(no subject)
Summary: After the events surrounding Valentine's Day, Patrick Jane returns from the forest. One of the first people he goes to see, naturally? Daniel Jackson. It's all laid bare here.
This was the hardest conversation Patrick was going to have, and the most necessary. To say that he owed the man behind the door some kind of explanation for his behavior was ... well. It was a moot point. He owed Daniel - a lot - but mostly he owed him an apology and whatever emotional and ugh, physical fallout that could happen with this. So he knocked on the door to Daniel's cabin, breathed in deep, and waited for the other man to open the door.
So much, so much, and the niggling urge to run again kicked in, but Patrick squashed it viciously as he rocked back and forth on his heels, making himself be patient, for once. It was literally the least he could do.
"Coming!" Daniel called. It was probably Vala. Or at least he hoped it was Vala and William. Seeing them every day was not only nice, but it was required ever since William had been kidnapped and Vala injured. He needed to check periodically that they were still safe. He put his book down and headed for the door, opening it with a smile on his face.
The smile froze when he saw who it was. "Where's Jack and his knife when I need him?" he asked himself.
Alarm flashed over Patrick's face and he took a few steps back automatically as he put up his hand. "Daniel, woah, wait. I think you can let me explain what happened without calling in your military nut friend with his knife, all right?"
He looked around warily, almost expecting Jack to jump out of the bushes and gut him, right there. Not that he probably didn't deserve a little pain, but honestly? Being vivisected was hardly better than staying in the forest.
It was not the sort of thing you expected to hear from hallucinations. Hallucinations threatened all kinds of things and did nothing and also weren't... Daniel leaned forward quickly and pressed two fingers at Patrick's shoulder. He expected them to go right through, like the rock had with Adria. They didn't.
Oh. Oh god.
He withdrew his fingers quickly and stared at Patrick. "You're...I thought you'd vanished." There was a particular inflection to the line that specifically pointed to an off-the-island location. He'd thought Patrick had gone home.
"I did. Sort of." Patrick stood still and let Daniel poke him, but he kept his distance. Just in case Jack was waiting somewhere with a weapon. He was pretty sure Jack could kill him with a spoon, but who knew?
"I ... I had a severely bad reaction to what happened on Valentine's Day. Mentally, that is, and I ran. To the jungle slash forest. I've been living there for a month and a half." He cleared his throat. "... living is stretching it, somewhat. I was existing."
"No," Daniel said slowly, "I don't think you understand." There was the very beginnings of real anger in his voice. "I thought that the reason I hadn't seen you for a month and a half is that the island had taken you home after the island had stopped its thing." Jack had given him the idea and he'd run with it. It was that or believe...believe this. "Because I spent weeks asking people if they'd seen you and no one had."
"Ah." Patrick said slowly, and ducked his head a little, his lips pressing together briefly before he looked up at the other man. "I ... know it won't mean much, all things considered, but I am sorry. I never meant to - it was not my intention to hurt you, or scare you."
"Then what was your intention, Patrick? We were all dealing with the repercussions of that day. Or hasn't the island gossip hit you about that particular bit, yet? Because you and Cole weren't the only ones affected." He was still trying to deal with things with Guy.
"I, ah, not really?" Patrick's brow furrowed. "I left, right after I woke up, and realized it was all a lie." He didn't shift - or fidget - although he did have to stuff his hands into his pockets to accomplish that. "I assumed something happened with Guy because Guy was acting ... not at all like Guy would."
"He was acting like a man in love who got to see the object of his affections in bed with someone else, you mean?" Daniel nodded. "I should know. I got to hear all about it. I fell in love with Guy. Alcuin fell in love with me." That was something else Daniel hadn't allowed himself to think about. How much Alcuin hadn't really changed toward him except by virtue of degree. "So you see, you weren't the only one dealing with things." He was just the only person who'd ran.
Patrick nodded his head slowly - yes, well, that was to be expected. He looked up at Daniel, expression grave and serious. "No, I suppose I wasn't. Well, I'm sorry I'm the one who left, and didn't deal with things, or didn't talk to you." He lifted his shoulders. "But, I suppose there's nothing really left to say, about that."
Daniel stared at him for a long moment. Nothing left to say? There was everything left to say. He supposed that he should let it go, though. He hadn't moved on to someone else, but he had moved on. Except he'd moved on because of a lie. Because he thought Patrick wasn't coming back. One lingering question that he'd been holding onto stuck in his mind, though, and he couldn't not ask it. "Why? Why did you leave?"
Patrick paused, and considered his answer. He could answer with the truth, or he could leave Daniel with a comfortable sort of lie - shame was an easy and cowardly answer and it would get him ... he had no idea what it would get him. However, he'd never lied to Daniel. Not once, not ever.
