FIC: Acrimonious (12/21)
Title: Acrimonious
Author:
sirenofodysseus
Disclaimer: …it’s probably better that Bruno Heller owns The Mentalist, really.
Rating: NC-17
Summary: After FBI Agent Susan Darcy is overheard telling Special-Agent-in-Charge Luther Wainwright that Patrick Jane may be working with Red John, Red John steals Jane’s body and begins to destroy the team’s lives one-by-one.
Spoilers: Brief spoiler for Crimson Hat (4x24), but the rest of this story is set after Something Rotten in Redmund (4x20).
Warnings: Violence, language, drug use, sex, non-con situations, mentions of child abuse/domestic abuse, negative character portrayals, major and minor character death.
Pairings: Red John/Teresa Lisbon, Patrick Jane/Teresa Lisbon, Wayne Rigsby/Sarah Harrigan, Kimball Cho/Summer Edgecombe.
12-
Lisbon stared intently at the doorway to the private waiting room that they had been ushered into upon their arrival at Placerville General Hospital. Jane held her hand in his own, as they both waited for any news on Cho’s condition. Van Pelt and Rigsby remained a few seats down from them while the only sound within the room came from the hum of the mounted television.
After she had gotten the phone call and she had slid down onto the floor, Jane had grabbed the phone from the floor and had learned from whoever had been on the phone that Cho had been rushed to Placerville General Hospital in critical condition after a massive explosion at the local gas station and that had been hours ago.
The hallway outside the waiting room was silent, except for the random voices every so often and Lisbon shifted within her uncomfortable leather seat.
How much longer will we be sitting here? She wondered as she felt Jane’s hand squeeze her own and she turned to stare at him.
Jane wore a frown; concern written across his face with his bluish-green eyes focused on hers.
“He’ll be fine, Teresa.” Jane told her in a whisper. “Cho’s strong. He’s not going to let a little explosion stop him, my dear.” Jane’s constant reassurances had done nothing to relieve the guilt that lined her stomach. If she had refused Cho’s request to leave early, none of them would have been sitting in the hospital waiting room and Cho wouldn’t be on an operating table.
On the ride over, Lisbon had used one of her hands to wrap around Jane’s hand and the other to clench at her cross necklace. Jane hadn’t said anything about her prayer and she hadn’t said anything when he had broken several speed limits just to get to the hospital; both of them so caught up in their own worlds at the news one phone call had brought that the last things on their minds, she thought, had probably been logic and reason.
Lisbon tore her eyes and hand away from Jane, before she put her head in both of her hands. Could they never get a break? First it had been Jane with Red John and next it was Cho with an explosive. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
If Cho dies, she thought, it’ll be my fault.
The thought of her second-in-command dying was too much to bear, even for her.
She felt Jane place his hand on her back, before he started to rub circles between her shoulder blades, while they continued to wait for any news-good or bad, life or death and for once, Lisbon didn’t care that she and Jane were no longer tiptoeing the professional-personal boundary that she had set up for them both to follow, as his touch kept her from losing it completely and she had to remain strong for them all.
“Teresa?” Teresa heard the soft voice of Jane’s in her ear. “Come on, you need to wake up.” She felt his fingers dance across her face and she opened her eyes, only to be greeted by the blinding light of wherever she was. She groaned and closed her eyes ago, drawing warmth from Jane’s shoulder that she rested her head on. “The doctor wants to speak with you, Teresa. Don’t keep the good man waiting.”
The doctor? She almost asked him, out of a sleep-induced confusion. Why would I need a…?
It then all came back to her-the phone call, Jane’s hold on her, the hospital and Cho-and with a start, she brought her head from Jane’s shoulder and became fully aware of her surroundings.
The sterile smell of the waiting room greeted her alongside the scent of Jane, before she felt the stare of an additional person in the room with them. Quickly, she glanced at the person: comfortable black shoes, tan pants, a white coat, tawny skin and dark hair. Lisbon blinked. Was the person before her Cho’s doctor?
