Stay Sane at Home

Once upon a time there was a little girl who lived in a little yellow house with her mother, her father, and three little brothers who arrived one by one.

They were not a well-off family, and sometimes the parents argued that the little yellow house’s mortgage and repairs were more a drain than a respite. But the little girl would stroke the house’s walls and whisper that she loved it, that it was her home, and the house would stop creaking sadly and stand up a little straighter and its yellow paint would shine a little brighter. 

The girl could hear a lot of things—her crayons would tell her which of her brothers had taken them, and whether they were currently being eaten or broken. Her mother’s sewing machine would bid goodbye and click excitedly to be home from the pawn shop again like a beloved aunt. Her father’s beer bottles tried to hide in the back of the fridge and get harder to open the more he’d had, at her request.

She didn’t really realize that what she was doing was anything special until after her mother died and her little yellow house turned from a home to a prison.

She learned to be quiet with her requests to avoid her father’s heavy hands after…well, after. To ask the floorboards and stairs not to creak when she and her brothers tiptoed in after school. To ask the washer to cooperate and the iron to not burn her as she cleaned everyone’s clothes and ironed her and her brothers’ uniforms. To ask those same uniforms to adjust themselves as they were handed down from Stan to Jimmy to Tommy, shrinking or growing as needed. To ask doors to close and muffle when her father was drunkenly raging at just her, but to open wide along with the windows when he tried to catch her little brothers unawares.

She didn’t know what exactly it was she was doing. The closest her research could turn up was psychics and their abilities, but even they didn’t seem to exactly match what she could do. It also didn’t help that, by the time she’d come around to the idea to reach out to this one or that one to ask, they’d been exposed as con artists and frauds.

When her father died, everything in the little yellow house breathed a sigh of relief even as the girl and her brothers mourned.

So it was little surprise that the girl fled the little yellow house in Chicago for university, then for California, where she would eventually Special Agent Teresa Lisbon of the CBI.

Contrary to popular belief, a hidden psychic/supernatural/whatever the hell gift is much less helpful for a law enforcement job than one might think.

Lisbon had learned over the years that strange objects did not like talking to or obeying anyone who wasn’t their owner. Even in rare cases where she could gain information from a victim’s clothing or personal affects (a watch gifted by a grandfather, a bracelet from a best friend, a jacket from a lover), she couldn’t just come out and say what she’d learned—she’d be thrown out of the bureau for making accusations of murder based on what she claimed an object had told her. Evidence still needed gathering, suspects still needed interviewing, cases still needed presenting. 

(But if doors open for her and close on fleeing criminals, if she never needs to touch her gun to turn the safety off or on, if she can coax her car to go a few extra miles on a nearly empty tank, well. She can’t deny it’s convenient.)

And then Patrick Jane comes stumbling into the CBI bullpen and onto crime scenes, and starts strutting as a consultant for her team and turns everything she thought she knew about police work and psychics upside down.

(A part of her—small, childish, forever with the taste of soap and copper in her mouth—is disappointed when Jane tells them all he isn’t actually psychic, that he actively disdains the practice. It’s irrational and stupid and yes, childish, and nearly all of her is much gladder he’d told them all the truth from the outset, but.

But, for the briefest moment when they were introduced, when she was told who he’d used to be.

She’d thought, “Maybe I’m not alone.”)

The emeralds are snooty.

She knew Jane had bought something expensive—even without whatever it was inside the bag having a muffled argument about worth, nothing bought from a casino is ever cheap.

Still, it does undercut the awe a little to pull the lid off the box and have the stunning earrings and necklace declare her not the highest quality wearer, but at least she’s pretty. Yes, we can enhance this!

She feels her eyebrow twitch with a mixture of amusement and exasperation that only Jane and his gifts seem capable of bringing out of her.

(Though perhaps that qualifier is a little unfair. The origami frog he’d given her is cute if a little excitable, telling her at every spare moment I’m a frog! I’m a frog! Make me jump!)

“You don’t like it?” Jane asks. When she looks up his grin is as broad as ever, but she must be imagining things because he seems a little. Worried?

