Broken and Scarred (1/1)
Title: Broken and Scarred
Author: tromana
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Jane/Lisbon
Summary: Jane isn't the only one who needs some time to gather his thoughts. Episode tag to 4x10 Fugue In Red.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Notes: Written for little_firestar as a part of the Holiday Fics challenge. The end is in sight!!!
Broken and Scarred
“Why did you do this?”
“Jane, I’m, I’m…”
The words don’t come easily, not anymore. The look in his eyes is of deadly murder. He’s furious and potentially, justifiably so. She hates it whenever he gets that look of rage on his features. But she straightens her back, pulling her spine up until she’s as tall as she can be. Height (or lack thereof) has never been a problem for Lisbon when it comes to asserting her dominance. She has three younger, though significantly taller, brothers to thank for that. Besides, deep down, she knows she’s in the right. That Jane needed reminding of everything he’s lost, who he really is, and who he was. This man, this creature who has been in her life for the past couple of days isn’t Jane. Not the one he once was, tempered by the love he shared with Angela, nor the one she herself is growing increasingly fond of.
“Sorry? Sorry? Is that all you can say?”
“Well what else am I meant to say?” she spits, her anger rising to match his. This is old ground, ancient history. How can she be perpetually sorry for something that happened years ago? Something that she is trying desperately to help him solve? It isn’t fair on her, but then again, when is he ever?
He shakes his head and turns back to face the room. Jane’s pushing her away again, casting her aside in favor of hiding back in his shell. How much damage has this caused? To him, to them? The doctor had told her that she should allow the memories to return of their own accord and instead, she’d chosen to push him in the most brutal manner. But then again, she could tell they were returning. It was only a matter of time. And she couldn’t let him leave, not with that woman who was clearly several sandwiches short of a picnic.
(She didn’t even notice the slight physical resemblance between Tamara and herself - in more than just name alone - mostly because she never has the ability to think like that.)
Tentatively, she reaches out to touch him, to offer him some sort of comfort. Instead, she stops just short. She’s aware of just how unwelcome she is here. This house, this shell of a home, is his own private enclave. He uses it to escape from the realities and subsume himself in guilt whenever he believes he isn’t suffering enough. Nobody is meant to trespass here; even his attic room, back at the CBI headquarters doesn’t offer that kind of privacy to him. Figuratively, she is disturbing the dust, rattling the ghosts, when she should be anywhere but here.
However, this isn’t the first time she’s been to his home, just the first time she’s actively chosen to come here. It’s been years, literally, since she last stood at the top of this staircase, as a young agent, recently hired by the CBI, still a little green behind the ears, hoping to rise quickly through the ranks. (Something, which she’s very proud to say, that she has succeeded in doing.) After all, working for an investigative unit such as this one is poles apart from anything she did with the San Francisco Police Department, and before that. Yes, she may have managed to come across some relatively big cases, back then, but ever since joining the CBI, her work before has long since been eclipsed.
She had felt like she was invading back then and she feels the same right now. This had been her first big murder scene and she hadn’t been sure how to handle. It rankles, more than she cares to admit, to know that Red John is still on the loose, that he still hasn’t been stopped, one way or another.
Red John.
They still haven’t had that talk, the one they should have shared a month or so ago. The one they desperately needed since Panzer had been found brutally murdered (off MO) by the serial killer. Lisbon had tried to corner him, tried to make him explain how he’d known that Carter wasn’t Red John, but Jane had always managed to slip through her fingers, uncannily so. Then again, being Jane, she doesn’t find that surprising.
Part of her aches to take advantage of the situation now. The ball is very clearly in her court as he, uncharacteristically silently, stares onwards, now almost oblivious to her presence. Instead, she turns on her heels and heads downstairs. It feels wrong to abuse her position right now.
Besides, this is Jane. He’s more than her consultant. More than just a friend, even. What he is, she cannot quite be sure. For some reason, it feels far safer just to ignore it than to try and give him something as silly as a label. Knowing him, he’d just find a way to subvert it anyway. That’s what he does best.
