This chapter was the hardest to write so far. I'm still not sure I got their emotions across so I'd be glad to hear what people think.
"I believe that everything happens for a reason," said Van Pelt, prim and proper in her desk chair, never taking her eyes off her computer screen.
Conversations were one of the major ways Jane could get the team off their assigned lines for the day, and so he spent a large amount of time poking and prodding the team members. There were few secrets left uncovered during these conversations.
"Nonsense," replied Jane. Leave it to Van Pelt to take a simple question he posed and answer it with her own metaphysical twist.
"Aren't you the one who always says there're no coincidences?" asked Lisbon, unable to keep herself from commenting as she walked out of her office.
"In murder investigations," said Jane to Lisbon. "Completely different set of circumstances."
"What if they're more similar than you thought?" Van Pelt interjected. "You might not look back at this day as the turning point in some part of your life, but something you thought insignificant at the time could change your viewpoint just slightly and change you. Forever."
"Is this what your yoga instructor tells you to get you to go to class every week?"
Van Pelt looked uncomfortable.
"Twice a week?"
She squirmed under his scrutiny even more.
"Oh my, three times a week. She's making a handsome sum from you, Grace."
"My point is that in hindsight, everything fits together. All our choices, all our decisions affect others and ourselves. Even the most random pieces fit together to create our lives."
"Yeah, I mean, that's how Cho got his girlfriend: random events, the right hand of fate played by an old Chinese lady..."
"Shut up Rigsby," said Cho a lethally smooth tone of voice. Rigsby and Van Pelt exchanged looks, and Rigsby mouthed something like "sorry."
"Jane," Van Pelt continued, "let me ask you a question. Do you believe in anything bigger than yourself?"
"Not that I can think of," lied Jane smoothly, "except perhaps for revenge."
In the end, lies blinded Jane to the obvious truth. Jane had spent a substantial amount of time of his life lying. As he didn't hold much with lies to soften or obscure the truth, there were two main types of lies he told: lies to uncover the truth and lies to hide it. The former gave him black eyes, bloody noses, and a paycheck every month. The latter were ones that he believed to be true.
If Jane had stopped believing his own lies, he would've seen how the torture he was currently going through was of his own making. By rationalizing his attempts to save Lisbon as attempts to save himself, he was stuck in this day forever, watching Groundhog Day during the night and scoffing at the romantic plotline, watching over Lisbon during the day, trying to be proactive yet in reality powerless. His breakthrough would not come easily. Lies you tell yourself are very hard to disprove.
"How about you, Lisbon, do you believe in anything bigger than yourself?" asked Jane, eager for any information, as most of her secrets were still intact.
Lisbon considered for a moment, and then shrugged, "Sometimes I do; other times I don't."
"Interesting."
"Yeah, that word comes up way too often when you're talking to me," Lisbon said with a slight frown. Jane wondered how limited the stock phrases this day had to fit any situation that came up. It was depressing.
"You have that crease in your forehead again," Jane smiled, diverting the conversation into more pleasant channels.
"Ever notice that it mostly happens when I'm talking to you?"
Lisbon unfolded her arms and retreated back into her office. Jane thought for few moments, then followed her, before she had time to lock the door. He walked up to her desk, hands in his pockets, and loomed over her.
"What is it you sometimes believe in?"
"Nothing," she said, looking up at him.
"Oh don't lie to me. You believe in the law; that's for sure. And justice, I know you believe in that. Both of those are the driving forces in your life. Back there, though, you were thinking of something else. What was it?"
Lisbon looked up at him, but still did not speak, her face devoid of reaction for all of Jane's lures. When she finally spoke, however, Jane knew she was speaking the truth, for her eyes betrayed her thoughts.
"Redemption."
There were two flickers of light that Jane would recognize in any given day. One was if he could get the day to deviate from its pattern, even in the most mundane of details. It gave him a sense of control, helped him feel less suffocated by predestined events. The other was if he could keep Lisbon smiling the majority of the day. This hadn't happened yet, but it usually started with bringing her a very strong cup of coffee in the morning and went on from there. Often the mornings were spent getting Lisbon to play his games after he got some caffeine into her.
"Close your eyes," Jane crooned.
"Please not this again," complained Lisbon. "I can't think of any more 20th century presidents, with or without my eyes closed."
"No presidents, no mind reading," Jane reassured her, "just a simple experiment."
Lisbon looked at him, dubious.
"When I ask you a question, all I want you to do is answer with the first thing that pops into your head."
"Fine." Lisbon closed her eyes, knowing there was no arguing with Jane in this sort of mood.
"I want you to imagine the most important person to you. Do you see that person?"
"Yes."
"You know that person is in mortal danger from someone. How do you protect them?"
"Police detail. 24 hour surveillance."
"That fails. They're going to die if you don't do something."
"Um…"
"First thing that comes to mind."
"I protect them myself, no matter what."
"You can't predict everything that's going to happen. You might mess up. One wrong step is all it takes. What do you do?"
"I take their place."
"You take their place?"
At this reaction from Jane, Lisbon couldn't help but open her eyes and study him. What she saw confused her. There was barely concealed shock and horror written on his features.
"I'd die for them. That's what protecting someone no matter what means."
The majority of people who met Patrick Jane saw a man haunted by Red John, by the deaths of his wife and child, by the mistakes that caused those deaths. They were wrong. You cannot be haunted when you are already dead. The dead are not haunted. They haunt. And so Patrick Jane haunted Red John's footsteps—as a wraith, a shadow, insubstantial as smoke dispersed by the wind. But the wind kept forgetting to blow, and Jane still existed. In this case, Jane was for the first time ever haunted by Lisbon's words.