“No, no, they’re. These are lovely.” She glances back down at them ruefully, because they are and they know it. “But we can’t keep this stuff.”

WHY??? shriek the emerald earrings and necklace while Van Pelt’s rubies back her disappointed “We can’t?” with wails of protest.

“It’s against regulations.” She argues, trying to ignore the emotional meltdowns from two sets of jewelry.

“No it’s not,” Jane’s demeanor is back to being charmingly roguish, like the blip she’d thought she’d seen was merely a trick of the light. “Why would it be? I won the money fair and square, and I spent it fair and square. Where do the regulations come into it?”

Lisbon rolls her eyes as she tries to mentally soothe the emeralds with an admittedly half-hearted it’s not you, it’s me. Just like on real life people, this does very little to make it better.

And then the watches come out for Rigsby and Cho, and she honestly feels kind of guilty for the way all of these shiny accessories have gone sad and shaken, all their certainty about their role in life ripped away, so she lets everyone wear them out for dinner, lets Jane tell her that the emeralds make her eyes look beautiful before she finally puts her foot down and returns them. She isn’t afraid to admit she’s proud of Van Pelt for doing the same, but pretends not to notice the gaudy flash on Cho or Rigsby’s wrists.

The blown glass studs that she finds hidden in her bag two weeks later (forest green with small flecks of silver and gold shot through) are much more personable and practical. And, since she doesn’t actually know who or where they came from, she supposes it’s not entirely against regulations to keep them. She resolutely ignores Jane’s triumphant grin the first time she wears them into the office.

And again when he realizes she’s worn them often enough that they’ve become her favorite pair.

Lisbon feels she’s perfected the art of hiding the extra awareness she has of the world, mimicking the normal behaviors of everyone around her. She’s had to, if she didn’t want to be sent to a psychiatric facility or worse.

Of course, given that her consultant is a paranoid, near supernaturally-observant expert in human behavior and tells, her masking skills are undergoing the most rigorous testing she’s ever experienced.

He’s already reminded her to check her safety on two separate occasions, when her gun did it for her out of habit—she can’t let anything else slip.

Case in point—the widow of a rich sponsor of the Attorney General has had some heirloom jewels stolen. CBI wouldn’t normally be called in, except a cleaner whose brother’s in-laws have gang ties was found dead in the widow’s basement.

They’re currently interviewing the widow, who insists on only seeing them in her overly extravagant bedroom with the most annoying dressing table in fucking existence.

WOE it wails gratingly, WOE IS ME, THAT MY BEST POLISHER IS DEAD!! OH, WHO WILL MAKE ME SHIMMER AND SHINE LIKE I SO RICHLY DESERVE?! OOH, WHO WILL CARE FOR ME NOW?!?

It’s enough to set her teeth on edge.

“So, Ms. Milverton, what time did you say you noticed your jewels missing again?” She asks, mentally pleading with the table to shut up.

“As I’ve told you before, Detective—” Ms. Milverton starts. And the stupid table, with its stupid gilded edges and inset mirror with stupid floral molding just. Gets. Louder. OH! OH, I SHALL DIE! I SHALL DIE OF WOODWORM AND ROT AND NOBODY CARES!! NOBODY CARES!! I AM THE VICTIM AND NOBODY CARES!!!

“Lisbon, you all right?” Jane’s voice snaps her back in the worst way, and she looks up to see both him and Mrs. Milverton staring at her.

“F-fine, fine.” She pinches the bridge of her nose. “My apologies, Mrs. Milverton, you were saying?”

“Well, Miss Lisbon, I don’t know why should I have to repeat—” Mrs. Milverton huffs but Jane interrupts. “Why won’t you look at the dressing table?”

“What?” She asks reflexively. “I-I’m not.”

“No, you’re not.” Jane scoots closer to her, holding up a hand to forestall Milverton’s purpling indignation. “We’ve never been here before, but for some reason, you won’t even glance in the direction of the wall the table’s set against. You’re normally attentive, but right now you will not look away from Charlene or your notes, to the point of creepiness. Why is that?”