“Agent Lisbon?” The male spoke and Lisbon kept her attention on him. “I’m Dr. Max Hough. I was the surgeon in charge of Agent Cho’s surgery.” Lisbon scanned his face for any sign of good or bad news, but all she found was a tight smile and cold eyes. Her hand found Jane’s again for comfort.
“How is he doing?” Lisbon questioned. Dr. Hough said nothing for a moment and she feared that something had gone wrong in surgery or Cho had passed away. Her heart pounded wildly in her chest as she tried to think positively; the lack of news doesn’t mean bad news, bad news isn’t always accurate and good news, even with what we know, is always possible.
“Can I speak with you in private, Agent Lisbon?” Dr. Hough asked and Lisbon nodded. She stood from her seat and followed Dr. Hough before anyone could stop her. Out in the quiet, brightly lit hallway, Dr. Hough shut the waiting room door behind him before he turned back to her.
The expression on his face hadn’t changed much and Lisbon started to worry again. If nothing bad had happened, she wondered, why did he want to speak in private?
“Agent Cho made it through the surgery, Agent.” Dr. Hough informed her and her stomach did a flip in joy. “He’s alive and in the ICU.” Lisbon stared at the doctor as she brought her arms against her chest. Dr. Hough left her with more “if” or “what” questions than anything else. She opened her mouth to reply when he continued to speak. “He’s not completely in the clear yet, which is why we have him in the ICU. I want to monitor him for a few days, as his vitals keep dropping dangerously low.”
She nodded again and closed her mouth. Lisbon appreciated his honesty and the fact that he wasn’t sugar-coating everything for her.
“He has an eighty-five percent chance of pulling through, which will increase as the night goes along.” Dr. Hough stated. “However, I am worried about what the future may hold for Agent Cho.”
“Why is that?” Lisbon forced herself to ask him.
“How much have you been informed about the events at the gas station, Agent Lisbon?”
“I know a bomb went off and my agent was there.” Lisbon answered. She hadn’t been able to get ahold of the officer-in-charge for Placerville to ask him about it, as cell phones weren’t allowed in the hospital. “Nobody else has really told us anything else though.” Dr. Hough nodded as he crossed his own arms against his chest.
“I’ll be honest with you, Agent. If Agent Cho hadn’t been leaning toward the passenger seat when the bomb had exploded, you and I would be having a completely different conversation than the one we are having now.” Lisbon silently thanked God for saving Cho’s life, but she was still confused at his action. In the CBI-issued SUV-Cho’s actual vehicle had been in the shop; his break line had been severed by one of the criminal’s days ago-they tended to keep nothing of actual use in the glove compartments, aside from the random map. “From what I understood, Agent Cho wasn’t alone in the car. He had someone with him, but you’ll have to speak with either Officer Joel or the EMTs.
“If there was somebody else in the vehicle though, I will ask that you and your colleagues refrain from telling Agent Cho more than he needs to know, Agent Lisbon.” Dr. Hough told her. “The mind is a dangerous place to play around in or with.” She nodded again.
“I understand.” She hadn’t followed the orders from when Jane had been diagnosed with amnesia and he had come back to her with no everlasting effects from her reintroducing Red John to him. Lisbon briefly wondered if doctors just gave the advice they did to annoy friends and family of the patients, who could handle the news perfectly.
“I’m being serious, Agent Lisbon.” Dr. Hough replied, sternly. “Agent Cho doesn’t need any more extra stress right now, considering the psychological aspects are only the beginning of what he will be facing.”
Lisbon furrowed her brows. “What?” The psychological aspects were a given, as she had dealt with her own mini-psychological crisis after she had been strapped to a bomb last year. Cho was strong, but nobody could wave away being on the threshold of death that easily.
“The explosion did great damage on his body, Agent.” Dr. Hough answered. “It did even more damage to his spinal cord.” Lisbon felt sick to her stomach again, as she removed her hands from her chest and pressed them against her stomach. She knew enough about the anatomy of a human body to know that any injury suffered to the spinal cord was not a good one. “I can’t tell you much function he’ll have over his body until after we run some tests. We should know in a few days though.”
“What happens if he’s…?” Lisbon couldn’t finish her sentence. The thought of Cho not being able to walk-let alone move-because of her made her ill with guilt. How could she face her team-or Jane?-with that knowledge?
