Disclaimer: We don't own anything to do with the Mentalist. We just like to play around with the characters.

This is a collaboration fic between Sectumsempress, rabidcumberbunny and callipygian-pigeon.

"Daddy! Daddy!"

A flash of pink tulle and golden hair clumsily tumbled into Patrick Jane's arms. Jane, with all the practice in the world, automatically lifted the small body up against his chest, golden curls bouncing, and whirled her around, while her legs gripped around his hips securely like a koala and she giggled hysterically into his suit jacket.

Jane buried his face into his daughters blonde ringlets that smelled of children's no-tears strawberries and cream shampoo and of the hairspray his little girl had insisted was necessary for special events such as these.

"Hello, my strawberry," he said to Charlotte, rocking her back and forth and she leaned back and looked at him seriously.

Charlotte pressed her tiny warm palms on either side of his face, her big brown eyes staring reproachfully into his green ones, and babbled so quickly with excitement and anxiousness that her words slurred together.

"Why were you so late Daddy?" she asked and he was struck with the familiar twinge of guilt as his daughter's innocent eyes scanned his face. His booming psychic business and recent onset of publicity had kept him from spending time with his family for some months now and this wasn't the first event he had been late for.

"You said you was going to be here when the big hand was on the twelve and the little hand was on the seven but the big hand was on the two and I said to Mummy that I was scared you were going to miss my dancing but she said that…."

He pressed his finger lightly to her lips so he could get a word in. "Remember to breathe."

Charlotte took a big, theatrically deep breath in and exhaled loudly for her father. He chuckled and set her down so he could get a good look at her.

Charlotte was dressed in her pink leotard with a frothy tulle skirt and ballet slippers. Her golden ringlets were tied into two pigtails on the side of her head and her red cheeks were flushed with exhilaration and her eyes were wide with excitement. His wife had done her make up for her, although according to Charlotte, she hadn't applied nearly enough.

Charlotte slipped her tiny hand into Jane's and led him down the aisle of plastic chairs.

"Mummy set the timer to tape you on the television tonight, Daddy, so we wouldn't miss it."

"Is that right?"

"Mhhm, she pretends to not be happy about it but I can see she gets happy when she sees you and is proud of you. Mummy isn't good at pretending. I want to watch it when I get home if Mummy lets me. Me and her can watch your tape next time you're gone so we don't miss you. Will you sit with Mummy, Daddy?" she asked him softly. "Will you sit together? So when I'm dancing you can say to each other, "Oh, that's our darling daughter. How proud we are!"

"Of course we'll sit next to each other," Patrick laughed. "Why would you ask that, princess?"

Charlotte looked up at him, her mocha eyes narrowed and she looked just like her mother.

"I said for you not to say that to me anymore please, Daddy. I'm big, now. I don't want to be a princess; I want to be a nurse like Mummy."

He nodded apologetically. He had heard this many times before. Although, she was always going to be his little princess. Nurse or no nurse.

"And Mummy was sad with you today," she continued matter-of-factly while they walked hand in hand. "She didn't use her inside voice. And Mummy only uses her outside voice inside when someone's been bad or when the game is on. And the game wasn't on today so you must have been bad, Daddy!"

Patrick laughed lightly at Charlotte's deduction. She had definitely inherited his gift. She was so clever and his heart swelled even more with pride.

But truth be told, his wife had used her outside voice inside with him today which was usually against the rules. This morning, he had caught Charlotte drawing a small butterfly with her coloured crayons on her bedroom wall, which was, of course, forbidden. But Charlotte was sure if they saw just how lovely her wall would look with art, they wouldn't get angry. That's why she had to draw them fast.

"No, Charlotte," Jane said disapprovingly taking the purple crayon off of her. "The wing is shaped like this…."

Angela came in and saw her husband drawing multiple crayon butterflies on the wall.

She used her outside voice with him.

"Welcome to the West Malibu Preschool Talent Night," the announcer said on the stage as the lights dimmed.