She rubs her eyes to try to give herself time to think. She has to be careful, needs to be, but the table’s melodramatics are pushing her over the edge.

“Well maybe I’m trying not to look because it’s so hideous it hurts to look at.” She snaps.

The dressing table screams.

“How DARE you?!” Ms. Milverton squawks. “You IMPERTINENT little CHIT! That dressing table is VINTAGE! It is from THE NINETEENTH CENTURY!! One of CHIPPENDALE’S ORIGINAL PIECES!!!”

Lisbon’s ears are ringing so much from the high-pitched screeching that it takes her a moment to realize.

The dressing table has suddenly gone weirdly quiet.

Jane is staring at it with a look of dawning realization. “Charlene, forgive my curiosity, but who told you the table’s provenance?”

Ms. Milverton looks caught off guard by the question, before she sniffs. “I had appraisers from the Met and the British Museum brought in. Everyone said it was genuine.”

“And their names?” Jane fires back.

Milverton splutters. “Wuh-well how should I know?! I pay those pencil-pushers, I don’t need to know their life stories!”

Jane grins.

The case ends with him employing a flock of geese, an art history adjunct from Yale, and Cho pretending to be a gang enforcer. Lisbon books Charlene Augusta Milverton for insurance fraud, blackmail, and the murder of Eberado Gonzalo-Fuentes.

And thanks her lucky stars that in all the excitement and bemoaning a goose bite to his shin, Jane seems to have forgotten to ask her about her odd behavior.

Occasionally she does play along when Jane wants to demonstrate an old skill from his fake psychic days. She’s by no means his main assistant/victim/demonstratee, that dubious honor is held by Rigsby and Van Pelt who can’t seem to help challenging Jane whenever he claims he can do something impossible. But, when she has the time for it, she does try to see them for herself. For one, it’s useful experience that she can take into the field, an understanding of the psychology and tricks a smart criminal could be using to bamboozle law enforcement. For another…

“I was thinking of an octagon inside of a rectangle.” She cheerfully replies, and gets to enjoy the rare sight of Jane caught off guard and perplexed before he quips, “Liar.”

She laughs, hands raised in surrender. “All right, all right, you got me.”

“Pretty good, huh? He got me and Rigsby the same way.” Van Pelt volunteers with a grin, inadvertently proving Lisbon’s point to herself. She turns back to Jane. “How’d you do that?”

“Oh that’s nothing. That's just a calibration key to real mind reading.” He boasts, gesturing to her head. “Now I have access to all your innermost thoughts.”

She rolls her eyes. “Yeah, right.”

“No, I’m serious!” He protests. She challenges, “Okay, so what am I thinking right now?”

Jane stares at her, blue eyes piercing enough to send a shiver down her spine.

“You're thinking, ‘I'm so glad Jane is joking around and he can't actually read my mind’."

“No.” And then she says, because apparently her common sense has decided to take the day off, “Well, actually yes, but not for the reasons you think.”

Jane looks delighted by this lapse in judgement. “What reasons do I think?”

By some miracle, she does not blurt “I don’t know because I’m more concerned with you working out that I can hear your clothes trying to convince everyone you’re a harmless peacock and that the pen Rigsby leant Van Pelt begins composing sonnets every time she uses it”, instead snapping, “Never you mind.”

“You’re blushing.” Rigsby sing-songs as he walks by, the jerk. His flashy watch is snickering.

“You are blushing.” Jane echoes, pleased fascination clear in his tone, which of course sends more blood to her treacherous cheeks.

She’s never been more grateful when Cho comes bearing news of a murder/arson case.

The weeks after Dumar Tanner’s death are rough on all of them.

Lisbon is forced to attend session after session after session of pointless trauma counseling with Dr. Carmen, and she’s aware that the grating frustration makes her throw herself into her work even harder as a result. Cho and Rigsby have been sent to so many corners of the state to investigate anything even tangentially related to Red John that the soles of Rigsby’s shoes are wearing thin, while Cho’s shirts are beginning to complain about seatbelt-shaped fraying. Van Pelt’s been pulling so much overtime chasing down digital ghosts that her computer has began whispering longingly of the chance to shut down.