“One day at a time, Agent, is all I can say.” Dr. Hough said as he turned away from her and opened the door to the waiting room. “One day at a time.” She nodded numbly before she muttered a soft thank you to him and stepped back into the waiting room, where she was met with Jane’s arms.
“Are you okay?” Jane asked her, softly.
No, she thought, I’m not okay. I’m so far from being okay right now, it’s not even funny.
Instead of answering him, in fear of losing her self-control, she pushed him away from her hands and turned to address the rest of her unit with a deep breath. She felt Jane’s eyes on her back and ignoring the fact that Jane needed the comfort too, she focused her attention on Van Pelt and Rigsby, who both stood inches from her. Rigsby had his hand against Van Pelt’s upper arm as they both stared at her, concern written across their faces.
“Is he okay, boss?” Rigsby and Van Pelt asked at the same time. Lisbon stared at them both, a frown across her features, before she told them everything that Dr. Hough had told her.
“He’ll be okay, Teresa.” Jane told her, after she had finished speaking and the room had fallen silent again. “You’ll see, I promise.” She really hoped he was right-for Cho’s sake and her own.
“I thought about bringing you flowers, but from the looks of it,” Lisbon told Cho as she slid into the seat by his hospital bedside, days later, “you have more than enough to last you.” She tried to ignore the wires and bandages that decorated every inch of his body by glancing around the room at the flowers and the balloons, while the man stared at her with his head leaned back on one of the hospital provided pillows. “How are you feeling?”
“Like I was blown up and I can’t walk.” Cho told her and Lisbon shook her head. Rigsby had told her yesterday that Cho was acting as if none of this was bothering him, which had immediately worried her. “Van Pelt’s the one who sent the flowers, by the way. I told her I was allergic; she doesn’t listen.”
Lisbon chuckled at that. She had known the Junior Agent was sending him flowers, as she had caught Van Pelt days ago purchasing them from her work computer. “Van Pelt means well.”
“By giving me asthma, sure.”
“I’ll tell her to stop sending the flowers, but she might start sending balloons.” Cho grimaced at one of the get well balloons, which lingered within his hospital room. “Or worse.” Lisbon briefly imagined a swarm of stuffed animals around Cho and she stifled her laugh, as she doubted he would appreciate the joke. “The doctor said you’re doing well.” Dr. Hough had stopped her in the hallway to remind her of the rules: “You shouldn’t ask him about his accident and you shouldn’t tell him anything if he asks” and to tell her that Cho-aside from the fact that the hospital tests had concluded that he was a paraplegic, which had been the one piece of information she didn’t want to hear-was doing well.
“Peeing in a bag is not what I call well.” Lisbon said nothing to Cho’s response. Hospitals had always reminded her of her childhood and of the times her father had beaten her brothers unconscious, but the fact that she and Cho couldn’t actively discuss what had happened to him put her even more on edge within the single, one window room. Cho had yet to ask them anything about the incident and while she knew more than enough to fill in the blanks for him, she had to keep them both away from the reason he had no control over anything below the waist for his own safety. “If Van Pelt wants to send something, make it food. Hospital food tastes like crap.”
“If you think the hospital food tastes like crap, you should try the hospital coffee.” Lisbon replied. “It’s even worse than the tasteless Jell-O they serve you.”
“I’ll pass.” Cho answered.
“Good decision.” Lisbon replied with a laugh. Cho closed his eyes for a moment and she wondered if she should get a nurse, when he opened his eyes again and she took a deep breath. “I wish I was just here for a social call, Kimball.”
Cho glanced at her, a small smirk on his lips. “Not even seventy-two hours and I’m being handed a pink slip.” Lisbon shook her head. “You mean Agent Wainwright hasn’t approached you about me yet?”
“He has.” Lisbon admitted. Cho’s job within the Serious Crimes Unit had been a major disagreement between herself and Wainwright, who had disagreed with the suggestion that Cho should remain on her unit. The Special-Agent-in-Charge had thrown out several issues with allowing Cho to work with the unit after his accident; Lisbon had finally managed to make him reconsidering the rash decision, citing the fact that whether Cho could walk or not-he was still a model agent. “You’re not being fired.” Cho blinked in response. “You’re a good agent, Cho and the CBI knows it.” He said nothing in response. “Wainwright knows it, as do I.”