"I woke up, and realized I wasn't madly in love with Cole. It might have been a simple thing to you, but, well, it was like losing my wife, all over again." He pressed his lips together. "I had what I wanted, and it was ripped away from me - again - and ...and I couldn't handle it. Something broke. And when something breaks, in me, I either decide to kill it or run away from it. Since it was me - well, I took running over slicing open my wrists. The lesser of cowardly acts."
"Losing your..." Daniel breathed out softly and closed his eyes. "Do you know that you haven't once told me about your wife? I'm not even sure I knew that you were married. You once said that I would hide things. That I couldn't promise to always tell you the absolute truth and I said that you were wrong. I'm not so sure anymore that argument was really about me. I've tried my best to be nothing but honest with you, not because you could tell if I was lying, but because I wanted to be. But most of the time it seems that the only thing I ever knew about you is your job."
He should have been angry, but what he felt most was regret. Regret because if anyone knew what it was like to love again after losing something precious and then lose that love, it was him. Maybe he could have helped, maybe he would have just made things worse, but now they would never know.
"I'm a con man." Patrick said quietly. "Born to a con man, raised by a con man. It's not an excuse, not really even an explanation. It's just a fact. I didn't learn how to not lie until I met my wife, and that was because I could never lie to her. But eventually my dishonesty caught up with me and got her killed. Fact, still, not an excuse or explanation." He breathed, deep. "What that means is ... you're right. I was more worried about me lying to you, than you lying to me. As long as you kept up your end of the bargain, I could keep up mine. Not to lie to you, not to get you killed. In the end, though, I just ended up ... keeping myself from you."
He looked off again, and swallowed, hard, before looking back at Daniel. "I'm not asking for your forgiveness, Daniel, because honestly? I've got no right to." God, he missed his team. They never would have let him get to this point. Lisbon would have put his head through a wall. "But, you do deserve to know that I am deeply ...truly sorry, for never letting you see exactly the kind of man I am, the kind of problems I have. I don't know how I can ever make this up to you, but one day, I hope to find a way."
"You of all people should have known I would have been able to help. That I would have wanted to help." Part of him wanted to yell at Patrick until he somehow understood that he didn't have to be alone. Part of him wanted to quietly close the door and just curl up and mourn something that was right in front of him. Part of him...he didn't quite know what that third part of him wanted to do, but he was afraid it would end in heartbreak. Again.
"I have time to talk." It was a compromise between all three instincts. It wasn't an offer to pick up where they'd left off, but then if Patrick had been hiding this much, then what really was there left?
"I've needed help for a long time, Daniel." Patrick said quietly, "I just didn't want it. I didn't want it to get better. I thought I deserved to go quietly mad, become the monster I helped create. I lost everything else, so what did sanity really matter?"
He looked at Daniel for a long moment, blue eyes piercing as he watched varying emotions cross Daniel's face, and he slowly nodded. "All right ... so let's talk."
"You're not the only one who questions what happened," Daniel said, leading Patrick into the library. "What if I'd never stayed on Abydos. What if I'd never unburied the Stargate. What if I'd never brought Sam and Jack to see the map. The what ifs are what really kill you."
Patrick paced the small library, his entire expression pressing into a pensive look. "You didn't spit in the face of your wife's killer, Daniel. Actually or verbally. I did, and I did it with some ... arrogant relish." He held up his hand. "I'm not saying you didn't suffer - but at least yours is free of direct intervention guilt."
"No, he was one of my best friends," Daniel retorted. "It's not about guilt, Patrick. It's about blame. You might blame yourself because of your actions, but unless you were the one who actually harmed her, you are not the one at fault." He sighed. "What happened?"
Patrick's expression clearly said he didn't believe that, so his tone was a little more sharp as he answered Daniel's question, his gaze going out of the window, and his posture straighter than normal. "I was helping the police investigate a serial killer, by the name of Red John. At that time, I was ... I liked publicity. So when I was invited on television to talk to them about Red John, I agreed. And I insulted him, supremely confident that I could catch him. I called him a coward, and several other things."
He ground his teeth together. "I thought nothing of it, when I finally returned home, that evening. I didn't even know anything was wrong, until I went upstairs to my bedroom, and found the note, from him. Who called me a worm, and a coward, and told me, if I was really psychic... then I wouldn't need to open the door to find our what he did to my wife and daughter."
Daniel wanted to go to him, wanted to wrap his arms around Patrick, but the memory of a month and a half gone stopped him. The memory of thinking Patrick was dead or just vanished stopped him. "You have an ego the size of a small planet, Patrick. Everyone who knows you at all knows that. That doesn't mean that your family or even you should have been punished because of it."
