AN: Here I am, again! So this is a new territory for me, I want to try an AU story (multi-chapter).. I know this is totally AU, more or less, but it will have a lot of TM aspects, the characters are basically the same for example, so give it a try, please!

The penetrating wind kept pricking her skin like an eternal reminder of the failure she had just experimented; she tightened the coat around her to feel a sort of alternative comfort, while pondering, almost amused, about how funerals were always all windy and gloomy, even in Sacramento. She hated funerals, who loved them anyway, but for her, for a woman who had learnt to suffer and to grow up at the same time, funerals were just a way to remind her that the pain was never over, that it was an eternal vicious circle. She used to travel with her mind during funerals, thinking about the most funny and absurd things, what to cook for dinner, what color to dye her hair or better, how to find the courage to do it and how many episodes of her favorite crime show she needed to catch up. Suddenly, a hand on her shoulder stopped her train of pleasant and totally amiss thoughts.

"Boss, it wasn't your fault." An Asian man, half stoicism half charm told her.

"Thanks, Kimball." She smiled, trying to stop that stubborn tear ready to drop from her eye.

Not here, not in front of everybody, Teresa.

Melissa Hasting had been her confidential informant until three days ago; until she had found the young girl strangled on a dark road of Sacramento. She had promised to protect her, to give her a promising future like she was able to do that anyway. She had failed and this failure hurt more than the previous ones somehow. Teresa Lisbon had no children, she wasn't even sure she wanted one someday, but she had this natural empathy toward desperate and hopeless people, maybe because she was one of them, even if her badge and her confident posture could suggest the contrary. She loved to hide herself behind this image, this shield built involuntary that could keep her away from dealing with her demons. She loved this false concept that people had of her. She loved the fact that nobody knew who she really was, that was the only thing that made her feel special, proud somehow.

What a bitter consolation.

"Agent Lisbon, a word!" Her boss, Virgin Minelli told her. She was relieved to follow him in a more private corner, relieved because she knew that with him she could lower her barriers a little without being judged and mostly, without surprising him much.

"You couldn't do anything more, Teresa." He said, extracting a cigarette from his pocket.

"Don't." She said, taking the cigarette from him. "Come on, don't look at me like a wounded puppy." She said, throwing the cigarette while some silent tears was leaving her eyes. " I screwed up everything, Virgil."

"No, you didn't! Look, it's a very hard case, don't give up now! We already have a new lead, Melissa found something before dying, your agents Rigsby and Van Pelt are already on it and.."

"I should go to check, then!" She interrupted him.

"No way! You're going home right now! Call Marcus and spend the evening with him, how are things going on between you two anyway.. what is it, a year?"

"Ten months.. and yes fine, I guess." She answered, hoping to change the subject immediately.

"I'm happy for you, you deserve to have someone.."

"Oh cut the crap, Virgil." She said, maybe too sharply. "Sorry." She added soon after.

"Go home." He said, squeezing her shoulder.

"Call me if there's anything new."

"I will."

The truth was that the Red bull case was consuming her, slowly but inexorably; a drug case had the power, this infinite power, to drag you in the dark with its constant and stubborn presence. Sometimes Lisbon felt dirty and incredible wrong. The Red bull was the first place where everything had started, a dusty traditional pub full of drunken motorcyclists; that place had totally misled them. This sick traffic of drug was different from the usual ones or better from the most common ones. It involved young girls, aspirant models most of all, desperately addicted to these magic pills able to make you lose pounds and be high at the same time, a really lucky combo in that outrageous world, not understandable to her eyes, that had already killed five of them without leaving tracks. Melissa was one of those skinny, too skinny, girls that she had tried to save at all costs.

Lisbon wasn't surprised to find Marcus who was waiting for her at home, two glasses of red wine in his hand, like he had been ready for her arrival until now. He seemed like an empty puppet, an attractive empty puppet. That thought made her angry and a little disgusted at the same time but she didn't need an argument to complete her glorious day. She kissed him on the mouth, almost mechanically, then she drank the wine in her glass in one gulp, she filled it two times more and emptied it with the same velocity. Marcus looked at her almost incredulous, she bite his earlobe in response and whispered in his ear seductively, "I want to have fun tonight."

Find comfort in sex after a terrible day, she was incredibly foregone sometimes but she didn't care at the moment or at least she kept telling herself that. They had sex two times that night, there wasn't nothing sweet or remotely sentimental in it; she reflected how her best sexual encounters with Marcus were always with her drunk or angry. Maybe because she didn't love him and she was pretty sure that he didn't love her, even because he didn't know her, not at all. He loved that image of her he had built in his mind and she was ok with that; it wasn't like she needed love in her life anyway. She believed that love was not for everyone, some people born to be alone, to marry solitude and to actually enjoy it sometimes. She was one of them; she had never been in love in her whole life, she was thirty-two and she didn't know what love was.

Marcus happened because Virgil made him happen. He was his grandson and when the old man introduced him to her, she knew that something would have happened. Sometimes she thought about the fact that she had started this relationship more to satisfy his boss. The sex wasn't bad though, he was an attractive man and she didn't need to tell the story about how much pain she had already met in her difficult life. There was this silent accord between them to keep their relationship on a superficial level and she was happy with it. Marcus anyway didn't seem interested in finding out the spectra of her life and that made her feel even more insignificant somehow. The man in question was busy in giving her another wave of pleasure with his fingers when her phone rang suddenly.