And Jane? Well, Jane alternates between periods of black-tea-fueled too-intense focus peeling through past Red John crime scenes, dropping into unconsciousness the moment his head hits the cushions of his couch, and rapid-fire, blasé closings of any cases that dare interrupt either of the previous activities.

Which is probably why Lisbon’s interrupted mid-paperwork by a panicked call from Rigsby. “Boss! We need back—!!”

A gunshot and the line goes dead.

Lisbon’s pretty sure her SUV breaks every speed limit known to man on the way over. Cho and Van Pelt are prepping themselves in the passenger and backseats, strapping on bulletproof vests and checking their pistols. Her mind is racing over the intel she has on this case—at the AG’s request, she had sent Rigsby and Jane to investigate the death of a criminal witness for a prominent trial. White collar crime, investment fraud, so who the fuck is shooting at her boys?!

When she pulls up and they get past the police perimeter, they find Rigsby crouched behind a car and bleeding from a gash above his left eyebrow.

“Rigsby!” Van Pelt almost launches herself at him. “Are you—they didn’t get you, did they?”

“Nah, just a graze.” His suit shirt is sighing wearily about another bloodstain removal as he turns to her. “Boss, the fuckers took Jane.”

“Who.” She demands as she straps herself into her vest.

“Bounty hunter, boss. Eric Sohdars.” Rigsby says. “Works for Providence Bail. Jane said that he killed Luke Gray during a failed extortion attempt—he’s point man in forcing Providence’s clients to pay extra on top of their bonds, give up valuables, but Gray wasn’t the kinda guy to take that lying down. Fought back, got killed.”

“And Jane announced this in front of Sohdars, didn’t he.” Cho is too professional to pinch the bridge of his nose, but dearly looks like he wants to.

“The entire damn bail company’s in on it,” Rigsby growls. “Sohdars knocked out Jane while the rest drew on me. No one’s seen hide nor hair of em since.”

Van Pelt turns back from talking quickly with a young cop. “Boss, local law enforcement says they’re about to breach the building. We’re in, right?”

“Of course.” She finishes adjusting her vest as it mutters we can do this, protect and serve, we’ll rescue our own. “Let’s go make these bastards regret being born.”

Inside the Providence bail offices is all noise, gunfire and yelling that gets cut off as arrests are made. She manages to chase Sohdars the bounty hunter to the back, running him down when he short-shucks his shotgun and tackling him off of a desk to the floor.

“You have the right to remain silent, you have the right to an attorney,” She rattles off, eager to get through the procedure so she can actually get to the questions she needs answered. “Anything you say can and will be used—”

“…sbon…”

She pauses for a second, mid-cuff.

“…Lisbon…”

It’s so soft. A faint, feminine voice that’s not the leather jacket being mutinously silent.

She locks the cuffs and digs her knee in harder into the sonuvabitch’s back and begins yanking at the jacket, ignoring the protests under her. Not, not in the pockets, it’s too muffled, so the lining—!

There’s a secret pocket with a small opening near the seam she rips wide open, sending small jewelry and brick-a-brack flying.

There, amongst the detritus, sits Jane’s wedding ring.

Lisbon, the ring sighs as she picks it up, gentle and beautiful. I knew you’d come for us. I knew it, Lisbon.

If her heart wasn’t breaking to see the ring off Jane’s finger in the first place, it would be now. She turns on the thug below her with a snarl. “I’m gonna give you to the count of three to tell me where Jane is before I start making you wish you’d never been born. One, two—!”

There’s a loud clattering that has her looking up.

Jane bursts out of a closet, wild-eyed and frantic. His right hand is gripping his left, there’s a vicious-looking lump on his forehead, and he’s scanning the ground desperately before his head lifts and he sees her.

It’s hard to balance keeping the still-squirming bounty hunter pinned below her and holding out the ring to Jane, but she manages. “Jane. Here.”