"Really? If you're stupid enough to stick your hand into the tiger's cage, should you be surprised you get it bitten off? I deserved my punishment. And when I find Red John, he'll have earned his, as well." Patrick's chin lifted a little, his expression tight. "And I will find him, I will kill him, and then ... I'll face the consequences of that, too."
"People aren't tigers as much as they might act otherwise sometimes. They're complex. Who knows what set him off. Maybe it was just that you were speaking about him. A cop going on the show might have set him off. Maybe it was that you were a psychic. Maybe he would have seen a newspaper article about a psychic helping the police and that would have set him off. You can't know." Daniel's voice softened. "And it's entirely possible that you can't get over this completely until you find the person responsible. God knows there was a weight off my shoulders when Apophis finally and truly died. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't try."
Patrick looked over at him, and exhaled as he stuffed his hands into his pockets. "Perhaps, perhaps not. I know that I ... I need help, again. I'm not so proud that I can't admit that I need to find someone to talk to, about all of it."
Daniel just wished he'd come to that conclusion earlier. Days. Weeks. "Good," he said quietly. "I'm glad."
"Thank you, Daniel. For hearing me out. You didn't need to do that." Patrick spoke quietly, but without that measure of softness that sometimes preceded his speech with Daniel. What they had - months ago - well. He had a right to talk to Daniel as another human being, like so many people he had interacted with briefly in his five years at CBI.
Not really much beyond that, though.
"Of course. I was...maybe glad isn't the right word. Honored, maybe, since it's obvious how hard talking about it is." Honored wasn't quite the right word, either. He found himself missing the way Patrick used to talk to him and he could all but taste his heart in his throat.
"I am glad you're back."
"Thank you." Patrick's smile flicked to something wry, and he straightened, stood up, with his hands still in his pockets. "I suppose I am glad to be back, in a way. I suppose that means not all with me is ... lost."
He mused on that, and his shoes, for a moment, before he breathed out. "I should probably go."
"If you need to talk," Daniel said without thinking, "uh, I'm here." He couldn't, wouldn't promise anything else.
"I will ... I'll keep that in mind. For the future." Patrick moved towards the door, and paused there, glancing over his shoulder. "I'll see you around, Daniel. Thank you, again, for your time."
He opened the door, and closed it quietly behind him, without looking back again.
This was the hardest conversation Patrick was going to have, and the most necessary. To say that he owed the man behind the door some kind of explanation for his behavior was ... well. It was a moot point. He owed Daniel - a lot - but mostly he owed him an apology and whatever emotional and ugh, physical fallout that could happen with this. So he knocked on the door to Daniel's cabin, breathed in deep, and waited for the other man to open the door.
So much, so much, and the niggling urge to run again kicked in, but Patrick squashed it viciously as he rocked back and forth on his heels, making himself be patient, for once. It was literally the least he could do.
"Coming!" Daniel called. It was probably Vala. Or at least he hoped it was Vala and William. Seeing them every day was not only nice, but it was required ever since William had been kidnapped and Vala injured. He needed to check periodically that they were still safe. He put his book down and headed for the door, opening it with a smile on his face.
The smile froze when he saw who it was. "Where's Jack and his knife when I need him?" he asked himself.
Alarm flashed over Patrick's face and he took a few steps back automatically as he put up his hand. "Daniel, woah, wait. I think you can let me explain what happened without calling in your military nut friend with his knife, all right?"
He looked around warily, almost expecting Jack to jump out of the bushes and gut him, right there. Not that he probably didn't deserve a little pain, but honestly? Being vivisected was hardly better than staying in the forest.
It was not the sort of thing you expected to hear from hallucinations. Hallucinations threatened all kinds of things and did nothing and also weren't... Daniel leaned forward quickly and pressed two fingers at Patrick's shoulder. He expected them to go right through, like the rock had with Adria. They didn't.
Oh. Oh god.
He withdrew his fingers quickly and stared at Patrick. "You're...I thought you'd vanished." There was a particular inflection to the line that specifically pointed to an off-the-island location. He'd thought Patrick had gone home.
"I did. Sort of." Patrick stood still and let Daniel poke him, but he kept his distance. Just in case Jack was waiting somewhere with a weapon. He was pretty sure Jack could kill him with a spoon, but who knew?
"I ... I had a severely bad reaction to what happened on Valentine's Day. Mentally, that is, and I ran. To the jungle slash forest. I've been living there for a month and a half." He cleared his throat. "... living is stretching it, somewhat. I was existing."
