no rules were broken!"
Lisbon looks up at the ceiling, and Jane realizes she is trying to stop herself from crying. "But they're right," she whispers, her voice so soft Jane has to walk toward her to hear it. "They're right—I shouldn't have let Grace bring him there. He was a suspect, and he'd only been cleared a few hours before. If I'd told her not to bring him, maybe he'd still be alive and we'd be closer to catching Red John."
She finally looks over at Jane, and his heart crumbles into oblivion as he watches a single tear fall down her cheek. "I'm sorry, Jane. I messed up. I don't know what I was thinking."
"No," says Jane emphatically. "Lisbon, stop that. You didn't make a mistake, alright? If anything it was me. I came up with that plan, and clearly it wasn't foolproof. It's my fault. Lisbon, please, don't take the blame on this."
Lisbon brushes the tear away. "I already have," she says in the same, small tone. "They've reassigned me to entrance security for the time being. Cho's taking over this office, and I think you'll be getting a rookie to fill out the team."
"What?" says Jane. "No, Lisbon, come on—this is crazy! All the stuff I've pulled before was far worse than this, and they never took action against you! You can't just let them do this." He slams his palm down on her desk. "Damn it," he says. "God, I'm so sorry, Lisbon. This is my fault—I'm going to fix this, Lisbon—I swear to you I'll fix it."
She steps closer to him. "Please don't," she says weakly. "The last thing the team needs right now is another of your plans, Jane, alright? I don't want to give Bertram any reason to go after you, Cho, Rigsby, or Van Pelt."
She turns away from him, bending down to open her bottom desk drawers and begin unloading her possessions. Jane follows her and reaches over to pull her upright.
"Lisbon," he says, pleading.
She touches his forearm lightly, trying to smile at him. "I'm not mad at you, Jane," she whispers. "It was a good plan. Really, it was. I messed up, and I need to deal with the consequences of that. I'll work my way back up again—this won't be permanent."
"Lisbon," he says again, his voice cracking.
"I know, Jane. I know."
But she doesn't, not really, and Jane can't find the words to tell her what he means. So, instead, he watches her pack up her possessions from her office in silence, and it feels like she takes a part of him with her when she slips out the door.