"Lisbon." She said, extracting her body from the man behind her.

"Boss, we've found something." A female voice informed her.

"Talk, Van Pelt!"

"It seems like we've found a plausible place involved in the traffic."

"Where it is?" She asked, pushing away Marcus who was trying another approach, he was surely attracted to her at least, maybe too much.

"it's a photography studio, but Boss, you can't imagine which studio it is!"

"What?" She asked impatiently.

"Patrick Jane's studio, Boss!" She answered, almost excited.

"Wait, I've already heard that name." Lisbon said.

"Are you kidding me?" The Agent seemed almost offended by her lack of knowledge. "Boss, he's like the most famous and brilliant fashion photographer in the States!"

"He has been investigated for something, am I right?" She asked.

"Yes, but nothing proved him guilty anyway." She replied victorious.

"Ok, I'll visit him in the morning, I guess."

"Can I come with you, Boss? I mean, if you want."

She hadn't the strength to analyze her suspicious enthusiasm, she was too tired and too drunk for it, "sure, see you tomorrow! Night Van Pelt!" She hung up the phone.

Patrick Jane was tired of being a photographer, or better of photographing models; now, with his hands busy with his loyal photo camera, his eyes tired of seeing the same expressions, the same winks and mouths half open every day, he was cursing himself, wondering when and where his life had taken that turning point. His life, if that life could be still defined as his at that point.

The price of notoriety, someone could say.

Everyone knew about his tragedy, about the love of his life, Angela, taken away from him with a car accident; nobody knew that he was the one driving though. He had found love once and he wasn't interested in finding it again, especially because he was too coward to face that possible pain that love would have comported, not another time. He had been a great photographer once, he had started a collaboration with National Geographic and other important magazines but then, that tragedy had taken away his dreams and ambitions; he simply didn't care anymore or better he didn't have the strength to collect the pieces. He couldn't stop to make photos though, it was his personal way to approach the world; in some indigenous tribes, people believed that photos could steal your soul or pieces of it, it was totally absurd and insane but he loved this theory too much. He loved to think of being able to read people, their mysteries, fears and secrets just with a pic, that's why he didn't want to be photographed , it was too dangerous and intimate.

Besides, the camera was his personal weapon and shield, he loved too much hiding himself behind it.

He started to photograph the women he took in bed, all beautiful and perfectly shaped, thing not really surprising, considering his own aspect ; He knew too well the effect he had on women, he enjoyed that sensation because he liked being and thinking superficial somehow, it was the only way to survive for him, like a breath of fresh air or a way to turn off his pretentious brain . Every time he slept with a new woman though, he closed his eyes for a minute or two, pretending the woman in question was Angela, then, he made them sleep in his bed because he was a gentleman or he liked thinking of that and he said them goodbye the day after without never calling them back. No one had never interrupted this routine, no one would have done it in the future, it was simply impossible. He looked at the girl in front of him, Cindy or something, who was trying to flirt with him during the whole photo shoot.. normally, he would have invited her at dinner and he would have tried to seduce her the same day but he had promised to start to be more selective lately. He ignored her sloppy words and kept doing his job, when Summer, his secretary, entered in the room.

"Patrick, we have visits." She said, trying to find his eyes behind the photo camera.

"I'm busy, Sum!" He replied without stopping.

The girl reached him and whispered, "it's the police."

This caught his attention and he told the girl to make them come in. "Don't worry honey, keep smiling like that." He said to the model in front of him, then, the moment the door opened, looking in the lens of his camera, he found something interesting in the background, or better, someone interesting. It was a woman, a thin and not very tall woman, not at all tall to be honest, but she had an incredibly charisma anyway. He made zoom on her delicate face and found her grumpy look adorable. He focused on her eyes, maybe because they were powerful like a magnet; he smiled behind the photo camera wondering if he had ever found a pair of eyes like those. She had freckles painted on her pale skin, she seemed a little doll, a pissed one though, and this contrast made her irresistible to his eyes. He kept looking at her through the photo camera until she was a few step from him, then he lowered it and the intensity of seeing her, without barriers, confounded him a little.

She was strangely stunning.

"Mister Jane, I'm Agent Teresa Lisbon with the CBI, can I speak with you in private?" She asked secure.

He looked at her with a depth that made her uncomfortable but she didn't look away.

"Teresa, did you have sex last night?" He asked, never leaving her eyes.

"Excuse me?" She snapped back, incredulous.

"I'm sorry, really, but you have this incredible brightness in your eyes, you know.. you could light up a whole room with them.. they call it afterglove, so I heard." He said, smiling. "I bet you are not totally satisfied though, you haven't been neither a little smug for my words and you don't seem easy to please in bed, I could-"

His words were interrupted by a sonorous slap in his face.

"You know, I'm very easy to please sometimes, Mr Jane and yes, I feel totally smug right now." She said, crossing her arms and looking at him.

Ok, so.. are you interested in this story? Did you like the beginning?