He stumbles, fingers slipping over hers as he grabs it, hands trembling as he slides it back on. His eyes are wet when he glances between the ring, her, and the bounty hunter with his torn jacket. His mouth opens soundlessly.

“Go. Tell Rigsby or Van Pelt to call you a paramedic,” She orders. “You look rough. I’ll be right behind you. Promise.”

Jane’s mouth shuts and he nods, jerkily. She watches him stumble out of the room, leaning against the wall for support, his wedding ring murmuring reassurances only she can hear.

“Fuck this.” Eric Sohdars spits. “I’m not going down to some fucking whore—!”

She feels no remorse when her boot jams into his ribs.

While she’s glad that Jane’s feeling himself enough to resume his other psychic playacting and games—hiding dollar bills under cups for him to find and guessing nicknames that somehow followed her from high school into the SFPD—she’s never allowed him to hypnotize her. Swore that she never would, too.

She’s seen suspects, both criminal and not, swear with a gun to their heads that they’ll never spill their secrets, spitting defiance at anyone unlucky enough to interrogate them. And then Jane swans in, murmuring low and soft, tapping arms, shoulders, even knees on occasion, and suddenly confessions are falling into his hands like overripe fruit.

And that’s even before the incident where a hypnotized Rigsby almost hurled Jane off a building.

Is it any wonder that she’s twitchy as all hell about it? She covers it well enough, she thinks, claiming it’s because she’s sick of defense attorneys riding her ass over “induced confessions”, but.

But she doesn’t want Jane in her head. Doesn’t want to know what he’ll do with what he finds there.

(Given how he’s reacted to other so-called psychics in the past, she has a pretty good idea.)

Except William McTeer is dead, and even though nothing in the alleyway recognized her, none of the dumpsters or the door or even the poster mentioned seeing her there before, she still can’t remember what the fuck she was doing on Tuesday night.

She’s been barred from returning to the crime scene as a potential suspect. She can’t even interrogate the gun to see if it recognizes her, if she’d ever touched it before, because that would be seen as evidence tampering on top of the failed polygraph.

She has to remember. Her word and her work are in jeopardy until she remembers, she’s useless until she remembers.

So when Jane says he won’t after all of his badgering, after following her into her home where all of her possessions are now gossiping amongst themselves about the first man she’s brought since a one night stand two years ago, she’s about ready to start screaming and never stop.

And then he starts talking, soft and soothing, about how it would be impossible, how he’d need to make all of her stress go away, how it’s not happening so she can relax, she can let go…

Her mind has never felt so quiet. So safe. So hers.

“How are you feeling?” Jane asks her, and she says “Good,” because it’s true.

“Good. You’re gonna remain in this relaxed trance state while we think about Tuesday night. But first…” There’s a beat. An odd pause.

Something in her stirs unhappily, tenses, begins wake to defend herself—!

“…sometimes you dance to that Spice Girls CD, don’t you?” There’s amusement in his voice. It makes her smile and relax, a small sleepy “Yeah,” escaping as the strains of her favorite songs fill her head.

From there she begins reviewing her day, like a movie, like Jane says. She fills out Form 41s (something holds her back from saying how chatty they are in contrast to their dour contents) sees the new guy in the mailroom and thinks he’s hot (his clothes know it and try to enhance it while he doesn’t, it’s a little endearing), skips lunch, (the money in her wallet nags her about not being spent), leaves the office and Van Pelt working late (her computer’s trying to adjust its light levels to be easier on Van Pelt’s eyes) and…and…!

It’s blank.

It’s blank. (Wrong)

It’s blank. (Unnatural) There’s nothing (Monstrous) there. Nothing (Obviously demonic) but an abyss (How could you do this) where her memory (Your mother would be ashamed) should (Open your mouth, Teresa!) be—!

Warmth and pressure on her forehead and she opens her eyes to see Jane staring at her, brow furrrowed.

She’s grateful that he leaves when she asks, gives her the privacy to tug her favorite blanket around herself and listen to it and her sofa whisper reassurance, you’re not a monster, you aren’t, we promise, we love you, to try to ignore the siren call of the Jack Daniels bottle hidden in the back of her cupboard for emergencies.

