Work Text:
He did not wear his scarlet coat…
A Red Lanterns universe tag to Strawberries and Cream, Part 2
Samantha Kelly showed her badge, even though that was not what would get her into the prison.
Into Patrick’s prison. The smell of sweat and disinfectant oozed from the walls, the floor, even the uniform of the guard sitting behind the gate. Her stomach flipped over; she swallowed back saliva, horrified at the thought of being sick in front of the impassive Cerberus.
He read through the note on his computer screen, looked at the letter she handed him, then pushed a manila envelope through the cut-out. She dumped money, car keys, her watch, and the Swiss Army knife Kick had given her for her sixteenth birthday into the envelope, sealed it, and slid it back through the opening. She pulled the holster off her belt and pushed it, gun and all, after the envelope.
He put her personal items aside, then pressed the button to allow her entrance.
Abandon all hope… Clichéd, much? The walls closed in around her, and her skin fluctuated between hot and cold. She walked down the corridor to where another guard allowed her access to the row of glass cubicles. The guard here took her request with the same blank stare. She had expected perhaps to be one of many, but only three or four people occupied those cubicles, speaking though handsets to an inmate on the other side.
She chose a cubicle with no one on either side. How long will that last? The chair was metal, its joints corroded, its rubber feet missing. Sam slid into the chair and waited. She rubbed her palms against her dark trousers, drying the sweat. Sweat still trickled down her spine, although her hands were chunks of ice, and her stomach flipped again. All the drive down from Royale she’d been thinking up things to say, things that on reflection sounded clichéd or melodramatic or simply ridiculous. She’d tried to imagine his face, tried to imagine how he’d react to each one of her conversational gambits, and all that had floated up in response had been the blank Patrick-Jane stare and the flat words, “Go away.”
Lisbon hadn’t tried to talk her out of it.
Kick had.
But Kick—both as Sheriff Austen and as her foster-brother—thought Patrick was nothing but a disaster looking for a spot to happen. And now with disaster alight and burning down the forests from here to Mexico, he thought she should let things take their course.
But of course, he didn’t know.
The door squeaked when it opened. A blond man stepped through. The orange jumpsuit fit him better than she’d expected, although he seemed, in nothing more than a month, to have lost weight. The guard motioned to the chair beneath the glass. Patrick looked from the guard to her.
The world halted.
That, or she was dizzy.
He pulled the chair out, and sat down with the same grace as if he sat down at a table for tea.
She wondered if prisons served tea, or just bad coffee, then jerked her brain back to important details. No handcuffs.
His lips moved, but of course she couldn’t hear anything but mumbling due to the glass. He frowned, then picked up the handset.
Stupid. Handset, stupid. She picked up hers.
He cleared his throat. “Samantha.”
“Patrick.”
“How is everyone?”
“Ummm… “ Of all the things in the world, I never expected that. “Fine. We’re all fine.” She could hear Harrison Ford’s voice in the back of her head… ‘We’re all fine here, now. How are you?’ “They put a restaurant in the old five-and-dime, and some of the condos next to it have sold.”
“Good. Things picking up a little in spite of the economy.” He cleared his throat again. “Good.” He glanced around the room. “I see you heard.”
“Yes.”
“I haven’t been able to send out cards or anything—” The old Patrick smile punctuated that, puncturing the balloon of things-not-said between them, pretending that things weren’t quite as bad as they were.
“Lisbon called me.”
He nodded. “Ah.” After a second, he said, in a surprisingly gentle voice, “I would have given you warning if I’d known ahead of time.”
“I’m glad you didn’t. I might have thought I had to—” She stopped, because she had agreed to teach him to handle a gun. She had looked at it, known she should tell Teresa what he’d asked her to do, and had decided to keep it a secret.
“Was Lisbon rough on you?”
It made no sense. Then she parsed it, and after a few seconds, she realized that once again he was a step ahead of her. “She was pissed I hadn’t told her I’d taught you to shoot.”
“Not, of course, that it takes any real skill to shoot at that distance.”
“If you hadn’t hit him at that distance, I’d have been pissed.”