There’s a chill to the air when she steps outside and she shivers slightly. Though she’s wearing her work clothes and usually, she finds that’s enough, for some reason it just isn’t. Quickly, she disregards it and contemplates heading to her car. Instead, she pads her way around to the back of the house. She’s not really heading anywhere in particular, but for some reason the sea is luring her in. It doesn’t matter that it’s nighttime, that’s not a reason for her to avoid heading there. Any childish fear of the dark had long since been beaten out of her (quite literally, in some respects).
The ocean is a place she’s always associated with change. The water never ceases to move; you cannot step in the same sea or river twice. That should, in a way, feel threatening, but not to Lisbon. Without change, things stagnate and that can lead to disaster.
Something that Jane is heading towards pretty damn fast.
After all, he’s running around in circles when it comes to Red John. Whenever they think they’ve gotten a break, two steps closer or even closed the damn case, a curve ball is thrown, sending them straight back to square one. And each time it happens, Jane changes and stays the same in equal measures. It’s like he’s adjusting to the fact that he’ll never catch Red John, will always be on this never ending quest and will never achieve the closure he so desperately craves. He gets angrier and angrier, sadder and sadder and then what?
She thinks they’re getting closer, but is it a real friendship, relationship, connection, whatever? Or is it just his way of keeping grounded with reality or simply staying sane? Is that all she is to him?
With a despondent sigh, she flops into a chair. The padding is moldy, damp, from years of exposure to the elements and no care whatsoever, but it doesn’t bother her. Lisbon needs to sit down, to think, to try and work out what the hell is going on. Jane isn’t the only one with problems since his near-drowning. It changes things, for all of them. Not just him. Tentatively, she props her elbow up on the table, trying not to think about the ghosts that linger around this place. Jane is doing more than enough of that for the both of them. Resting her head on her hands, she listens at the waves crashing beneath her, tries desperately to absorb herself in the sound.
The nagging sense of guilt still refuses to go away, however. Did she like the Jane that had been thrust upon her by this incident? No, of course she didn’t, just as Van Pelt hadn’t, either. That had been a Jane that hadn’t been tempered by his wife (forgotten, repressed by the incident to prevent his mind from being subsumed by the stress), nor Red John. Hadn’t been influenced by her team and molded into being a better man. The man he could be, the man he is, which had only been unlocked once he’d learned the error of his ways. That hadn’t been her Jane, nor Angela’s, just a version of him, as he could have been.
And she’d known he’d been a nightmare in his past. Heck, sometimes he is barely tolerable now; therefore it is hardly surprising that he had no moral compass whatsoever when he’d been masquerading as a psychic. Especially so when he didn’t have the love (and conscience) of somebody else to keep him in check.
She lets out a hollow laugh. Is she really the Jiminy Cricket to his Pinocchio? Jane’s certainly mischievous enough to be the little marionette, and evasive too. He is also brutally honest and a nightmare to control. And he’s learning too, slowly, slowly, who he is, who he was, who he can be.
That’s something he’s had to do all over again, over the past few days.
Lisbon cannot help but pity him, and wish that he could just remember so that they could just get on with their lives. Was it cruel of her to use this last ditch attempt to jog his memory, to steal away any potential happiness that he could have if he remained oblivious? A semblance of happiness that he could have had with that woman, Tamara, or was she just as mask too? Would he have just remembered anyway?
After all, the Jane she knows cannot bear not to know anything and his history is a huge thing to remain none-the-wiser about. And anyway, if and when he’d really wanted to, a thirty minute Google search would reveal everything.
And there are worse alternatives. What if Red John struck again, close to home? What if he killed somebody else close to Jane, simply to trigger his memories? (Somebody in this new life he was more than happy to construct, or a member of her team, maybe?) Mental health is a delicate matter and though Lisbon knows full well that he was lucky to recover from his first breakdown, would he manage to do so for a second time?
But surely it’s better this way? More tangible, more real? Webpages can make something seem like a fairytale, like it doesn’t really matter. Like it’s something he can run away from when really, she knows that deep down, running away is the last thing he wants.
But is it? Really? Is she really doing this for his own good, to salvage Jane’s (already debatable) sanity or is she just being selfish?
Whenever he’s tried to leave in the past, she’s fought tooth and nail to keep him on board. Heck, she’s even been more understanding (if not entirely accepting) of her own potential leaving than his. Lisbon knows that a cop with her skills can find a job anywhere (even with a track record like her own, no thanks to Jane himself). But him? Where else will he have the resources in order to ensnare Red John? He’s got the quicksilver mind, but sometimes, and when it comes to Red John, that alone isn’t enough.