Less grateful when Jane pops back in ten minutes later with coffee, a theory about her being drugged by her psychiatrist’s shitty coffee, and a harebrained scheme for her to stage a public breakdown at work to catch him.

She has to apologize to her window for breaking it, and to her glock (it’s insulted that she called its trigger safety stupid), but punching out Roy Carmen makes it all worth it.

Of all the things she can hear, Lisbon’s pretty sure she despises bombs the most.

Knives are…complicated. Very few are designed for the purpose she sees them used for in an assault or homicide, and if they will speak to her, they’re usually too traumatized to be coherent. The same goes for any number of improvised weapons she’s come across over the years.

Guns are less emotive, but more consistent than most murder weapons. They know their only role is to kill, so to them it’s inconsequential whether the thing they kill is an animal or a human being. They’ll panic if they themselves are threatened with disassembly, but that’s about it.

Bombs, though? A bomb knows from the moment of its creation that its only role in life is to be destroyed in a quote-on-quote “blaze of glory”.

And it wants to take as many people as it can with it when it does.

The one in the Harrington household is insidious.

She wastes twenty seconds after she sends Xander away trying to interrogate the furniture for its location, pleading for them to think of the family they serve, only to be met with haughty silence.

Then she calls Jane.

“If they called it the Grand Salon, then obviously they’re insiders.” She can hear his couch shift under his weight and begs her cell to keep the signal strong as she asks, “Good point, leading us where?”

“Uh, let’s see, if I was familiar with that room, I would plant a bomb…” A few anxious seconds pass as her phone whispers its terror. “Try under the sofa—no, no, no, cupboard by the Dutch forgery.”

She barely registers questioning how he could possibly know that as the forgery lets out a scandalized gasp, he looked at that painting for maybe thirty seconds when he was here last—

Found me, the bomb in the cupboard sing-songs as its counter flashes from 01:07 to 01:06. Stay here with me pretty lady. We’ll go out with a bang.

“Ah, Jane, the bomb, it’s here, you found it. One minute left,” She reports back.

“Good, it’s time to leave, get out of there,” There’s none of his usual humor as he quips rapid-fire. “Lisbon, if you think I’m even gonna engage in this game of which wire to pull, I’m not, I’m not interested, I don’t wanna play that game, run, get out of there!”

He’s right, she knows he is, there’s no way she can get it out safely with so little time so she straightens up—!

Oh, hello little one. The bomb coos. Lisbon’s blood runs cold as it continues, won’t you come play?

Ashley Harrington is standing by the sofa when she whirls around, staring up at her warily.

“Where’s Mommy?” The little girl asks, distrust clear in her tone.

“Ashley,” It takes everything she has to keep her voice even. “Ashely, we have to leave now.”

“No!” And before she can cross the room, Ashley Harrington darts under the sofa, clinging to one of its feet. It is a genuine challenge to not begin swearing aloud as she dashes across the room, crouching to try and grab the girl from her hiding spot.

“Ashley, come out of there,” She coaxes against the child’s shrieking protests, against the sofa’s overprotective rumbles of Go Away, Not Wanted. “Sweetie, please listen to me, we have to go, now! Ashley, come out of there now, that’s an order!!”

That never worked on her brothers. It still doesn’t here.

The sofa is trying to shrink its gap so she can’t reach Ashley, as if that will protect her from the blast. Ashley is screaming for her mother, little legs kicking desperately against Lisbon’s futile attempts to grab her. She can barely hear Jane yelling for her to take Ashley and get out.

The bomb behind her gleefully counts 15…14…13…12…11…10…9…8…7–!

SHUT UP SHUT UP STOP IT RIGHT NOW!!

It chokes under her glare, red numbers freezing on 00:07 and taking all her concentration to hold them there. It wants to continue. It needs to continue. She isn’t sure she can hold it—!

“Screw it!!” Lisbon snarls, yanking out its wires.