"Hurry, Daddy," Charlotte hissed pulling him along the row of parents already sat down.

Charlotte led Patrick by the hand to where his wife was sitting. Charlotte took her chair and patted the seat next to her mother.

"I saved this spot special for you, Daddy," she whispered, proudly. "I didn't take my hand off it until I saw you and when people walked past I said 'This seat it taken. It is reserved. My Daddy's sitting here, right next to my Mummy and me. He's going to be here when the big hand is on the…"

"Shh, Charlotte," Angela putting her hand over her daughters motor mouth that was still managing to ramble through her mother's palm.

"I'm sorry," he whispered to her, interrupting whatever she was about to say to him and cupped her cheek with his hand and kissed her gently, melting against her with exquisite relief. Even after nine years of marriage, kissing Angela after not seeing her for twenty four hours was like sinking into a hot bath after being caught in the rain, like sliding under crisp cotton sheets after an exhausting day and then when they would break apart her face would light up with the most exulting, breathtaking smile he had ever seen. And he would fall in love with her all over again. It was enough to make him forget momentarily about the pending argument that he had rehearsed resolving the entire drive back from the studio.

"Daddy!" Charlotte whined looking around to see if any of her friends had seen her parents kissing.

Patrick chuckled lightly brushing his hand over his daughter's hair.

"Sorry, princess."

"Daddy, how many times do I need to say it? I don't want to be a princess, anymore. I want to be a nurse. I told you a hundred million-"

"Shh, Charlotte," Angela said again.

Charlotte sucked her lips in and balled her fists up tightly, a little crease appearing between her eyebrows in fierce determination as if it were a terrible strain for her to stay quiet.

The presenter's voice rang loudly across the audience. "Our first act of the night is Sophia Dela Cruz's performance of Celine Dion's 'My Heart Will Go On'.

Polite applause welcomed on stage a little girl the same age as Charlotte in a glittery sequined dress, her face plastered with stage make up ("See, Mummy!" Charlotte hissed quietly leaning across them to look at Angela reproachfully).

Little Sophia took the microphone in both hands and began to sing. Her voice was quivery with exaggerated emotion, making the audience flinch when she hit the high notes.

She was followed by tap-dancing twins, a magic show and a gymnastic routine.

Finally, the presenter came out and announced: "Next up, Charlotte Jane performing a routine she choreographed herself called The Butterfly!"

Angela was suddenly terrified and Jane instinctively felt her panic. Choreographed it herself? She had assumed Charlotte would be doing something she learned at her ballet lessons. Angela's stomach felt sickly with stage fright as if she were the one going up there.

"Hmm," Charlotte frowned, squirming on her seat with her tiny arms wrapped around her tummy.

"Strawberry," Jane said. "It's your turn now."

Charlotte looked at him, her chocolatey eyes wide and fearful. "I actually feel a bit sick."

"All the best performers in the world feel sick, sweetie. It's a sign, it means you're going to be fantastic," Jane told her encouragingly.

Angela looked at her daughter. Charlotte looked terrified and resembled her mother more than ever as a child. She suddenly felt the urge to scoop Charlotte up and run far away from those critical judges and scathing stage mums.

"You don't have to-" Angela began before Patrick touched her arm lightly.

"The sick feeling will go away go away as soon as you start," he said sincerely.

Charlotte looked at him trustingly.

"Promise?" she whispered holding out her pinky finger.

"Cross my heart and hope to be killed by a big fluffy bunny," he said curling his own finger around hers.

She giggled and crawled across her parents laps. "You're so silly Daddy."

She marched down the aisle towards the stage, her tulle skirt bobbing in time with her pigtails.

Angela's heart twisted. She was so little.

"Have you seen this routine?" Patrick asked his wife curiously as he adjusted the focus on a tiny camera. He made a point to document every little event in their daughter's life. It was held together with masking tape after Angela punched it into his face in the delivery room. With the pay he got from the interview, he would be able to buy seventeen new cameras if he wished.