All she knows is that if he leaves, she won’t know what to do with herself.
He fits her like an old glove, comfortable, reassuring, always there. She likes having him holding her hand, guiding her through whatever case they’re currently tackling. She needs to have somebody to look after, to babysit, to try and fix.
Besides, there’s nobody else with the sheer patience to be able to do what she does with him. Even the rest of the team have to take it in turns to look after him.
In fact, she’s the only person she knows who can tolerate Patrick Jane in more than just very small doses. Only person that’s alive, that is. Though she never actually saw Angela and their daughter alive (their corpses were enough), she simply assumes that she had the gift too, after all, she never took the opportunity to leave him, did she?
Everybody else accepts his quest for revenge at face value too, even the rest of the team. There’s the old adage of eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, which is a concept everyone understands. They may say the whole world will end up blind, but even the law in California lives by that rule, so who is she to argue?
All she knows is that Jane needs the closure as much as he needs the revenge.
He needs it because without it, it seems physically impossible for him to move on.
And she likes to think that he needs her too. Because he knows that nobody else would show willing and faithfully stick beside him for as long as she has now. She doesn’t need a reason to do so (or more truthfully, she hasn’t actively looked for it), she just does.
That’s why she needed to help him find himself again. To save him from himself.
And to make sure she’s always there to pick up the pieces whenever he can’t. It’s all she feels capable of doing, these days.
Footsteps disturb her from her reverie and quickly, Lisbon jerks her head off the table to look. She hadn’t particularly noticed, but her thoughts had sent her drifting off into that delicious space between sleep and wakefulness. Sometimes (or often?) her job has its downsides and one of them is the perpetual lack of sleep. There’s no rest for the wicked, nor for those who dedicate their lives to catching them.
“Teresa?”
Her heart almost sinks when she hears him use her forename. Has he regressed again? Actively buried the thoughts back down because he doesn’t want to dare deal with them?
Wordlessly, she motions to the seat beside her, but she suspects that he doesn’t need the offer to sit to do so anyway. Besides, it’s his property, not her own. He can do as he pleases with it and he (the old him?) chooses to keep hold of it and allow it to remain a time capsule. Even his daughter’s tricycle still litters the lounge, as it would have done when she was still alive to play with it.
“I could have been happy.”
“I know.”
“Why did you do it?”
This time, it’s her turn to give a wordless, noncommittal shrug. How can she phrase it, if she barely understands it herself? The thoughts are still jumbled up. All she knows is that they both need him to be back to normal, fully back to his senses. There’s a reason they’ve worked together for so long and that’s because they just complement one another.
He falls into a contemplative silence and she does the same. She suspects that he already knows that she believes he wouldn’t have been truly happy, living a half-life. That he knows that her feelings for him run way deeper than they should. (Though, he’d even worked that one out by doing a cold-reading of her, shortly after he’d regained consciousness.) That she believes she’s the only one with half a chance to help him through whatever it is he needs helping with.
Lisbon takes a deep breath, almost relishing in the salty wind. They can’t see the sea, it’s far too dark for that, but they can still tell it’s there. Kind of like the distance between them. The problems they share and the ones they choose not to. The things they tell one another, and those they don’t need to. What they’re slowly hurtling towards, however much they try to push it aside and try to deny it.
Even this latest scare has done nothing to dampen that, it seems.
“Lisbon?”
That eventual use of her surname, along with his interrupting of the waves, actually takes her off-guard. She jolts slightly and he grins in response. It takes all of her self-control to resist hitting him. The anger management course that LaRoche had forced her to endure had had some effect on her, it seems.
“Yes, Jane?”
“Thank you.”
She furrows her brow. “What for?”
He simply shrugs in response and she remains, irritatingly, oblivious. Jane covers her hand with his own and, (rather annoyingly) her heart skips a beat. Lisbon knows now that she has her Jane back and secretly, she’s pleased. But equally, she cannot help but wonder if there is still some sort of damage lying underneath, if there’s something he’s not telling her. He may be good at telling the truth, especially when you don’t want to hear it, but he’s equally good at concealment, too.
But really, what more can she expect from him?