The bomb lets out a garbled shriek that pierces her brain as it dies, its counter falling blank and useless. She doesn’t trust it, glaring hard in case it suddenly returns to life.

“Lisbon?! Lisbon!!” Jane’s tinny voice over her speakers makes her jump and turn around.

Ashley’s finally (finally!) crawled out from under the sofa and is staring guiltily at her. “Are. Are you okay? Your nose is bleeding.”

She blinks, sniffs, swipes a knuckle under her nose to find red glistening back at her. She feels very tired all of a sudden.

“You.” Lisbon tells Ashley seriously. “Are a very bad girl.”

“You’re a bad girl.” Jane’s tinny voice returns weakly over the line.

As proved by the semi-disastrous collaboration with Bosco’s team on the Westlake kidnapping and the weeks of growing pains after Hightower took the role of Special Agent In Charge, it’s always an adjustment when Lisbon’s team has someone else added to their crime-solving orbit.

It’s no one’s fault, not really. She likes to think it’s more a sign of how she and her team work like a well-oiled engine. Probably to a chainsaw, given Jane’s predilections for mayhem and trying to induce heart attacks in Internal Affairs, but well-oiled nonetheless.

With all that said, she’s still not quite sure what to make of Kristina Frye.

The woman is principled, for a certain yardstick of probably con artist principles, and sticks to them and Lisbon can respect that even when it impedes their first investigation and makes her look guilty as sin.

She’s also beautiful, charming, and unflappable no matter what horrors the cases she’s helped with bring up. It makes sense why Hightower would push Jane towards her, why Jane himself is interested.

Lisbon just…still isn’t totally sure how she feels about that.

She wants Jane to be happy, of course she does. Anything he can have in his life that gives him something to live for aside from finding Red John receives a huge green check mark in her books. It’s why she makes sure that the CBI cupboards are plentifully stocked with a wide array of teas despite the majority preference for coffee, why she haggled with Minelli for a solid week to get the couch in her office and in the bullpen. She’s more than prepared to welcome Kristina with open arms on that pretext alone.

Except, she’s not entirely sure Kristina Frye does make him happy. Van Pelt told her about finding Jane crying in a dark interrogation room after Frye left it. He still hates the notion that Frye could be anything more than a skilled conwoman and needles anyone who says otherwise. And she’s never seen him so furious as when Frye insisted that she could appeal to Red John’s better nature, that she could succeed where Jane failed, that him lying was more to blame for his wife and daughter’s deaths than the serial killer who murdered them.

Or as shaken as when Frye vanished out from the watch of Van Pelt and 40 armed officers.

A large part of her wants to believe that the psychic escaped unharmed, that she ran away under her own steam, that her powers were real and could protect her from Red John, or at least buy her some time for the CBI to find and rescue her. She wants to.

(But, for all her insistence on veracity, on the legitimacy of her profession, the truth that remains is this:

Kristina Frye has only ever recognized Patrick Jane as a fellow psychic.

She hasn’t acknowledged Lisbon once.)

So Lisbon throws herself into information gathering and issuing missing person notices to the entire state, plus some border counties in Nevada, Oregon, and Arizona, as though this will somehow make up for failing to thwart Red John again. For Jane’s haunted silences, for Kristina Frey’s disappearance.

And when Rigsby tells her that Napa’s reported an outage in their computer systems which means they can’t receive the BOLO, Lisbon thinks nothing of volunteering to drive down there herself to ensure it gets delivered.

You were clinging to a pipe on the side of the Home, trying to stay away from the angry white dog that was barking at you down below.

You didn’t know why the angry white dog was so angry, or why it decided to be angry at you in particular.

As far as you knew, you’d exited the Home, heard a growl, and then been chased around until you scrambled up the drainpipe.

But it’d been a long time and the dog was still there.

And your fingers were slipping.

If you could’ve called out for help, you would have been saved. Mx. Fayghen was just inside along with the other kids, and they could have chased the dog away, or worked out how to make it stop being angry.

But when you were left at the Home as a baby, you’d been left without any vocal cords or tongue to speak of or with.