“I can’t chase after criminals in a wheelchair.”
“I know.” Lisbon responded. “But you can do paperwork, unless you can’t move your hands either.” Lisbon mimicked the motion of signing paperwork.
Cho met her gaze. “Thank you, boss, but no thank you.” Lisbon opened her mouth to argue with him; she didn’t want to lose one of her best agents, paralyzed for life or not. “You need four capable agents to arrest criminals and babysit Jane, Lisbon. You don’t need one in a wheelchair.” Cho seemed at peace with his decision, but that didn’t mean she believed him.
“If you change your mind…” Lisbon started, a few moments later.
“I won’t.” Cho replied. “But if I change my mind, I’ll give you a call.” Both of them shared a small smile and Lisbon knew nothing would be the same after this. The Serious Crimes Unit, while still filled with Jane, Van Pelt and Rigsby, wouldn’t be the same without Cho. “How angry is the CBI about the vehicle damages?” Lisbon hid her surprise. She hadn’t thought Cho knew or remembered that much from the accident, but she felt the need to answer him anyway.
“They aren’t angry; they’re more worried about you.” Lisbon answered. “Although, last I heard: Bertram wanted to dock the pay from Jane’s paycheck.” Cho seemed less uncomfortable with the topic-although, it was hard to tell as he liked to be stoic-which made Lisbon want to steer away from the darker topics of work and his injury.
“Better his than mine; do you know how much insurance is going to charge me for this?” Cho asked her and Lisbon chuckled again. “While on the subject of Jane though, he came to visit me yesterday.” Lisbon nodded; Jane had briefly dropped by her office to say that he was going to see Cho. “He said you blamed yourself for my…” Cho trailed off and under her breath, Lisbon cursed Jane out. Those words had been said to him under the strictest of confidences. “This isn’t your fault, but I want you to find the bastard that did this to me.”
“We will.” Lisbon told him. The Placerville PD had refused to share the case with the CBI, but that had never stopped them from working a case before. She kept her eyes focused on Cho, who seemed as if he had something he wanted to say and she waited patiently for him to talk again.
“I don’t remember much about what got me here. The doctor said it’s a form of amnesia, but I remember that Summer was in the vehicle with me.” Cho stated and Lisbon kept quiet. “I know CI’s and CBI agents aren’t supposed to date, but we are.”
“It’s fine.” Cho was right though; she had jumped on Van Pelt and Rigsby for their relationship, but under the different circumstance, she knew she couldn’t distress him any further than he already was.
“Everybody has been in here to visit: you, Rigsby, Wainwright, Bertram, Darcy, Van Pelt and even Jane.” Cho continued. Lisbon knew what his question was going to be, even before it formed on his lips and she forced herself to continue glancing at him. “Why hasn’t Summer?”
Lisbon tried to shrug off his question. “I don’t know. We haven’t seen her lately.” Of course, that was a lie.
Summer Edgecombe had been the only casualty and her death had been moments prior to the bomb destroying both of their lives via a sniper weapon. Cho, whether he would believe it later or not, had been the lucky one as Summer’s body was still being found days later at the crime scene.
If Cho knew she was lying, he never called her out on it.
But he did ask her to leave and she left him without a single word.
Naked and under the warm comforter in Teresa’s dark bedroom, Red John felt Teresa’s head on his chest. The slender brunette had clung to him from the moment her feet had crossed the threshold into her bedroom, as Teresa had been upset from her earlier visit with Cho. After almost thirty minutes of listening to the woman try to calm herself down, Red John had brought her a glass of milk laced with a sleeping pill and she had fallen asleep shortly afterwards.
He didn’t enjoy drugging her as the last thing he wanted was her body to become addicted to the drugs he used, but he could only take so much of her blabbering nonsense before he grew agitated.