"No," Daniel said slowly, "I don't think you understand." There was the very beginnings of real anger in his voice. "I thought that the reason I hadn't seen you for a month and a half is that the island had taken you home after the island had stopped its thing." Jack had given him the idea and he'd run with it. It was that or believe...believe this. "Because I spent weeks asking people if they'd seen you and no one had."
"Ah." Patrick said slowly, and ducked his head a little, his lips pressing together briefly before he looked up at the other man. "I ... know it won't mean much, all things considered, but I am sorry. I never meant to - it was not my intention to hurt you, or scare you."
"Then what was your intention, Patrick? We were all dealing with the repercussions of that day. Or hasn't the island gossip hit you about that particular bit, yet? Because you and Cole weren't the only ones affected." He was still trying to deal with things with Guy.
"I, ah, not really?" Patrick's brow furrowed. "I left, right after I woke up, and realized it was all a lie." He didn't shift - or fidget - although he did have to stuff his hands into his pockets to accomplish that. "I assumed something happened with Guy because Guy was acting ... not at all like Guy would."
"He was acting like a man in love who got to see the object of his affections in bed with someone else, you mean?" Daniel nodded. "I should know. I got to hear all about it. I fell in love with Guy. Alcuin fell in love with me." That was something else Daniel hadn't allowed himself to think about. How much Alcuin hadn't really changed toward him except by virtue of degree. "So you see, you weren't the only one dealing with things." He was just the only person who'd ran.
Patrick nodded his head slowly - yes, well, that was to be expected. He looked up at Daniel, expression grave and serious. "No, I suppose I wasn't. Well, I'm sorry I'm the one who left, and didn't deal with things, or didn't talk to you." He lifted his shoulders. "But, I suppose there's nothing really left to say, about that."
Daniel stared at him for a long moment. Nothing left to say? There was everything left to say. He supposed that he should let it go, though. He hadn't moved on to someone else, but he had moved on. Except he'd moved on because of a lie. Because he thought Patrick wasn't coming back. One lingering question that he'd been holding onto stuck in his mind, though, and he couldn't not ask it. "Why? Why did you leave?"
Patrick paused, and considered his answer. He could answer with the truth, or he could leave Daniel with a comfortable sort of lie - shame was an easy and cowardly answer and it would get him ... he had no idea what it would get him. However, he'd never lied to Daniel. Not once, not ever.
"I woke up, and realized I wasn't madly in love with Cole. It might have been a simple thing to you, but, well, it was like losing my wife, all over again." He pressed his lips together. "I had what I wanted, and it was ripped away from me - again - and ...and I couldn't handle it. Something broke. And when something breaks, in me, I either decide to kill it or run away from it. Since it was me - well, I took running over slicing open my wrists. The lesser of cowardly acts."
"Losing your..." Daniel breathed out softly and closed his eyes. "Do you know that you haven't once told me about your wife? I'm not even sure I knew that you were married. You once said that I would hide things. That I couldn't promise to always tell you the absolute truth and I said that you were wrong. I'm not so sure anymore that argument was really about me. I've tried my best to be nothing but honest with you, not because you could tell if I was lying, but because I wanted to be. But most of the time it seems that the only thing I ever knew about you is your job."
He should have been angry, but what he felt most was regret. Regret because if anyone knew what it was like to love again after losing something precious and then lose that love, it was him. Maybe he could have helped, maybe he would have just made things worse, but now they would never know.
"I'm a con man." Patrick said quietly. "Born to a con man, raised by a con man. It's not an excuse, not really even an explanation. It's just a fact. I didn't learn how to not lie until I met my wife, and that was because I could never lie to her. But eventually my dishonesty caught up with me and got her killed. Fact, still, not an excuse or explanation." He breathed, deep. "What that means is ... you're right. I was more worried about me lying to you, than you lying to me. As long as you kept up your end of the bargain, I could keep up mine. Not to lie to you, not to get you killed. In the end, though, I just ended up ... keeping myself from you."
He looked off again, and swallowed, hard, before looking back at Daniel. "I'm not asking for your forgiveness, Daniel, because honestly? I've got no right to." God, he missed his team. They never would have let him get to this point. Lisbon would have put his head through a wall. "But, you do deserve to know that I am deeply ...truly sorry, for never letting you see exactly the kind of man I am, the kind of problems I have. I don't know how I can ever make this up to you, but one day, I hope to find a way."
"You of all people should have known I would have been able to help. That I would have wanted to help." Part of him wanted to yell at Patrick until he somehow understood that he didn't have to be alone. Part of him wanted to quietly close the door and just curl up and mourn something that was right in front of him. Part of him...he didn't quite know what that third part of him wanted to do, but he was afraid it would end in heartbreak. Again.