"No, have you?" Angela asked hopefully.

"No."

He held her hand with his free one reassuringly rubbing his thumb across the back of her hand as they watched their daughter climb the stairs and adjust her skirt nervously.

Charlotte went to the middle of the stage. Her head was down and she had her arms wrapped around her tiny body. The music started and she slowly opened one eye and then the other. She yawned enormously, wriggled and squirmed. She was a caterpillar emerging sleepily from her cocoon. Charlotte looked over her shoulder, pretending to catch sight of her wings for the first time. Her mouth dropped comically and the audience laughed.

She looked over her other shoulder and staggered with delight. She was a butterfly! Charlotte fluttered this ways and that, trying out her new wings, falling over at first and then finally getting the hang of it. It was true, she wasn't always in time with the music and her dance moves were, well, quite unusual but her facial expressions were priceless.

Jane was certain that there had never been a cuter performance of the butterfly.

By the time the music had stopped, he was filled with pride. He stood up as he clapped the loudest and looked about the audience and saw that people were smiling and clapping, clearly charmed, although they were perhaps holding themselves back as to not make the other performers feel bad.

Charlotte came running towards her parents, her face flushed with delight.

"Was I good?" she asked. "Was I excellent?"

"You were the best," Patrick said. "Everybody is saying we may as well pack up and go home now that Charlotte Jane has performed."

Charlotte giggled and was lifted into a hug.

"Love you Daddy," she said resting her head on his shoulder.

"Love you too, sweetie," he said though his voice was muffled by her fairy wings.

The other performances were finished and the children were running away joyously in their costumes while the parents looked on admiringly.

Angela was trapped in a conversation with Jane's agent, Carmen Dela Cruz, whose children attended the same preschool with Charlotte. She was patronising and critical and succeeded in making Angela feel like a substandard mother and wife.

"Oh, it was such a fantastic interview Angelina. You should have been there," Carmen laughed exuberantly lightly resting her perfectly manicured talons on Jane's arm. "If it at least appears that Patrick has a supportive family, it would do wonders for his image."

Angela's eyes flashed fiercely and Patrick quickly interjected and tried to diffuse the situation. "You needn't worry about that, Carmen." Patrick put his arm around Angela's waist pulling her close in a loving matter but also as a good position to restrain her from killing his agent if need be. There had been many a close call.

"Oh, Patrick honey, you know how supportive I am of you working on your marriage differences," Carmen whispered theatrically. "And of course, that should be your main priority. In the meantime, I'll look out for your professional wellbeing. God knows someone has to," she said jokingly and laughing in her flaky tone.

Jane had to put his hands on either side of his wife's shoulders and spin her around and away from the conversation as he believed that her being arrested for murder would put a bit of a damper on the evening.

"Come for a walk me with," he said taking Angela's hand and pulling her along.

Angela looked to make sure that Charlotte was occupied playing with her friends.

He led them outside where they could still hear the laughter and music quietly.

She was kicking bits of gravel as they walked across the car park silently, her hand gripping his a little too tightly, and he knew that she was still irate. Angela dropped his hand and swung her legs over the log fence so she was sitting on it and looked down at all the lights of the coastline over the hill they were on.

"I wasn't sure you were going to come tonight," she said not taking her eyes off the water.

He leaned on his elbows beside her. The success of the interview had his agents and the television station managers celebrating well over the time he was supposed to leave. If Carmen hadn't left to see her own child's performance, he would have forgotten entirely and not gotten home till the late hours of the night and spent the following day groveling to his inevitably forgiving family. It wouldn't have been the first time he'd done so.

"I know and I've been thinking about what you were saying," Patrick said finally. "About my job."