Although Teresa was hurting and saddened by what she couldn’t fix, it didn’t change the fact that he was beyond happy with the destruction that his plans and accomplices had accomplished. Red John knew that a bomb would change things, but he had never anticipated on the amount of things that one car bomb would have brought about.
Cho had the quit the CBI, which put the Serious Crimes Unit down a leader. Of course, Teresa was the official leader-the Senior Agent Teresa Lisbon on her door said as much-but Red John had learned from watching them all that Cho was the most logical person, aside from Teresa, on the unit. Without the second-in-command, Red John knew, the entire unit would slowly fall apart as Teresa’s head wasn’t in her work at the moment and nobody else on the unit had the abilities to lead the team from the metaphorical ashes.
Aside from the professional destruction though, the bomb had practically made Cho useless; the man couldn’t move, let alone, control his bladder without the use of some help. Red John wondered if suicide had crossed the stoic agent’s mind without being promoted. He had subtly slipped the idea to Cho in his hospital room on his first visit and if Cho chose to end his life, his suicide would do so much more to the team that if the bomb had just killed him.
Teresa had also told him earlier that Cho had asked about his girlfriend, Summer and it taken almost every dark memory from his childhood to suppress the smile her words had brought him. Dawson’s idea to shoot Summer dead had been a brilliant one as Cho would forever have the blood of his tramp on his hands, before she had been blown into tiny pieces and scattered all over the property of the gas station. Red John envied the nurse or doctor, who would eventually inform Cho that Summer had died, because they would see the reaction that Red John wanted to see from every member of the unit: fear, defeat or sorrow.
In the darkness, Red John continued to smile. He had ruined Cho’s life, killed his little blonde tramp and in his opinions, things kept getting better and better.
Teresa blamed herself for the state Cho was in, which amused him highly. Indirectly, she had been the one to detonate the bomb-a last minute change to the plan that he had thought of, as he had stepped into her office-and what had made it even better was that Darcy had seen it happen. When Patrick got caught for being Red John, Teresa would go down with him as an accomplice and while that was a true pity, he had uses for Teresa long after her job abandoned her and Patrick was long gone.
Red John’s smile became a grimace. He almost hated that he wouldn’t be around to watch Teresa fall apart after she realized that the man she had fallen in love with was Red John, the serial killer that they been hunting for years, but he knew his time as Patrick was coming to an end.
The Placerville Police Department would eventually find the owner of the sniper gun used to kill Summer and when they found the recently deceased Greg Dawson-a red smiley shimmering above his massacred body-someone would make the connection that the shooting and the bomb were related to Red John. The FBI would probably be called in and Darcy would place a high amount of suspicion on him again and if that happened, he would never be able to swap back with Patrick.
Besides Cho and Teresa, Red John refocused his thoughts again; Rigsby and Grace had taken the loss pretty hard as well. Rigsby had lost his work partner and best friend, which kept the man continuously distracted at work out of worry while Grace had spent the last few days absolutely mortified and on the verge of tears.
Even in her teary state of panic, the redheaded agent had spent countless hours over the past two days trying to figure out who had been behind the bomb. Red John doubted that she would find anything as she had absolutely nothing to work with, but he had quickly learned that underestimating the work of anybody (especially, the work of a redheaded slut) was a bad idea; the Serious Crimes Unit had, after all, gotten Jared Renfrew out of jail with nothing more than a silly party trick.
Absentmindedly, he petted Teresa’s hair with his hand; the woman, apparently so far gone, did not stir at his touch and he continued to smile.
Either way, if he wanted to slip away unscathed and get back into his own body, Red John knew that he had to mess with that slutty little head of hers.
And what a better way to mess with a slut, he thought with a smirk, than to give them what they truly wanted: a good pounding without consent?
--
Part One - Part Two - Part Three - Part Four - Part Five 1/2 - Part Five 2/2 - Part Six - Part Seven - Part Eight - Part Nine 1/2 - Part Nine 2/2 - Part Ten - Part Eleven - Part Thirteen - Part Fourteen - Part Fifteen - Part Sixteen 1/2 - Part Sixteen 2/2 - Part Seventeen - Part Eighteen - Part Nineteen - Part Twenty 1/2 - Part Twenty 2/2 - Part Twenty-One