"I have time to talk." It was a compromise between all three instincts. It wasn't an offer to pick up where they'd left off, but then if Patrick had been hiding this much, then what really was there left?
"I've needed help for a long time, Daniel." Patrick said quietly, "I just didn't want it. I didn't want it to get better. I thought I deserved to go quietly mad, become the monster I helped create. I lost everything else, so what did sanity really matter?"
He looked at Daniel for a long moment, blue eyes piercing as he watched varying emotions cross Daniel's face, and he slowly nodded. "All right ... so let's talk."
"You're not the only one who questions what happened," Daniel said, leading Patrick into the library. "What if I'd never stayed on Abydos. What if I'd never unburied the Stargate. What if I'd never brought Sam and Jack to see the map. The what ifs are what really kill you."
Patrick paced the small library, his entire expression pressing into a pensive look. "You didn't spit in the face of your wife's killer, Daniel. Actually or verbally. I did, and I did it with some ... arrogant relish." He held up his hand. "I'm not saying you didn't suffer - but at least yours is free of direct intervention guilt."
"No, he was one of my best friends," Daniel retorted. "It's not about guilt, Patrick. It's about blame. You might blame yourself because of your actions, but unless you were the one who actually harmed her, you are not the one at fault." He sighed. "What happened?"
Patrick's expression clearly said he didn't believe that, so his tone was a little more sharp as he answered Daniel's question, his gaze going out of the window, and his posture straighter than normal. "I was helping the police investigate a serial killer, by the name of Red John. At that time, I was ... I liked publicity. So when I was invited on television to talk to them about Red John, I agreed. And I insulted him, supremely confident that I could catch him. I called him a coward, and several other things."
He ground his teeth together. "I thought nothing of it, when I finally returned home, that evening. I didn't even know anything was wrong, until I went upstairs to my bedroom, and found the note, from him. Who called me a worm, and a coward, and told me, if I was really psychic... then I wouldn't need to open the door to find our what he did to my wife and daughter."
Daniel wanted to go to him, wanted to wrap his arms around Patrick, but the memory of a month and a half gone stopped him. The memory of thinking Patrick was dead or just vanished stopped him. "You have an ego the size of a small planet, Patrick. Everyone who knows you at all knows that. That doesn't mean that your family or even you should have been punished because of it."
"Really? If you're stupid enough to stick your hand into the tiger's cage, should you be surprised you get it bitten off? I deserved my punishment. And when I find Red John, he'll have earned his, as well." Patrick's chin lifted a little, his expression tight. "And I will find him, I will kill him, and then ... I'll face the consequences of that, too."
"People aren't tigers as much as they might act otherwise sometimes. They're complex. Who knows what set him off. Maybe it was just that you were speaking about him. A cop going on the show might have set him off. Maybe it was that you were a psychic. Maybe he would have seen a newspaper article about a psychic helping the police and that would have set him off. You can't know." Daniel's voice softened. "And it's entirely possible that you can't get over this completely until you find the person responsible. God knows there was a weight off my shoulders when Apophis finally and truly died. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't try."
Patrick looked over at him, and exhaled as he stuffed his hands into his pockets. "Perhaps, perhaps not. I know that I ... I need help, again. I'm not so proud that I can't admit that I need to find someone to talk to, about all of it."
Daniel just wished he'd come to that conclusion earlier. Days. Weeks. "Good," he said quietly. "I'm glad."
"Thank you, Daniel. For hearing me out. You didn't need to do that." Patrick spoke quietly, but without that measure of softness that sometimes preceded his speech with Daniel. What they had - months ago - well. He had a right to talk to Daniel as another human being, like so many people he had interacted with briefly in his five years at CBI.
Not really much beyond that, though.
"Of course. I was...maybe glad isn't the right word. Honored, maybe, since it's obvious how hard talking about it is." Honored wasn't quite the right word, either. He found himself missing the way Patrick used to talk to him and he could all but taste his heart in his throat.
"I am glad you're back."
"Thank you." Patrick's smile flicked to something wry, and he straightened, stood up, with his hands still in his pockets. "I suppose I am glad to be back, in a way. I suppose that means not all with me is ... lost."
He mused on that, and his shoes, for a moment, before he breathed out. "I should probably go."
"If you need to talk," Daniel said without thinking, "uh, I'm here." He couldn't, wouldn't promise anything else.
"I will ... I'll keep that in mind. For the future." Patrick moved towards the door, and paused there, glancing over his shoulder. "I'll see you around, Daniel. Thank you, again, for your time."
He opened the door, and closed it quietly behind him, without looking back again.