AN: It's long past time to resolve some of the tension in this story, so I thought I'd update a little early. Hope you guys enjoy this chapter.
Jane and Carter spend the next two days negotiating.
At least, this is what Carter calls it. Jane thinks a more accurate description is listening to his prison sentence being read aloud, since all he's really doing is agreeing to sign his life away. There is no active negotiation on his part.
He learns how he will keep in contact with Carter, Erica, and their men. He learns just how much of Lisbon's investigations must be reported back to Carter in order to keep Lisbon in the dark of a potential mole. And most importantly, he learns that agreeing to this will kill him in the end.
Not literally, of course. But merely listening to his future job description twists his stomach into knots, makes him feel unclean and inhuman. He doesn't think his soul can take this for long.
But Lisbon will be safe, and that is all that matters.
At dusk on the third full day of his captivity, Erica meets him in his bedroom with a syringe needle in her hand.
"It's time to return you to your Teresa," she says. "Red John wishes to drug you so that she will not question your involvement in the kidnapping."
Jane rolls up his shirtsleeve.
Lisbon has had a headache for the last two days, thirteen hours, and thirty-three minutes.
In other words, she has literally been worried sick ever since she arrived at work on Wednesday morning and received word that Jane had gone missing. Her team has been pouring over nonexistent leads ever since then, focusing on the security camera footage from Jane's motel.
The quality of which, of course, ensured that it proved utterly useless besides confirming the fact that he had been taken.
At gunpoint.
Lisbon has lost track of the number of pills of Tylenol she's dry swallowed to keep the pain at bay. They never seem to fully work. Or perhaps the Tylenol can't cure what's really ailing her.
Lisbon looks down at her desk, and the files in front of her come in and out of focus. She takes a shaky breath, refusing to admit to herself that her team has run out of leads to follow.
She had thought she'd be thrilled to have her job back, but now she realizes she'd take the demotion any day if it meant Jane was back in her arms.
Someone raps on her door, and she jumps, not expecting to hear from anyone at this time of night. But she gets to her feet when she gets a look at Cho, who's standing just inside her door.
"No," she says, shaking her head, ready to fight in the sincerity of her denial. He cannot be bearing bad news. He can't be. She looks through the glass to see Rigsby and Van Pelt on the other side, their expressions, for once, unreadable. Lisbon glances back at Cho. "I don't want to hear it. I don't think I can hear it."
Cho shakes his head. "You're going to want to hear this," he says.
She can't wait for the elevator.
Instead, she flies down the stairs, skipping some steps and completely missing others, until she reaches the lobby of the CBI on the ground floor. Despite the fact that it's half-past ten, there's a small group of people crowded around just outside the building, and Lisbon rushes across the lobby toward the glass doors. She elbows her way past a couple straggler agents and security guards to find that they are all huddled around a very familiar man dressed in a very wrinkled three-piece suit.
"Oh my god," says Lisbon, now pushing agents out of her way. "Jane!"
He's lying on the sidewalk, clearly only somewhat conscious, and the idiots around him are doing nothing to help. Lisbon rolls her eyes. "Did someone at least think to phone an ambulance?" she nearly yells as she drops to her knees to check Jane's vitals.
She vaguely registers Cho's voice behind her. "It's on its way, Boss," he says.
Lisbon breathes deeply for the first time in what feels like days when she gets confirmation that Jane is doing the same. But he's still unresponsive to any of her questions, and her anxiety begins to creep back in. "What did he do to you?" she wonders aloud, her fingers skimming over his neck and then his chest.
She remembers some basic first responder training from a mandatory course she'd taken through the CBI. "I'm sorry," she whispers to Jane, and she rips open his shirt, locates his sternum, and rubs her knuckles roughly against it.
Jane's eyes flash open at the same time he gasps.
Lisbon nearly smiles in relief, and Jane's hand flies to his chest, rubbing the soreness there. "My god," he rasps. "That hurt."
Lisbon does smile at this. "That's sort of the point," she says, shifting to grab his shoulders and move his upper torso to her lap so that his back and head are no longer pressed against the concrete.
Jane leans back against her and closes his eyes. "Where the hell am I?" he asks, moving a hand to his face.
"You don't know?" Lisbon asks, concerned. She glances at Cho, Rigsby, and Van Pelt, all of whom are watching them with expressions of equal parts relief and horror. "Who found him?" she asks.