Angela turned to observe him with wide surprised eyes. This was usually a discussion topic he liked to avoid wherever possible with her. Where was this going? She had many things to say on his 'job' that she kept to herself. How deceptive and dangerous it was. The ridiculous hours involved and not to mention how ludicrous the idea was. She had swallowed her disapproval uneasily when she had found out about this ridiculous television interview about a serial killer. But he was her husband and she loved him. Even if it meant dealing with the ridiculous job descriptions, bitchy agents and copius amounts of hair gel. She was still so proud of everything he had achieved.

"I think you're right," he said stopping and turning to face her. "I've realised some things." "Wait, what?" Angela said cupping her ear. "What was that?"

"I've realised some things?"

"No, before that."

"I think you're right?" Patrick said puzzled. "But what I mean, Angel…"

"Shh," Angela said quickly closing her eyes concentrating. "I need to remember this moment. Patrick Jane telling me I'm right."

He nudged her in the ribs and they both dissolved into soft laughter.

"No, this was supposed to be a serious conversation," he said. "I practised it a hundred times on the way here."

"Basically," he said sitting next to her and taking her hands. "I don't want to lose you.."

He covered Angela's mouth with his hand as she opened it.

"I know what you're going to say but let me finish, Angel. I've loved you my whole life. You were my only purely good constant thing in my life, even as children, you just inspired me and everyone at the carnival really, to be better. Like you. You were the light of my…of all of our lives. I should feel guilty about taking you away from them so you could be happy and mine forever," he moved his hand from her mouth so he could rub his forehead. It still at times seemed surreal. Him and Angela Ruskin. Angela Jane.

"But I don't. You were different from us from the start. My shy, stage frightened, socially awkward, moralistic Angela. You were never a carnie. You were too good and beautiful to belong. That lifestyle was against everything you were and it was painful to watch. I promised that one day, I was going to take you somewhere far away, marry you if you would have someone like me and spend the rest of my life making you happy and giving you the life you deserved. But I can see now I've tried too hard and sort of become what we didn't want. I went too far, like I always have. I've made you unhappy and forced you to live with deceit and selfishness when that was what I was trying to pull you from. I'm sorry, I've made you so unhappy and I've been so selfish but I'm going to do better now, Angel. For you and Charlotte."

He took a deep breath. There was more, so much more he could say to her but she was probably battling an intracranial bruise keeping quiet for that long.

Angela tried not to laugh at the uncharacteristically serious look on his face.

"That was very moving," she said, biting her lip and trying to remain serious. "Incredibly profound."

"I try," he shrugged and smiled.

She shuffled closer to him and wrapped her arms around his waist and rested her head against his arm. "You do make me happy, Patrick," Angela said. "You've always tried too hard to make me happy, even when we were children, when you never had to try to. You just do."

"But you hate it. The money, the fame, the deception," he listed. "I can see it. It's everything you hated about the carnival. But I didn't think. I just wanted to give you everything you deserved and make up for everything you didn't have…"

"Silly Patrick," Angela said messing his gelled hair back to its usual state. "You've given me you and a family and a normal life and I feel like an honest and good person now which is all that I wanted. I've got everything."

"I know," he sighed. "I should have known better but I'm sorry. I didn't want you to have to work, but I know that's just you. I'll give it up, I promise. And I really mean it."

"May I ask what brought this brilliant plan to mind?" Angela enquired.

Patrick looked thoughtful.

"Basically, after working with all these murder cases…..I've seen just how quickly you can lose your family and I'm so lucky to have the most beautiful family in the world and I want to spend every minute with them. And the way you glare at me when I leave terrifies me."

She laughed and leaned her head against his chest and he complied by wrapping his arms around her.

"Thank you," she said as he kissed her hair.

"Ah!" she gasped nearly falling off the log, Patrick put his hands on her shoulders and steadied her.

"What's wrong?"

She put her hand to her stomach. "Nothing. It's gone now. Some kind of spasm, I think."

He still had concern in his eyes when she kissed him sweetly on the mouth.

"We walked here. Do you want to go meet us by your car? I'll get Charlotte."

"Okay," he smiled kissing her back. "I love you."

"I love you too," she smiled and untangled their fingers so she could go get their daughter.