Besides, this is better than nothing at all.
Author: tromana
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Jane/Lisbon
Summary: Jane isn't the only one who needs some time to gather his thoughts. Episode tag to 4x10 Fugue In Red.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Notes: Written for little_firestar as a part of the Holiday Fics challenge. The end is in sight!!!
Broken and Scarred
“Why did you do this?”
“Jane, I’m, I’m…”
The words don’t come easily, not anymore. The look in his eyes is of deadly murder. He’s furious and potentially, justifiably so. She hates it whenever he gets that look of rage on his features. But she straightens her back, pulling her spine up until she’s as tall as she can be. Height (or lack thereof) has never been a problem for Lisbon when it comes to asserting her dominance. She has three younger, though significantly taller, brothers to thank for that. Besides, deep down, she knows she’s in the right. That Jane needed reminding of everything he’s lost, who he really is, and who he was. This man, this creature who has been in her life for the past couple of days isn’t Jane. Not the one he once was, tempered by the love he shared with Angela, nor the one she herself is growing increasingly fond of.
“Sorry? Sorry? Is that all you can say?”
“Well what else am I meant to say?” she spits, her anger rising to match his. This is old ground, ancient history. How can she be perpetually sorry for something that happened years ago? Something that she is trying desperately to help him solve? It isn’t fair on her, but then again, when is he ever?
He shakes his head and turns back to face the room. Jane’s pushing her away again, casting her aside in favor of hiding back in his shell. How much damage has this caused? To him, to them? The doctor had told her that she should allow the memories to return of their own accord and instead, she’d chosen to push him in the most brutal manner. But then again, she could tell they were returning. It was only a matter of time. And she couldn’t let him leave, not with that woman who was clearly several sandwiches short of a picnic.
(She didn’t even notice the slight physical resemblance between Tamara and herself - in more than just name alone - mostly because she never has the ability to think like that.)
Tentatively, she reaches out to touch him, to offer him some sort of comfort. Instead, she stops just short. She’s aware of just how unwelcome she is here. This house, this shell of a home, is his own private enclave. He uses it to escape from the realities and subsume himself in guilt whenever he believes he isn’t suffering enough. Nobody is meant to trespass here; even his attic room, back at the CBI headquarters doesn’t offer that kind of privacy to him. Figuratively, she is disturbing the dust, rattling the ghosts, when she should be anywhere but here.
However, this isn’t the first time she’s been to his home, just the first time she’s actively chosen to come here. It’s been years, literally, since she last stood at the top of this staircase, as a young agent, recently hired by the CBI, still a little green behind the ears, hoping to rise quickly through the ranks. (Something, which she’s very proud to say, that she has succeeded in doing.) After all, working for an investigative unit such as this one is poles apart from anything she did with the San Francisco Police Department, and before that. Yes, she may have managed to come across some relatively big cases, back then, but ever since joining the CBI, her work before has long since been eclipsed.
She had felt like she was invading back then and she feels the same right now. This had been her first big murder scene and she hadn’t been sure how to handle. It rankles, more than she cares to admit, to know that Red John is still on the loose, that he still hasn’t been stopped, one way or another.
Red John.
They still haven’t had that talk, the one they should have shared a month or so ago. The one they desperately needed since Panzer had been found brutally murdered (off MO) by the serial killer. Lisbon had tried to corner him, tried to make him explain how he’d known that Carter wasn’t Red John, but Jane had always managed to slip through her fingers, uncannily so. Then again, being Jane, she doesn’t find that surprising.
Part of her aches to take advantage of the situation now. The ball is very clearly in her court as he, uncharacteristically silently, stares onwards, now almost oblivious to her presence. Instead, she turns on her heels and heads downstairs. It feels wrong to abuse her position right now.
Besides, this is Jane. He’s more than her consultant. More than just a friend, even. What he is, she cannot quite be sure. For some reason, it feels far safer just to ignore it than to try and give him something as silly as a label. Knowing him, he’d just find a way to subvert it anyway. That’s what he does best.
There’s a chill to the air when she steps outside and she shivers slightly. Though she’s wearing her work clothes and usually, she finds that’s enough, for some reason it just isn’t. Quickly, she disregards it and contemplates heading to her car. Instead, she pads her way around to the back of the house. She’s not really heading anywhere in particular, but for some reason the sea is luring her in. It doesn’t matter that it’s nighttime, that’s not a reason for her to avoid heading there. Any childish fear of the dark had long since been beaten out of her (quite literally, in some respects).