Cho nods to the head security guard, who steps forward.
"I do rounds every five minutes," he says. "I found him at the front of the building when I went around at 10:25."
"What did you see?"
The guard shakes his head. "Nothing, ma'am. He wasn't there one minute, and the next, he was."
"Check the security footage," Lisbon barks at him. She returns her attention to Jane. "You're at the CBI," she tells him in what she hopes is a soothing voice. "There's an ambulance coming for you in a couple minutes."
Janes groans. "Lisbon, no. No hospitals."
"I don't really care about your irrational fear of doctors right now, Jane. We're going to get you checked out."
Something in her voice must tell him that arguing is futile, so he changes tracks.
"Come with me?" he asks weakly.
"Of course," she says. "You've been missing for three days—I'm not letting you out of my sight again for a very long time." She pulls him against her more tightly, and the movement causes a piece of paper to fall out of the pocket in his vest. The paper floats to the ground, swaying back and forth like a falling feather.
Lisbon leans over to read the five words scrawled across it.
Special delivery for Teresa Lisbon.
Her eyes narrow. It's not Jane's handwriting.
It looks like whoever took him captive is feeling playful.
Lisbon looks up to ask Van Pelt to take the note, but the younger agent is already moving, grabbing latex gloves and a plastic bag from her pocket. She snaps on a glove and grabs the paper, placing it in the bag carefully, and turns to Lisbon.
"I'll get this logged and turned into the lab," she says.
"A private lab," Lisbon orders her in a low voice so that the agents around them will not hear. "Send it outside the CBI."
Van Pelt raises an eyebrow at this, but Lisbon knows she can't be too paranoid.
"And tell Cho and Rigsby that the same should be done with any future evidence."
Van Pelt moves her head a fraction of an inch to confirm she understands.
Lisbon turns back to Jane and brushes his unruly curls away from his forehead. He is paler than usual, his only coloring a sickly hint of green.
And then finally, finally, Lisbon begins to hear sirens in the distance.
Despite his best attempts to charm Lisbon into letting him leave AMA, Jane is admitted to the hospital overnight for observation.
He wonders if he'd have been more successful in making his arguments if he still weren't feeling stupidly slow from whatever drug Erica had given him.
So two hours later, Jane is clad in a hospital gown, and his nurse exits his room, shutting off the lights behind her.
Jane turns his head to the side.
Lisbon is there, sitting in the darkness, her chair pulled up to the side of his bed.
"Hey," she says, reaching over to touch her fingers to his forearm.
"Hi," he says, trying to manage a smile for her.
"Thank you. I know how much you hate hospitals."
"'Hate' is probably not a strong enough word," points out Jane.
Lisbon ducks her head to hide a smile. "'Loathe?'" she asks.
Jane tilts his head slightly, considering. "Closer."
Lisbon meets his eye and doesn't look away. "I spoke with your nurse," she says. "The tranquilizers you were given were pretty heavy stuff." She hesitates before continuing. "Were you struggling? Is that why he felt the need to subdue you?" She pauses again. "It was him, wasn't it?"
Jane decides on telling her a half-truth. "Yes, it was Red John," he says. "And yes, I struggled. How could I not?"
No need to tell her the struggle had been emotional rather than physical.
"He took you."
"Yes."
"Why?"
His answer isn't even a lie, so he feels no guilt in telling her. "He's bored. He wants to raise the stakes, to change the rules."
"And kidnapping you was necessary to tell us that?"
"It wasn't necessary," Jane agrees. "Which is why it's even more terrifying."
"He left me a note," Lisbon whispers. "It fell out of your pocket when I found you." She closes her eyes for a few seconds, as though exhausted, before opening them again and continuing. "I ordered Van Pelt to send it outside the CBI for analysis. We did the same for your tox screen. I'm tired of not getting anything back on our forensic reports."
Jane swallows as he stores this information away. "What did the note say?"
"'Special delivery for Teresa Lisbon.'"
The quiet is too loud for Jane. "Well, at least he got the 'special' part right."
He can see the war within her as she fights to refrain from laughing at this remark. Eventually, however, she looks at him with such great intensity that he wishes he hadn't made the joke at all.
"He treated you like a package," Lisbon whispers. "He took you and then dumped you in front of the CBI like you weren't a person."
"Red John doesn't see people as living, breathing entities," Jane responds. "Or, at least, that's what I tell myself when I inevitably wonder how he can kill the way he does."
