Work Text:
Sometimes, he still needs a moment to just breathe.
The burned summerhouse in the back yard is slowly but surely being reclaimed by nature. He doesn’t mind that in the slightest. Once upon a time, Charlotte had played hide and seek back there with him. Instead of feeling the stab in his gut, he now merely feels wistful.
Patrick Jane enters his house via the back garden. He knows he should get rid of it now. This house is a memory palace of its very own. It locks away his secrets and the ghosts of his past. Even so, he still clings hold of it and cannot let go.
He swallows; there’s a lump in his throat. The lounge is covered with a thick layer of dust; nobody has been here for years. It obscures the past, but fails to disguise the memories. The couch, obscured with dust sheets. The table where he had organized the guns he was going to use when facing down the five Red John suspects.
His feet slide across the wooden floor boards; this was the exact spot where Charlotte had been conceived, he remembers.
Memories, positive and negative intertwine with one another. This is his past; there’s nothing left here for him. But still, old habits die old. Even now, he’s still not quite ready to say goodbye to them.
Jane heads towards the kitchen. The yellowing mail on the sideboard hasn’t moved an inch. There’s been nothing in the intervening years to disturb it.
The thin light of a full moon lights up the kitchen. Angela had once stood by the hob, humming to herself as pancakes sizzled on the frying pan. She’d smile every time she walked in as the teakettle whistled, indicating its readiness. Charlotte would grin goofily at him, her cheeks smeared with chocolate spread. As he sat, the pancakes would be plated and his favourite tea cup would be filled with tea.
Nobody made tea like Angela did. There was something different, distinctive about it. She always used soya milk for him; she never let him dart around his lactose intolerance. Everyone, before and since, had turned a blind eye whenever he ignored his allergies. Sometimes, he’d believed they were all in his head anyway.
Those lazy Sunday mornings, when he’d actually made time to spend at home were the best. Just him and his girls; Jane knew he’d never be quite as happy as that again. When they died, they took a piece of his heart with them.
He’s the first person to come in here for a lifetime.
The first person to disturb the dust, to make the picture perfect memories shudder to the touch.
Then again, he’s the only living soul to remember exactly what happened here.
He’s the only one who can remember Charlotte, charging up and down the hallway on Christmas Day with her new airplane toy held aloft.
He’s the only one who can recall just how Angela had looked, utterly seductive in red, as she suggest trying for a sibling for Charlotte on New Year’s Eve.
He’d been the one to discover their bodies three months later, in early March.
He’d been the one who’d spotted the pregnancy test in the bathroom sink.
Red John hadn’t stolen two people from him, but three.
He’d never know what his son would have been like. Jane would never see his son, with mischievous eyes and brown curled hair, pulling at his elder sister’s pigtails.
He wouldn’t be able to take them both down the park, watch Charlotte look after the young boy in such a motherly fashion. He wouldn’t be able to watch with pride as his little girl played nursemaid with her baby brother when he came down with a cold.
But Jane couldn’t miss what he’d never had. These were memories that didn’t belong to him, that would never happen. It’s a future that Red John had stolen away from him, in a blink of an eye.
It had taken him so long to steal the time to come back here, now it was all over. Jane’s still not sure whether or not he’s made the right decision in coming back. There’s something bittersweet about it, knowing that it’s over and that Red John, McAllister, can hurt nobody else.
He’s made a murderer out of Jane, twice.
But he doesn’t regret it, not for an instant.
Jane leaves the kitchen. He’d toyed briefly with the idea of making himself some tea. After all, there would inevitably be some stale tea bags in one of the cupboards, but quickly disregarded the idea. It wouldn’t be the same; Angela wouldn’t have made it.
Instead, he heads upstairs.
The third floorboard from the top still creaks; he’d never been able to discover precisely what causes that irritation. Angela had complained repeatedly about it, but he’d always been too busy working to actually sort it out.
If he hadn’t worked so hard, then maybe he wouldn’t have lost them in the first place. Maybe, he’d have been able to save them.
It’s still strange, being back in this building. In spite of feeling lighter, for the most part, despite having the distraction in the form of his new FBI position and although he knows he still has a certain someone by his side, they are always at the back of his mind.
Ever since he’d returned to the good old US of A, he’d intended to come back. Only now has he been able to steal the time to actually come here.
It’s bittersweet.
When he stares at the smiley face, the blood of his wife browning and flaking away from the magnolia walls, he realizes that this all happened a lifetime ago. The important things were locked away in his heart. Some things he’d never forget; the wisp of Charlotte’s blonde curls, Angela’s dimpled cheeks as she smiled.
Seeing the smiley face still makes him feel sick to the stomach, though.
Somewhat unexpectedly a small hand with slender fingers slips into his. He doesn’t need to look to know who it is. She’s managed to avoid the creaking floorboard during her ascent. But then, there’s always been something canny about her. It’s why she’s so special to him.
There was once a time when he didn’t believe he’d have a future after Red John.
As he turns and looks into a certain pair of sea green eyes, he now knows that he had been wrong.