The day began as any other, after a night of insomnia. Jane got up. He ate breakfast. He drove to the CBI. From that point on, he waited. For Jane, this was the hardest part, because he wasn't very patient at all.
Unlike Jane, Lisbon was finding this day normal, which was perfectly fine with her. The case the team got a call for turned out to be routine. What's more, Jane had behaved during the time at the crime scene. No rudeness, no desecrating the bodies, no compromising the crime scene. It was an uneventful, unmemorable day, until Jane decided to pick the lock of the house they had driven to in the early evening.
At that moment, time seemed slow down for Lisbon. Cho went to clear the upstairs, and Lisbon started to move through the house methodically, calling out the suspect's name at intervals. It was not until too late that Lisbon realized Jane was not waiting outside the door like she told him to, and neither was he following her. Lisbon had circled back to the front hallway through the living room and then the dining room, floorboards creaking with each step. Where did that bastard go? She called up to Cho, but there was no answer to her question. Feeling more and more uneasy, she stepped back into the living room, onto the carpet that hid the sound of her steps, and round the corner into the kitchen.
As she entered the kitchen, in the split second she stood there unable to react, she saw a man holding a gun pointed at her. There was no way he could miss—he was too close—and it was a lethal shot. Once the shot fired, there was no turning back. Lisbon knew then that she would die, and all her thoughts were fixed on whether Jane would get out of this house alive or not. As she fell, she did not feel pain. The shot rang out, but she did not bleed.
In front of her, Jane stood where she had stood before he pushed her away, teetering on unsteady legs. As he crumpled to his knees, Lisbon lifted her head to greet the blood beginning to spot Jane's suit on one side. Cho took out the suspect and Lisbon caught Jane as he slumped to the floor. She lowered him to the floor and took off her jacket, fingers catching on the buttons in her haste to get it off, to stem the stain that was spreading with every second that passed. While Cho barked choppy sentences into the phone, Lisbon tore her eyes off the wound, for she could not speak when it clouded her vision. Jane's eyes were snapped shut, and Lisbon saw shock start to take him as she spoke.
"I told you to stay outside. Will you ever listen to me?"
"I listened to you," Jane said, opening his eyes to meet hers. "I finally started listening to you. Just not when you said to stay outside."
Lisbon shook her head in disbelief. The red Jane had started to lend the floor made her swear and shout to Cho, but his reply was not encouraging.
"Damn it, Jane, don't you dare think of dying on me, or—"
"Or what, you'll shoot me?" asked Jane, trying not to wince as he almost laughed.
"Ha, ha," Lisbon deadpanned. Only Jane would try to joke at a time like this. "Seriously, when are you going to get it through your thick skull that I don't need you to save me?"
The look that accompanied these words told Jane what she left unsaid: she didn't think she deserved to be saved.
"Do too."
Lisbon pushed harder on his wound, but the blood kept staining the floor, his vest, her jacket, and it would not stop. Jane took smaller and shorter breaths, trying not to focus on how hard it was beginning to take them.
"Jane!" Lisbon called out to him from what seemed a long distance. "Jane, look at me."
It was all that she could do to keep calm, to do nothing but wait. This was just like Jane, to be selfish and egotistic even as he bled to death.
"We need you, okay? Like you said, we can't cope without you."
Jane's eyes shut, then fluttered open, as if he fought back unconsciousness through sheer willpower. Why did he think it was fine to sacrifice himself, when her life, she realized as the shadows stole the light from his eyes, wouldn't be worth living without him?
"No," Jane said in a quiet, subdued voice. "They have you, Saint Teresa. You're worth much more than I am." To the team, and to him, he realized. It didn't come as a shock to him now, at the end of all things, that he had tried so hard to keep her from dying not because he wanted to escape this hellish day, but because she meant so much to him. Because he loved her.
"I'm not worth more than you, Jane, and if you can't see the value your life has for others, you're a miserable fool."
"Others?" Jane asked, just managing to let out a shaky breath. "Pretty vague word."
Lisbon felt furious that he was intent on deliberately misinterpreting her words and throwing them back at her, empty and lifeless without context. He wanted to drag out what was hidden behind her innocuous words, which she hid behind to keep her strong, which kept her safe from vulnerability, which made her a "saint" without feelings or desires. Fine. He wouldn't want to see what the light would expose.
"Want me to spell it out for you, genius? Me. I can't cope without you."
Jane paled even more under the ashen hue his skin was beginning to take. "What?"
"You heard me just fine," Lisbon said softly, lowering her head in defeat. "I need you, so don't leave me. Please Jane…"
"Liz…"
The tone of this single syllable brought Lisbon's head sharply up to meet his eyes, where she saw the rest of what he did not have the strength anymore to say. His eyes looked at her with such tenderness and relief and unadulterated joy that her heart ached, and she dipped her head to meet his. The last two things Jane felt before his heart stopped beating was the feathery touch of her lips on his and the gentle fall of her tears running down his cheeks.
Jane woke that morning with his tears joining hers. He looked up at the smiley face on his wall, and then at his cell phone. One glance at the same date he had seen so many times before told him that he had died yesterday, and yet lived. The curse on this hellish existence was not broken, for it was still the same day. However, to Jane it didn't feel like it was the same hopeless, repetitive sequence of dismal events. Never before had he felt such despair give way to such hope. He thought he had lost the capacity to hope after the death of his wife and child, yet now that the embers of hope in his soul had been stirred, there was nothing he could do but surrender to the fact that Lisbon, with her honest words and the tears that accompanied them, had given him a reason to live. Now that Jane knew the reason he could not bear to lose Lisbon was because he loved her, even this day seemed less bleak. He set his mind off to think of radically different ways to cheat fate, and for the first time gave a half smile back to the face on the wall.
Hopefully not as many torturous days left for Jane, but who knows...