Fic: End of the Valley (The Mentalist)

[keep_counting]

I am on fire people. Apparantly the words 'you need to study' have a magical effect on my creative writing skills. Fourth fic written in as many days. Did I mention that I am meant to be studying for my exams? you silly girl

Title: End of the Valley
Category: Heavy angst, slight romance, h/c
Rating: R to be safe
Warnings: (non)Character-death (yes, no one actually dies), mentions of violence and killing, psychological trauma
Characters/Pairings: Lisbon-centric, pre-Lisbon/Jane
A/N: My first Mentalist-fic. Seems I cannot enter a fandom without the angsting. Sorry folks!
Summary: “I’m sorry Teresa. Patrick Jane is dead. You killed him.”

 

 

End of the Valley

 

Everything around her was white; a blinding light that was hurting her eyes. She opened them slowly, feeling softness under her back and restraints tugging at her arms.

It wasn’t a hospital.

Lisbon tried to talk, her mouth dry and her head pounding. Blurred voices, blurred faces and everywhere, everywhere was the white. She closed her eyes, opened them again, but still, it was the same vision, the same haunting noise, the same feeling of lost time gnawing in her chest.

Minelli’s face appeared in the whiteness, a stark contrast to it all. He was frowning, worried. She must look a sight.

Her tongue finally decided to work with a throaty and dry ‘where am I?’

Minelli visibly swallowed, his jaw clenched and mouth quivering.

“You’re safe Teresa.” The syllables of her first name falls oddly from her lips, but the sentence in itself jars her more.

“Why am I tied down? Where is everyone?” Where is my team? Where is my consultant?

His hands were shaking, she noticed. She’d never seen them shake before. Not when he lost agents. Not when he was angry. Not when he was afraid.

“Teresa…” He choked on his words and Lisbon wondered if the feeling in her chest where her heart trying to jump out or something crawling in there, slowly tearing it to pieces.

Something was wrong. Something was terribly, horribly wrong and Minelli was just sitting there, shaking and looking like a broken man, not like the one person in her life that she’d come to depend on and look up to and trust. It was all broken, and Lisbon was alone with it, completely alone and all she could think was where are my brothers? Where is my team?

“Where’s Jane?”

Lisbon remembered when she was seven and one of her friends had dared her to climb unto their roof. And she’d done it and been so proud of herself – I’m promoting you Lisbon: you’re getting your own team and a Consultant of your choosing – but then she’d slipped and she’d fallen and fallen and hit the ground, crashing like glass against marble and feeling nothing but pain, from the bleeding cut on her forehead to the broken leg twisted behind her.

She feels like that now, as Minelli looks like he might cry, before the gates of his emotions are closed and there is nothing but composure on his face.

“I’m sorry Teresa. Patrick Jane is dead. You killed him.”

Realization – and the memories of what has happened – are like a bucket of ice-cold water in her face and amidst the crying and the screams, all she can think is that she has gone as mad as the criminals she used to lock up.  

oOo

There is a certain sense of pride, knowing that her brothers have all turned out more or less stable. That she’s done her job right: that she’s taken care of them enough that they can now do it on their own.

It’s not quite the same with her team, but there is the bubble of joy when Cho flashes one of his rare smiles, when Rigsby solves a peculiar case, when Van Pelt chases and takes down a rugged criminal, all on her own.

She wonders if this is how it feels like to have children and then looks at Jane and suddenly regrets all the good grief she gave her parents and teachers and tutors.

It falls apart though, as he says words she thought she would never hear from someone she considered a friend, words of harm and pain and wanting to cut Red John open and watch him while he bleeds, just as he did with my wife and child.

It is in moments like these that she wants to hold him the most, and in moments like these when she least can. Lisbon is nothing if not professional, and she can ignore the flare of desire when he turns that 100-walt grin at her, can ignore the peaceful feeling when he hugs her (or holds her close while they dance). But she can’t deny that, even if her job wasn’t this trying and he wasn’t this mental, she would still not have a chance to run her fingers through that hair or let herself be held in a different, more intimate embrace.

Because his heart already belongs to someone else.

