"I try to spread my fingers wide enough to let you go."

This is for Kathi-Ann, who thought it would be interesting to see a chapter from Lisbon's POV with the same premise. See chapter two for the quick intro. Hopefully it's okay. Thanks for all of the nice comments on the first one.

Minnow Go, To and Fro

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Teresa Lisbon knew she was helpless. Helpless against his all-consuming need for vengeance.

She had never been someone who had wanted to meddle in another person's affairs. They could do as they wished as long as it didn't harm another person, an innocent person. She knew from experience that meddling, even when well-meaning, led to a convoluted and often painful path.

Still, she couldn't help hoping that Patrick Jane could find some peace, some way to move forward. And even if he couldn't, she wanted him to find a way to live.

Selfish, she supposed. Never had anyone affected her like he had. Against her better judgment and normally steely willpower, Jane had found a way into her life and she couldn't, for the life of her, figure out a way to reverse it. Or even to stop it from getting worse.

It was like a landslide and all she had in defense was an umbrella.

Time and again, she tried to tether him to her world. She tried to warn against his blind vendetta. She tried to get him to see the value in his life.

She couldn't help feeling a little ashamed. Never had she wanted to push someone this much, wanted them to see things her way. In fact, she had always prided herself on her ability to be objective and accepting of others' thoughts and opinions. Sure, she may not agree (a circumstance which sometimes led to the incarceration of others—hey, her job was to uphold society's view of justice).

She couldn't help wanting to grasp onto Jane, wanting to keep him from going to far into the darkness. To keep him from leaving them, leaving her.

She tried to stop. She tried to keep her distance. She tried to leave him be.

But it was as if there was an invisible string connecting them.

She needed to let him go because holding him back, keeping him from his desire, would only chip at the crumbling pieces left of the man he was. And while she didn't want him to continue down the path he had chosen, she found that she couldn't bear to see him decay in front of her eyes.

Still, she couldn't seem to sever that invisible thread. Really, it was a lose-lose situation. For her. And maybe, she thought, for him.

She knew that there would be a time that she would have to let him go. Because sometimes she could see what he was before. Incredible lightness with an intelligence that seemed too large to be in one person. Someone not made to be caged, to be tethered.

She remembered when she was a child, she used to catch minnows in the stream near her family's first house. Her father, back when he could still be called such, would scold her. She would then protest that the stream was too strong, too dangerous for them.

"Teresa, they were made for the stream. Whatever happens, it is the way of the world."

She really hated that term. The way of the world. But she had known he was right. He still was.

And so, as in her childhood, she tried to spread her fingers wide enough to let him go.

She looked out to the bullpen from where she was sitting in her office, seeing him once more as the center of attention, keeping Cho, Rigsby, and Van Pelt hanging on his every word and action. She sighed.

Minnow go, to and fro.