The ocean is a place she’s always associated with change. The water never ceases to move; you cannot step in the same sea or river twice. That should, in a way, feel threatening, but not to Lisbon. Without change, things stagnate and that can lead to disaster.
Something that Jane is heading towards pretty damn fast.
After all, he’s running around in circles when it comes to Red John. Whenever they think they’ve gotten a break, two steps closer or even closed the damn case, a curve ball is thrown, sending them straight back to square one. And each time it happens, Jane changes and stays the same in equal measures. It’s like he’s adjusting to the fact that he’ll never catch Red John, will always be on this never ending quest and will never achieve the closure he so desperately craves. He gets angrier and angrier, sadder and sadder and then what?
She thinks they’re getting closer, but is it a real friendship, relationship, connection, whatever? Or is it just his way of keeping grounded with reality or simply staying sane? Is that all she is to him?
With a despondent sigh, she flops into a chair. The padding is moldy, damp, from years of exposure to the elements and no care whatsoever, but it doesn’t bother her. Lisbon needs to sit down, to think, to try and work out what the hell is going on. Jane isn’t the only one with problems since his near-drowning. It changes things, for all of them. Not just him. Tentatively, she props her elbow up on the table, trying not to think about the ghosts that linger around this place. Jane is doing more than enough of that for the both of them. Resting her head on her hands, she listens at the waves crashing beneath her, tries desperately to absorb herself in the sound.
The nagging sense of guilt still refuses to go away, however. Did she like the Jane that had been thrust upon her by this incident? No, of course she didn’t, just as Van Pelt hadn’t, either. That had been a Jane that hadn’t been tempered by his wife (forgotten, repressed by the incident to prevent his mind from being subsumed by the stress), nor Red John. Hadn’t been influenced by her team and molded into being a better man. The man he could be, the man he is, which had only been unlocked once he’d learned the error of his ways. That hadn’t been her Jane, nor Angela’s, just a version of him, as he could have been.
And she’d known he’d been a nightmare in his past. Heck, sometimes he is barely tolerable now; therefore it is hardly surprising that he had no moral compass whatsoever when he’d been masquerading as a psychic. Especially so when he didn’t have the love (and conscience) of somebody else to keep him in check.
She lets out a hollow laugh. Is she really the Jiminy Cricket to his Pinocchio? Jane’s certainly mischievous enough to be the little marionette, and evasive too. He is also brutally honest and a nightmare to control. And he’s learning too, slowly, slowly, who he is, who he was, who he can be.
That’s something he’s had to do all over again, over the past few days.
Lisbon cannot help but pity him, and wish that he could just remember so that they could just get on with their lives. Was it cruel of her to use this last ditch attempt to jog his memory, to steal away any potential happiness that he could have if he remained oblivious? A semblance of happiness that he could have had with that woman, Tamara, or was she just as mask too? Would he have just remembered anyway?
After all, the Jane she knows cannot bear not to know anything and his history is a huge thing to remain none-the-wiser about. And anyway, if and when he’d really wanted to, a thirty minute Google search would reveal everything.
And there are worse alternatives. What if Red John struck again, close to home? What if he killed somebody else close to Jane, simply to trigger his memories? (Somebody in this new life he was more than happy to construct, or a member of her team, maybe?) Mental health is a delicate matter and though Lisbon knows full well that he was lucky to recover from his first breakdown, would he manage to do so for a second time?
But surely it’s better this way? More tangible, more real? Webpages can make something seem like a fairytale, like it doesn’t really matter. Like it’s something he can run away from when really, she knows that deep down, running away is the last thing he wants.
But is it? Really? Is she really doing this for his own good, to salvage Jane’s (already debatable) sanity or is she just being selfish?
Whenever he’s tried to leave in the past, she’s fought tooth and nail to keep him on board. Heck, she’s even been more understanding (if not entirely accepting) of her own potential leaving than his. Lisbon knows that a cop with her skills can find a job anywhere (even with a track record like her own, no thanks to Jane himself). But him? Where else will he have the resources in order to ensnare Red John? He’s got the quicksilver mind, but sometimes, and when it comes to Red John, that alone isn’t enough.