She doesn’t realize this, until she sees the flames, the pure anger in his eyes. She has no doubt that Jane, non-violent and pacifistic though he is, would kill Red John without hesitation, without any second thoughts as to what the hell he was doing.

And she knows he doesn’t care about the ‘after’ – about the trial and the life-time prison and the tears that Van Pelt would shed and the haunted look on Rigsby’s face and the slumped set of Cho’s shoulders. He wouldn’t care, because what mattered had been done and when Red John leaves this world, there will be nothing but an empty shell left of Patrick Jane.

So she pulls the trigger right after he does, irrevocably ending the life of the man she has come to love.

oOo

“Lisbon? Lisbon, are you alright?”

She jerks awake, almost screaming when she sees Jane standing in front of her, startled expression on his face, worry in his eyes.

“Oh!... Sorry…” She mumbles, realizing that she is in her office, at her desk and has apparently fallen asleep. Automatically she reaches out, hand clutching his sleeve and he lets her, still looking worried and surprised at her reaction.

“Sorry…”

“Bad dream?” His voice is gentle and it sends a jolt through her, because he always speaks to her like that when he a) wants something from her or b) is concerned for her well-being and/or mental state (she privately thinks it’s good that she’s starting to think so logically so fast, because her heart is still pounding like a race horse in her chest and she fears she might have a break-down if Jane leaves right now).

“Yes,” She mumbles and he nods in sympathy. If anyone, he has experience with bad dreams. It doesn’t help her mood.

“Is there anything I can get you?”

She wonders how he can be this gentle and kind when he must fantasize about cutting a certain man open almost every night.

“I think I would let you,” Lisbon whispers, too late realizing that she has spoken out loud. She blames sleep-deprivation and neck-cramps and the horrible, horrible nightmare she has just had. And the fact that Jane’s other hand has come up to settle itself over the hand that is still clutching his sleeve like dear life. She contemplates letting go and grabbing aforementioned hand instead, but all of the sudden, she’s forgotten how to untangle her fingers and he’ll just have to live with the creases and rumples in his shirt.

“Let me?” Jane frowns, sporting an adorable puzzled frown and Lisbon thinks that she can’t not say this to him, not when she’s begun.

“Kill Red John.” She mumbles and he freezes, his eyes widening in shock and horror.

“You…”

“It’s just that…” She begins, feeling like she has to explain, like she has to make him understand, because no one has ever understood before. “I thought that, if I ever got the chance… the drunk who killed my mother… I would do it. I think I would do it. Or…” She stops again, tongue darting out and wetting her lips, keen eyes noticing the way Jane’s gaze lingers on her mouth afterwards. “Or at least I would have… at the time.”

“Don’t say that,” He whispers and then her hand is untangled from his sleeve and is folded between the two of his, glorious warmth and callouses creating butterflies in her stomach. Lisbon off-handily wonders when she has become a twelve-year old with a silly crush.

On a man who could possibly ruin everything in her life.

“Why not?”

“Because… Lisbon…” One of his long fingers run gently over her wrist, stopping at the pulse and she can hear her heart hammering in her ears. “Because I need you to be my morale center.”

His blue eyes are without life, his face a statue of nothingness and she is shaking and dropping her gun and someone else moves over to close his eyes, no one moving to touch her, to come near her. No one wants to come near her….

… “Why do you want this job, Lisbon?”

“I want to catch criminals, sir. I want to do the right thing.”

She clears her throat, pulling her hand away from his and already missing the feeling of it, but the sparkle in his eyes is worth it and it’s all she can do not to smile at him.

“Well, then. Alright.” She fumbles with some papers, trying to clear up the mess she’s made of her desk. “It’s late. I should be going home.”

“You should.” Jane says, letting his fingers brush the nape of her neck as he walks behind her to leave as well. “And try to get some proper sleep, alright Teresa?”

“You the one giving orders now?” She teases as he closes the door, triumphant that she’s gotten the last word for once. She briefly wonders when her life became this oddity of kinder garden jokes.

Neither of them talk about the incident in the following weeks, but whenever the gun becomes too heavy in Lisbon’s hands or the look in Jane’s eyes is too dead, all she has to do is think of warm hands and gentle smiles, and she’ll be ready again.