Patrick smiled and turned away throwing his keys in the air and catching them in his hand. He was looking forward to being a consultant or some sort of other profession that utilises his abilities rather than a psychic. It was different and he was certain he wouldn't get bored.

But before he could give another further thought, a loud noise interrupted his thoughts. The sound knocked him against a car and made his ears ring as if an explosion had taken place inside his skull. Then he noticed the pain in his chest, spreading across his lungs. He looked down and was shocked to see red blossoming across his white shirt. A stain expanding each second.

He put his hand to it, shocked, and drew it back. Red sticky blood coating his fingertips.

"I do not like to be slandered in the media, Mr Jane," a chilling voice said. Chilling but clear, concise and clever.

Red John.

This couldn't be happening. This sort of thing didn't happen to Patrick Jane. For the first time in his life, he was terrified. But surprisingly to even him, not of his death at the hands of a vicious serial killer in a public car park. That wasn't so bad. A shot to the chest, slash across the throat, suffocation…however this mad man planned on killing him would merely just end his life. But to destroy him was an entirely different thing. Especially when the two only things that could were only a small distance away.

Please, please, please don't let them come outside, Patrick begged in his head. Not his two angels.

"Lovely wife you have there," the voice said again. Poetic. Mocking. "Very beautiful. Does your daughter take after her? I surely hope so."

NO!

"NO!" she yelled but the cold pavement she had been standing on disappeared beneath her feet and she was being sucked down a dark tube. Tiny dots of light danced before her eyes.

Was it a dream or a memory?

"I don't know!" said a frightened voice. "I didn't see it happen!"

The dream or memory or whatever it was dissolved and vanished like a reflection on water and instead fragments of thought began to drift through her head as if she was waking up from a long, deep sleep.

That's when she noticed the pain in her head for the first time. It hurt on one side as if someone had given her a good solid thwack with a hammer.

It was so vivid, so clear. Yet, it was already vanishing from her mind. She remembered music, fairy wings and a gunshot. She hung on to the smell of strawberries, hairspray and blood but it faded away quickly.

"Her eyelids are twitching, like she's dreaming," a person said.

"Lisbon? Are you okay? Open your eyes."

It was a man's voice. Too loud and strident to ignore. It dragged her up into consciousness and wouldn't let her go. It was a voice that gave her the feeling of a familiar annoying itch like too tight socks.

Did she faint? She had never fainted in her life although she had spent most of ninth grade practicing in the hope that she could be one of those lucky girls who fainted during church and had to be carried out, draped across the muscly arms of their PE teacher, Mr Connors.

"A man's been shot," she gurgled at the voice. She couldn't even understand her own words. "I saw a partial plate AA6, I think. You need to track down and…and..."

"You're delirious," her boss, Virgil Minelli said. "Don't try to sit up."

"You hit your head," Sam Bosco explained as she looked around. She seemed to be lying at the foot of some stairs. The stairs at the office. The CBI. Not a little kindergarten car park by the sea.

She recognised Bosco's wife, Mandy, looking concerned and stroked Lisbon's arm.

"Oh dear, sweetie, YOU MIGHT JUST BE A LITTLE BIT CONCUSSED!"

"I don't think that makes her deaf," Minelli said gruffly before standing up to shoo away excited rookies who had been confined to their desks all day.

"I'll go get some towels for the blood," Bosco said standing up. "Mandy'll stay with you."

Lisbon always felt guilty and awkward around Bosco's perfectly friendly wife, Mandy. With good reason. It's a lot easier to justify a previous affair with a married man if his wife wasn't a caring, loyal and warm woman.

"You lost your balance and fell down the stairs," she said in her chatty voice. "You smashed your head and it made the most awful sound. I'm so glad you're conscious, again. I had been worried about cerebral compression."

Lisbon vaguely remembered that Mrs. Bosco was a school nurse. Not the sort of medical professional she was comforted by but she probably wasn't completely stupid on the subject. Lisbon sat on the floor quietly as she usually did around the overly friendly Amanda Bosco.

