Work Text:
There’s only one thing on Jane's mind, these days.
It’s a crucial distinction. These days, and those days. Who he was, and who he is now. Jane in those days slept in a real bed, with his family, in the middle of his home and his future and his life, and-
Jane opens the door to the bedroom, and as always, the first thing he sees is that face on the wall, brown and crusted. It could be mistaken for mud by a visitor. But Jane doesn’t have visitors. He doesn't like company. This room is for him alone, that smiling face reminding him what he still has to live for, why he still has to be here.
He strips off his vest, his collared shirt. They need ironing. It feels ridiculous to think about ironing his shirts at a time like this. Eating at a time like this, sleeping or doing laundry. Only one thing matters now. One thing left on the agenda. Red John must go away so Patrick Jane can go away.
To everyone else, the world has continued turning. To the CBI it was just one more case in a lifetime of cases. They want a healed man, a functional one, who smiles and says the right things and makes a positive difference in the world. He can play the role.
He washes his shirts. He irons his vests. He lies down on his bare mattress under that crusted brown smile, and he does not sleep.
-
Lisbon doesn't want him on her team, at first, but she warms up to him when she sees him in action. He closes cases, it's what he does, and the CBI can use someone like him. She respects him only for what he can do.
He sees it in her eyes. It's okay. He's using her too, all of them. He is their tool, and they are his.
-
They have the conversation once every few months like clockwork, he and Lisbon. There's always a suspect, clearly guilty, and she always wants to give them more than they deserve. She trusts the system to do its job- god knows why, with the life she's had- and so he cannot trust her, no matter how good her intentions.
"He deserves to suffer a little!" Jane steps into the doorway of her office. "If the real murderer finds him and offs him, then, hey, it's on him."
"Nobody deserves murder. Jane, we're officers of the law."
"You are. I don't care about the law. I care about justice," he says, and it's the only truth about himself he is willing to reveal. Nothing else matters but this, over and over until she really hears it.
"That's not justice, it's vengeance."
"What's the difference?"
It goes on as usual then, when he mentions that he will gut Red John and kill him slowly, and she retorts about custody and due process, that familiar hard look settling in her eye. Preemptive disappointment at her tool breaking down? Going after Red John, as he has warned a thousand times he will do?
She doesn't like rule breakers, and she certainly doesn't like him. She hates being responsible for other peoples failings, because she tries so hard to be independent, rational and level headed, and is frustrated when others can't do the same.
He used to be the same, in his own way. In another life, they could have been close friends. But in this one they are useful to each other, and that's all he needs.
"At worst, the suspect is a murderer. At best, he killed someone by being too careless and goading the real killer. Either way he deserves to-" Die. Rot. Suffer for all his guilt. "-stew a little."
She gives him a look, for a moment, like shes understanding something brand new, and she opens her mouth to speak, and-
They're interrupted by Cho knocking at the door, asking what to do with the suspect, and it doesn't come up again.
-
He surprises himself by liking the team. They're good people, Rigsby and Cho and Van Pelt and Lisbon, and the lot of them make a charming group. He could imagine being one of them, if he were to stick around after catching Red John, or if he somehow became someone capable of being a real friend. They want to be his friend, but he can't. Not anymore.
There are times that he fools himself about the state of things. He buys them all gifts, does little favors, sometimes accepted and other times rejected. Sometimes the gifts are from him, and other times, when the guilt creeps up and he shouldn't exist at all, the gifts are from no one, appearing from thin air and luck.
They never watch the hands.
-
In the daytime he sleeps in fits and starts, on chairs and slumped over tables, anywhere he happens to be when the exhaustion peaks. It's not a good look, but he can shift attention from his red rimmed eyes and disheveled hair. He can misdirect until they stop asking.
Around 6 PM, halfway into a case file, he drops off into sleep.
He wakes to a hand patting his back. He startles, catching it a moment too late. It's Lisbon.
He probably looks like hell. It's not ideal that the team sees him off his game at the office, but he can't go back to the mattress on the floor, because- he cant do it, not tonight. He can't sleep in a hotel either, because it would be all wrong, a betrayal of everything he's working toward. He honestly shouldn't sleep anywhere; what gives him the right when his wife and child couldn't sleep safely in their own home? What gives him the right to be here at all, when-
The psychiatrist calls this line of thought unhelpful. Spiraling. She's right, of course. There are times he starts thinking and doesn't stop, digging through the files for any clue like a madman as if it will do anything for him, like anything could ever fix him.
He yawns, trying in vain to shake off the thoughts. Lisbon has seen him in a genuinely vulnerable state three times that she knows of, and twenty that he has successfully played off as nothing at all. He keeps count of these things. An unstable tool is quickly discarded.
"New developments?" he asks. She had interviewed a witness today, and a glance to her face and the paper in her hand say there is nothing new to report. Still, only polite to ask.
"Nothing, the witness only confirmed what we already knew."
"Okay," he says quietly. The clock reads 9:20. That's late. Lisbon often stays late, and so does he, but she rarely wakes him. "Do you need me to clear out?"