Lisbon sighs. "I still don't understand the note."
"You wouldn't. That's the point—I'm sure he wanted me to explain it to you."
Her brow furrows.
"He's been watching us, Lisbon. He knows we had a major argument last week. In fact, I'm sure he knows why. But his plan—hurting you to hurt me—won't work if you've kicked me out of your life, will it? So the kidnapping and the note…they were designed to do exactly what he said: to deliver me to you, to deliver me back into your life."
And as before, these words have a ring of truth to them as well; surely Carter would have recognized that taking Jane was likely to put him back into Lisbon's good graces.
"So why would he want to ensure you told me that?"
"Because he knew I'd make another connection from the note."
"Which is?"
Jane's voice drops in volume unintentionally. "Whoever a package is delivered to has ownership of said package."
"What?"
"I'm yours, Lisbon. Even Red John recognizes that."
She doesn't respond, and in the darkness, it's difficult to read her expression. He listens to her breathing for a while, and eventually he realizes that he's synced his breaths with hers.
"Go home, Lisbon," he says after a few minutes. "Get some rest. You look like you haven't slept since I've been gone."
She shakes her head. "I haven't seen you in days," says Lisbon, and Jane winces, remembering once again that the days they'd gone without seeing each other before his apparent kidnaping had been his fault. "I need to make up for lost time."
"You need to make up for lost sleep," Jane argues.
Lisbon rolls her eyes. "Fine," she says, leaning back in her chair. "I'll sleep here and keep an eye on you at the same time. Happy?"
"Decidedly not. Your back will protest in the morning if you sleep on that chair."
But she reclines in the lounge chair anyway, reaching for the lever that pops the footrest forward. "Hush, Jane," she says. "I'm trying to sleep."
This time, he rolls his eyes, but he tosses one of his hospital blankets at her. He watches with a smile as she spreads it over her legs.
"Goodnight, Jane," she says, closing her eyes.
He takes one last look at her before closing his as well.
"Sleep well, Teresa."
Jane feels a bit hungover from the aftereffects of the tranquilizers the next morning, but when his doctor makes rounds just after daybreak, he is deemed fit to be released from the hospital. So after a shower and a change of clothes, brought to him yesterday by a thoughtful Rigsby, Jane books it out of his room, Lisbon following amusedly in his wake.
She crooks at finger at him when they reach the parking lot. "Over here," she says, turning left, and he immediately spots her standard CBI-issue SUV.
She looks at him pointedly over the windshield as he waits for her to open the door. "Please don't tell me I'm taking you back to that god-awful hotel room of yours."
"You are," Jane confirms, "but only so I can check out of it."
Lisbon pauses, her key lifted halfway to the door. "Permanently?" she asks, in a tone that suggests she doesn't believe it.
Jane nods. He avoids her eyes, examining the windshield as though it has suddenly become fascinating. "You were right," he says. "It's time for me to put down roots here. I need to make a home."
"You do?"
"I do. I'm…I'm not ready to buy a house or anything, but leasing an apartment sounds like a good place to start. Baby steps," he adds, rocking forward and backward on his feet, his hand still on the car door.
He watches as Lisbon shakes herself and realizes she still hasn't unlocked the car. She opens her door quickly, and then Jane does the same. They climb into their seats in sync.
Before she starts the engine, Jane looks over at her. "I'd like to take you up on your offer," he says. "Are you still willing to help me look at places? I confess I'd rather like another pair of eyes."
Lisbon glances at him out of the corner of her eye. Jane grins slightly at the wide-eyed expression on her face.
"So," he continues, after the stunned silence continues between them awkwardly. "What do you say?"
He swears he sees the corner of her mouth move upward. Then, a second later, she grins. "Of…of course," she answers. "Yes, of course I'll help you. Did you want to look today?"
Jane shrugs. "You said I was gone for three days, right? So that makes today Saturday? Are you free?"
She still looks a little gobsmacked. "I got my job back after you disappeared," Lisbon informs him. He knows this, of course, but she is not to know that he knows. "I suppose I should be working the Red John case today, but…"
She trails off before continuing.
"You know what?" Lisbon says, starting the engine. "Screw him. You're here, I'm here—we're both safe—and real life needs to come before that damned serial killer for once."
Jane can't help smiling at her like she is everything light and pure in this world.
Because to him, she is.