Luckily, a rookie shouted out. "The ambulance is here!"

Mandy stayed kneeling on the floor next to Lisbon, patting her on the shoulder. Then she stopped patting.

"Oh my, why do you get all the fun?"

Lisbon twisted her neck to see and saw two impossibly handsome men in green paramedic jumpsuits striding towards her.

She immediately felt embarrassed and tried to right herself. Showing signs of weakness or vulnerability was a taboo to Lisbon especially when fighting for authority in a male dominant profession that demanded such qualities.

"Don't move, honey," the tall one called.

"He looks just like Brad Pitt!" Mandy whispered excitedly. He did too.

Lisbon couldn't help but feel cheerier. She felt like she had woken up in an episode of Grey's Anatomy.

"Hey!" Brad Pitt said cheerfully kneeling beside Lisbon. "What's your name?"

"Amanda. Mandy," Mrs Bosco said blushing. "Oh, she's Agent Lisbon. Teresa Lisbon."

"Had a bit of a fall did you, Teresa?"

"So I've been told," she said.

Despite her rock solid expression, Lisbon felt secretly teary and special as she generally did when she talked to any health professional, even a chemist. She blamed her mother for making too much of a fuss when she was sick and as child. She and her brothers were terrible hypochondriacs because of it.

Her uncle died from a heart attack so she had always been frightened by the slightest case of heartburn. She had two grandparents die of cancer on both sides so she had been permanently on standby by waiting for the mutated cells to strike. For a while she was terrified she was about to be struck down by motor neurone disease, for no reason that the fact she had read a very moving article in the Readers Digest about a man who had it. She had first noticed the problem when her feet started hurting at her desk one day. So whenever she'd feel a twinge in her feet, she would think: okay, here we go.

She was a dreadful worrier too. Every day she would worry that her brother would be killed in a car accident, and contemplated every childhood disease that her niece and nephews could contract. Before she went to sleep she would worry that someone she loved would die in the night. Killed in a terrorist attack, maybe. "That means the terrorists have won," her brother, Tommy would say. He didn't understand that she was fighting off the terrorists by worrying about them. It was her own personal War on Terror.

But she was Agent Lisbon and was surrounded by colleagues; no tears would escape her eyes. She saw the paramedics set up a stretcher for her, it looked a little flimsy.

The CBI looked on grimly as Lisbon was loaded into the ambulance. Rookie's looked on with feverish excitement. She had never been more embarrassed in her entire life.

"Do you remember what you had for breakfast this morning, Teresa?" Brad asked.

It's Lisbon, she wanted to correct him automatically. She had been so used to being addressed by her surname for so many years.

"How is that relevant?" She was used to being the one asking the questions.

"It's just one of those standard questions we ask people with head injuries. We're trying to ascertain your mental state."

"Um…" she thought back, racking her brains but something else was on her mind. Screaming at her. But she couldn't remember what.

"That's okay," he answered. "I don't think I can remember what I had for breakfast myself."

Well, so much for ascertaining her mental state! Did Brad actually know what he was talking about?

"Maybe you've got a concussion too," Lisbon muttered and Brad laughed dutifully. He seemed to be losing interest in her. He was probably hoping that his next patient was more interesting and he could use those heart defibrillator things. Lisbon would if she were a paramedic.

Brad dabbed at her head with a cloth and drew it away. While it went past Lisbon's face, the smell of blood hit her nostrils and suddenly she was sucked down into that dream.

How could she have forgotten? The smell of blood, everywhere, pooling over the handsome blonde man's shirt, over the pavement. A scarlet puddle. A woman's scream. Sirens blaring. Her heart was racing so fast in fear that she was sure it was going to rip right out of her chest and bounce around the ambulance.

Lisbon turned her head and was sick all over Brad Pitt's shiny black shoes.

Thank you for reading. Please leave a review with your thoughts or feedback.