He shifts to get up, dislodging the stack of papers on the desk. He takes a moment to be grateful he doesn't drool in his sleep. As often as it happens, he doesn't actually enjoy getting chewed out by Lisbon.
"There's a couch in my office," she says. "Not for sleeping," she says hastily, as if he's going to set up camp permanently in her office, "for, y'know. Napping."
Napping, not sleeping. That's too convenient a loophole for it to actually trick his mind into a proper sleep. It's generous of her to give him permission to be alone in a room with private files and notes beyond his level of access. Interesting.
He smiles. "Here I thought you were all about professionalism. You've been napping on the job in your office this whole time?"
She rolls her eyes, but does not argue the point. "Consider it," she says, and it sounds like an order, not a suggestion.
He considers it.
-
When he turns in his ID card during the Renfrew case, he thinks that's the end of his time at the CBI. If Renfrew has the information he says he has, Jane doesn't need the CBIs help to find Red John and kill him. He won't see any of them again.It's fine.It's fine. This team was never part of his mission.
-
That afternoon there is a knock on his door and they show up on his doorstep, freshly suspended and ready to help.
One could say it's because they're all good people, interested in getting justice for a potentially innocent man, and that's true. But it's also for Jane, and he… appreciates that more than he can say.
It occurs to him then that there is a "we" to speak of, a group of which he is a member. It shouldn't be surprising, he's had the charm turned on around them since early days. Of course they've always liked him, superficially, the way you like a magician performing, especially when he's closing cases.
But, no, this is something else. They trust him. They're helping him, with no clear benefit to themselves, even though the chances are Renfrew has no information for him and this is all for nothing.
It's something.
-
"Anyone want the rest of this?" Rigsby asks, shaking his frappuchino.
"No thanks, I only drink black,' Lisbon says.
If he were in the mood to annoy her, he would call her bluff. She likes an absurd amount of sugar.
"We all know you're the one who uses all the break room sugar packets," says Cho.
Lisbon swivels to fix Jane with a betrayed look, and he puts his hands up.
Van Pelt comes to his defense. "Jane didnt say anything."
"I'll drink your frappuccino, Rigsby," says Jane.
-
He loves them, they're all his friends. It's all bound to go wrong. His only consolation is that they will not feel it in return, because he is too wily to be caught. He knows them from the inside out. They know everything about him that they need to know, and no more. There's no point in him outside this one last thing.
There can't be, or he'll start to think he has something left to lose.
-
On the mattress beneath the face, he manages to drift off a few times, weaving in and out of a shallow sleep.
He keeps the lights on in this room. It's strange, he had never been afraid of the dark in the old days, but now he sort of is. That night took away most of his fears, because he had nothing left to lose. The worst day of his life had happened with the lights on, and yet… the dark unnerves him now.
He considers getting a nightlight. Would it be childish? It's not like anyone would have to know. He realizes his entire body is tense, and tries to relax.
Light floods the room and he bolts upright, fumbling for a weapon where there is none. He blinks up at the intruder, their bleary shape forming into… Lisbon. But Lisbon doesnt come here.
"Patrick?" she says in that voice she uses on spooked cats and small children. That doesn't bode well.
"Yes?" he says, voice crackly. He clears his throat and tries again. "What brings you here this time of night?"
She's distracted. She keeps glancing at him, and then at the wall. "I wanted to make sure you were okay, after today."
"Nothing happened today." Their last case had his head in a bad place, but not in a way that would be noticed by others.He thinks back. Maybe he had a few tells, or behaviors Lisbon would think were tells. "Ah, let me guess. Because I didn't eat any of the takeout in the fridge for lunch, and I left without signing out. The break in routine made you believe I was-"
"No," she says. "I know you, you're unpredictable at the best of times. You skip out on takeout lots of times."
"Then?" He prompts.
"You smiled too much today." She says it with the confidence he usually has, and he wonders when exactly she got so good at reading him.
"So smiling too much means something bad is going on. I'll have to keep it in mind."
"Knock it off, you know what I mean. You've got your pretty smile, and then you've got the one that's like you're trying to convince everybody that you're above it all."
"Well, it shouldn't take much convincing. I'm fine."
"Clearly." Her eyes are flat, still trained on that crusted brown wall, a monument to his fault. He has a retort ready, a thousand little distractions to throw at her until one sticks and she gets out of here, but he holds his tongue to see what she'll do. "Does anyone know where you're living- no, of course not. Stupid question."
"My address is on file, everyone knows I live here." They've all been to his house before. Only the outside.
"Not like this." Her eyes meet his earnestly, "If we had known, I'd have-"
"Forced me to take psychiatric leave?"
"Offered the couch again."
He understands most of what she's projecting. She feels guilty, maybe frightened, unsure what to say but hiding it well under a cool exterior. What he can't understand is why she's so rattled. It's not the blood on the wall, she sees blood every week, spends half her life at crime scenes. So it must be Jane. But he's told her a thousand times who he is, what he's doing. She's familiar with his mission and his circumstances, so it's surprising that she's unnerved.