So the best you could do was kick your little feet against the brick wall and hope someone came to help.

“Hello? Are you alright?”

You couldn’t turn around to see the voice, because then you’d slip and fall. But you shook your head with all your might.

“I see…one moment, please! I’ll be right back!”

You almost began crying when you heard footsteps sprint away. But then they were back, and you heard the voice of the men who lived down the road together.

“Rodney! Roddy-kins! It’s din-din time, Wegg’s made your favorite!”

There’s a much less angry bark, and the scampering of paws.

Then, closer than before, the original voice says. “The dog’s gone home now. Do you need help getting down? If you let go, I’ll catch you, okay?”

So you let go of the pipe, and experienced two terrifying seconds of falling before strong hands grabbed you from the air.

When you looked up, a pretty lady was smiling at you from under a sombrero, a bandana around her neck. She also has really cool pink glasses, and boots, and a jacket with tassels on it.

“Hello little one.” She’d said. “You’re very brave, aren’t you? I’m King. I think your caretaker has been looking for you.”

And then she set you down, and took your hand, and walked with you inside and explained to Mx. Fayghen that you hadn’t been misbehaving, so you got extra dessert that night instead of Naughty Corner Time.

She even waved goodbye to you when she left to meet up with her friend and do her important mail-delivering job.

You decided, then and there, that King was the coolest and best adult you’d ever met.

Ever since then, you’ve kept an eye out for King.

She doesn’t visit very often, out travelling the world with her friend.

But she sends mail, sometimes in big bundles for other people than have her crown-sombrero seal in the corner, sometimes in actual letters to people on the outskirts. Sometimes even letters to you.

Well, to everyone in the Home, but you like to think she had you in mind at least some of the time when she asks if the kids here are eating well, how big you’re all getting, how your meager lessons are going. You all learn to read from King’s letters, sounding out the words carefully one by one.

Sometimes, on very, very special occasions, she’ll turn up to deliver the mail in person.

Everyone’s happy when King arrives, from the big kids to the littles, even the adults. She would ask how you all had been, listened like she cared what the answers were, tell all of you tales about the places she had seen and the people she had met, play small games using that strange megaphone she wears on her belt.

She didn’t even mind you following her around like a lost duckling, complimenting the bandana collection you’ve been steadily growing.

It’s sad when she leaves, but you tell yourself that it’s okay because it makes the excitement for the next letter or time she’ll come visit that much better.

And then one day Mx. Fayghen told you that this was the last time King was ever going to visit.

You had to find paper to write down your question, asking what they meant.

They told you that King wasn’t going to go travelling anywhere ever again, wasn’t even going to deliver the mail anymore. Wasn’t ever going to come back.

They told you that King was going to become a God.

You may have thrown a tantrum at that point, you’re embarrassed to say.

Look, you were young. You were naïf. You were ten. Everyone makes mistakes and has a meltdown when told their favorite adult was never ever ever coming back again when they’re ten.

You’re eleven now. That’s practically a full grown adult. You feel way more mature than you did two weeks ago.

So mature, in fact, that you don your favorite bandana and the hat you spent all your allowance repairing, borrow Littu’s leather gloves, steal three pairs of thick socks from Teeson so that the cowboy boots you were promised you’ll grow into fit, and run away from the Home.

After all, Mx. Fayghen told you that becoming a God is an honor. That only the best and brightest humans get elected to become one.

King’s certainly the best and brightest. And if you won’t ever see her again, you want to say goodbye, cheer her before she does…whatever it is people do before becoming Gods.

You’ve drawn her a poster and everything! It, it may not be a very big poster because you only have small paper at the Home, and it’s not very colorful because Monjah keeps eating all the crayons, and you have to fold it up even smaller to fit into your pocket, but you drew it and you’ll wave it and maybe even give it to her, if she wants something to remember being human by.

So you’re stowed away on a boat to the Grove, where humans do something to become Gods.

You’re pretty sure you’ve seen the captain attempt to talk himself up to kissing the boat four times before he finally notices you’re there.