All she knows is that if he leaves, she won’t know what to do with herself.
He fits her like an old glove, comfortable, reassuring, always there. She likes having him holding her hand, guiding her through whatever case they’re currently tackling. She needs to have somebody to look after, to babysit, to try and fix.
Besides, there’s nobody else with the sheer patience to be able to do what she does with him. Even the rest of the team have to take it in turns to look after him.
In fact, she’s the only person she knows who can tolerate Patrick Jane in more than just very small doses. Only person that’s alive, that is. Though she never actually saw Angela and their daughter alive (their corpses were enough), she simply assumes that she had the gift too, after all, she never took the opportunity to leave him, did she?
Everybody else accepts his quest for revenge at face value too, even the rest of the team. There’s the old adage of eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, which is a concept everyone understands. They may say the whole world will end up blind, but even the law in California lives by that rule, so who is she to argue?
All she knows is that Jane needs the closure as much as he needs the revenge.
He needs it because without it, it seems physically impossible for him to move on.
And she likes to think that he needs her too. Because he knows that nobody else would show willing and faithfully stick beside him for as long as she has now. She doesn’t need a reason to do so (or more truthfully, she hasn’t actively looked for it), she just does.
That’s why she needed to help him find himself again. To save him from himself.
And to make sure she’s always there to pick up the pieces whenever he can’t. It’s all she feels capable of doing, these days.
Footsteps disturb her from her reverie and quickly, Lisbon jerks her head off the table to look. She hadn’t particularly noticed, but her thoughts had sent her drifting off into that delicious space between sleep and wakefulness. Sometimes (or often?) her job has its downsides and one of them is the perpetual lack of sleep. There’s no rest for the wicked, nor for those who dedicate their lives to catching them.
“Teresa?”
Her heart almost sinks when she hears him use her forename. Has he regressed again? Actively buried the thoughts back down because he doesn’t want to dare deal with them?
Wordlessly, she motions to the seat beside her, but she suspects that he doesn’t need the offer to sit to do so anyway. Besides, it’s his property, not her own. He can do as he pleases with it and he (the old him?) chooses to keep hold of it and allow it to remain a time capsule. Even his daughter’s tricycle still litters the lounge, as it would have done when she was still alive to play with it.
“I could have been happy.”
“I know.”
“Why did you do it?”
This time, it’s her turn to give a wordless, noncommittal shrug. How can she phrase it, if she barely understands it herself? The thoughts are still jumbled up. All she knows is that they both need him to be back to normal, fully back to his senses. There’s a reason they’ve worked together for so long and that’s because they just complement one another.
He falls into a contemplative silence and she does the same. She suspects that he already knows that she believes he wouldn’t have been truly happy, living a half-life. That he knows that her feelings for him run way deeper than they should. (Though, he’d even worked that one out by doing a cold-reading of her, shortly after he’d regained consciousness.) That she believes she’s the only one with half a chance to help him through whatever it is he needs helping with.
Lisbon takes a deep breath, almost relishing in the salty wind. They can’t see the sea, it’s far too dark for that, but they can still tell it’s there. Kind of like the distance between them. The problems they share and the ones they choose not to. The things they tell one another, and those they don’t need to. What they’re slowly hurtling towards, however much they try to push it aside and try to deny it.
Even this latest scare has done nothing to dampen that, it seems.
“Lisbon?”
That eventual use of her surname, along with his interrupting of the waves, actually takes her off-guard. She jolts slightly and he grins in response. It takes all of her self-control to resist hitting him. The anger management course that LaRoche had forced her to endure had had some effect on her, it seems.
“Yes, Jane?”
“Thank you.”
She furrows her brow. “What for?”
He simply shrugs in response and she remains, irritatingly, oblivious. Jane covers her hand with his own and, (rather annoyingly) her heart skips a beat. Lisbon knows now that she has her Jane back and secretly, she’s pleased. But equally, she cannot help but wonder if there is still some sort of damage lying underneath, if there’s something he’s not telling her. He may be good at telling the truth, especially when you don’t want to hear it, but he’s equally good at concealment, too.
But really, what more can she expect from him?
Besides, this is better than nothing at all.