"I've slept in here since they died," he admits. "I'm going to kill Red John. It's the last thing I do. Is it really such a surprise that I'd stay here? It's a little reminder to keep me on task."
He taps the wall, and she makes a sad, indignant little sound.
"If," she says.
"Hm?"
"The saying. It's supposed to be 'If it's the last thing I do.'"
"Supposed to be," he echoes.
"I let you get away with a lot, but this is unhealthy even for you."
He wants to protest. What should it matter to her? He gets the job done, doesn't he, the CBI's unhealthiest, most effective tool?
He won't say it, It wouldn't be fair. It's been a long time since they were only tools to each other. They lapse into tense silence.
Lisbon clears her throat. "I've got some paperwork I need you to sign back at the office. I was going to wait til tomorrow, but if we send it off before midnight, the- the processing goes faster."
She's telling the truth, but hiding something. She is luring him out of here. For a split second, his exhausted, paranoid mind thinks, She's taking me somewhere to kill me, she's Red John's plant, but he shakes it off just as quickly, ashamed for thinking it at all. It's Lisbon. If she was going to kill him, he might even let her, because when she takes a life there's a damn good reason.
He nods, and follows her out to her car, and they go back to the office. He signs the paperwork dutifully. It only takes a few minutes. She could have brought it to his house instead of fetching him, if she were really interested in efficiency, but that's not what she's after.
She sets up the blanket on the couch, and he stands there doing little tricks with his pen as she gets out a pillow that he's certain he hasn't seen around the office before.
Lisbon sits at her desk and gets right back to her paperwork.
He's halfway to dozing off right there when he remembers to ask her something.
"Lisbon?"
"Hm?"
"Don't turn out the light when you go."
"Mm," she says distractedly, still filling out forms. "Not going anywhere."
-
He wakes up with a neck cramp, and Lisbon is asleep at her desk, pen still in hand. He peers over her shoulder. Oh, she definitely drools. He pats her back and she smacks her lips together, groaning. Luckily it's her day off, because she looks like she just rolled out of bed.
Lisbon mutters something about getting a pullout couch and Jane passes her a cup of coffee with five creams and six sugars, and they share a secret little smile.
-
Lisbon gets a lamp for her office. A gift from her uncle, supposedly.
-
None of the team are good liars compared to Jane, nor are they especially subtle. It's part of what makes Jane so fond of them. So he's onto their little scheme before it starts. Suddenly there are new cushioned chairs around the office, and Lisbon's couch always has a blanket folded on the corner like an invitation.
So, it's safe to say they're on a crusade to get him to stop sleeping at his house. It's a nice thought, so he'll allow it. When they realize it wont work, they'll eventually give up.
-
He wakes to a blanket draped around his shoulders.
-
He wakes and it is midnight, and no one is in the office, but the lights are still on.
-
He wakes and he doesn't want to die. He doesn't want any of them to die. Even when he kills Red John, they will still be in danger, and someone will need to be there to keep them safe from harm. He's so close to his goal he can taste it. In the back of a locked drawer at home he's got a gun with two bullets, one for Red John, and one for after. He's just got to finish this one last thing and he can go.
Except that Rigsby mentioned he's always wanted to see a whale in person, so Jane's going to try and make it happen, and Cho's old friends niece is having a birthday party that Jane is somehow roped into attending next month, and Lisbon got an extra ticket to some kind of opera in the fall and invited Jane along to that too.
Alright, so three or four last things.
Maybe once he's finished Red John he'll stick around awhile. Just until the fall, and he'll see how he feels then.
-
Lisbon has once again enticed him to her very comfortable couch. She comes in and shuts the door, about to sit down, and then she pauses, seeing Jane already in her spot.
"Hi, Jane."
"Hi," he says. He sits up and straightens his vest, preparing to go. He should get some work done anyway.
She sets her clipboard on the arm of the couch and sits, and she pats her lap.
"I didn't say you had to get up."
For a moment, he's not sure she's aware of the implication, but the look on her face says she knows exactly what she's conveying. Gingerly, he lies back down, head now in her lap.
Her hand drops into his hair. An alarmed glance up finds Lisbon still engrossed in paperwork. Accidental then, an act of instinct. Her fingers make small, pleasant movements against his scalp, and he relaxes into the touch.
After a while, she sets the clipboard down and turns her full attention to him.
Wordlessly, she holds out her arms, and wordlessly, he moves into them to be held.
He doesn't believe in psychics, but Lisbon has some kind of magic, in a purely metaphorical sense. She smells like the familiar lemon scented hand sanitizer Van Pelt had gotten for everyone in the office, and the supposedly 'unscented' lotion she uses because her skin gets dry in the winter. Her clothes are thick and well made and they smell like detergent. She adjusts the two of them so they're lying down, his head on her chest. A heartbeat bed.
He's taking deep breaths to subtly capture the nice smell, and the nice moment, and how once in a while it really does feel good to be alive.
He sleeps like a baby.