His lips twitched. His face had hollows, but his eyes were clear and unremorseful, even though looked at her as if from a long distance away.
Her fingers trembled. She clenched her hands into fists.
With a renewal of interest, he cocked his head to one side. “How did you get them to let you in?”
“It wasn’t easy.”
“So you called in every marker you had?” The thought seemed to amuse him. “A ticket to see the tiger in the zoo?”
“That’s not it.”
“I don’t need sympathy, Samantha.” He spoke just as finally, just as contentedly, as Lisbon had warned her he would, watching her out of eyes with no emotion in them, still as if watching her from some far-distant telescope. “I’m prepared for this. It’s all over, now. And it was worth it.”
‘You have to tell him,’ Lisbon had said. “Patrick—” Sam reached into the pocket of her jacket, pulled out the piece of paper, and pressed it up against the glass. By pressing her fingers against the glass, she stopped them from shaking. But the sweat started to run down the sides of her face, and she remembered her only breakfast had been a Coke over ice and dry toast.
He looked at her, then at the paper, than at her once more. After a second, he focused on the paper, his forehead furrowed, his eyes narrowed. “What is that?”
“It’s an ultrasound.”
*** *** ***
He heard the words. The last word stopped him a second; it held no connection to reality, to the walls around him, to the glass behind which Samantha sat.
Her fingers trembled against the glass as she pressed the picture against it. Her tongue slipped across her lips, as if trying to get some moisture into her mouth, like someone lost in a desert.
He knew the word. He knew the meaning.
They slept together when he came up for his lessons on the target range. Slept in the original sense—she slept without her nightmares when she lay next to him, and he slept without his.
Only once, he’d woken early in the morning, found her asleep on her back with her arm across her eyes, vulnerable and beautiful, and when he’d touched her face, she’d stretched, opened her eyes, and smiled at him.
Until Kristina, he had thought himself invulnerable. Beyond any physical interest in a woman. After Kristina, he had thought it was too dangerous. Too dangerous to any one he worked with or cared about to risk showing that connection.
And Samantha Kelly smiled up at him, barely awake and pleased to recognize him, pleased to see that she wasn’t alone in the darkness…
And he had kissed her. And she had kissed him back.
And then… He had sometimes woken remembering it, remembering that it had felt good, it had felt right, it had been both pleasure and comfort. And she had assured him—
“You told me you were on the pill,” he said.
Samantha flinched. She pulled her hand from the glass, fumbled to put the picture back in her pocket. Her fingers quivered like insect antennae picking up vibrations from the atmosphere. “I am. I was. I mean—I was on the pill. Apparently it’s not one-hundred-per-cent perfect.”
“How much?”
She picked up on his meaning without a hitch. “A two-per-cent failure rate.”
“I’d have taken those odds,” he said, and only realized he’d spoken aloud when she flinched once more. “Wouldn’t that be a two-per-cent success rate in our case?”
He saw her grit her teeth—Assistant Sheriff Samantha Kelly, in a hospital bed in Royale, telling the doctor that either he’d get her scrubs or she’d walk out in the hospital gown. “Not going to ask me if I’m sure she’s yours?”
If he’d been able to reach through the glass, he might have shaken her, or slapped her, or done something physical to relieve his frustration that she could think he’d accuse her—Then he realized that she’d lost at least some of the fear that had ridden her since she’d first met his eyes through the glass. “She?”
She bit her lower lip as she nodded.
She. A girl. His heart thudded in his chest, speeding up as he studied her face. Her skin was grey under the tan. The institutional fans circulated the warm air, bringing him the sour stench of inmate sweat and the guards’ cheap aftershave. Red John had smelt of expensive cologne and fabric softener. Start a family. He couldn’t catch Samantha’s scent through the glass. Would she smell of fear? The hair on his arms and the back of his neck stood up, and his gut revolted at the thought that Samantha of all people should be afraid of him. She came to tell me. She had no idea what I’d say… He found a smile somewhere. Her eyes lit up; her shoulders relaxed.
He put his left hand, bare of wedding ring now, up against the glass.
Samantha put her right hand up to match his.