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He stares out the vastness and beauty of the Grand Canyon and with the warmth of his tea between his hands for a moment he feels peace.
It’s perfect.
And then his phone shatters the illusion, a shrill reminder of everything he’s running from. He hits decline on her call and looks back out at the view in front of him but all it’s taken is a five second glimpse of her face on his phone screen to completely rob him of that sense of peace.
Now he simply feels hollow again.
So he closes his eyes, clears his mind, and tries to picture where to go next, what place could offer him a sense of peace again. But all he can see is the tiny bed in his Airstream and her dark hair in the periphery of his vision.
The most peace he’s known in years was waking up and knowing instantly that she was there beside him safe, and whole, and his.
He wants so desperately to live in that peace with her, had tried so hard to hold onto it while case after case of close calls had tugged it away from him little by little. Vega’s death and the sight of Lisbon in a kevlar vest, ready to walk into a hostage situation, was the final harsh pull, leaving his hands empty and grasping.
He can’t fathom how he could ever watch her go to work again without becoming sick with dread and panic. For the first time he can ever remember, the walls between rooms in his memory palace have become permeable. The memories get mixed together in ways he knows aren’t true.
Lisbon’s face covered in blood takes Angela’s place on the floor of his home. Lisbon tells him she loves him and then he shoots her. He stands in front of her in a plane and she tells him to just leave her alone — so he does.
No matter how hard he tries he can’t separate them, put them back inside the realities they actually belong to.
It was foolish of him though, to think that leaving her would take away his fear. She may be out of sight but she is so rarely out of mind. He wonders if she would be flattered to know that the only things powerful enough to eclipse her in his thoughts are literally the natural wonders of the world — and even then it’s only for a moment.
The awe striking beauty of the Grand Canyon is no match for how loving her has consumed him.
He doesn’t know yet how to stop running, how to guide himself back to her, but he knows he’s running out of places like this to run to.
In the end, she pulls him back herself and he is equal parts grateful that she did and ashamed that he wasn’t strong enough to do it on his own.
He can feel the old, familiar, mask slip back on the second they sit down together.
She makes him a cup of tea and he talks to her like he’s still just her consultant and not a man who left her with tears in her eyes, alone in a cemetery after burying a friend. Not a man who, up until that day, had been spending all his nights whispering his love into her ear and letting his fingers trace all the parts of her he had spent years withholding his desire to.
“How’s the tea?” she asks.
“Hot. Good. Thank you.”
He gives her one word answers instead of properly acknowledging her deliberate act of care so she meets his flippancy in equal measure.
“I would have mailed you your cup but I didn’t know where you were.”
“But you knew I’d be back,” he tells her, trying to convince himself as much as her.
“No, I didn’t. I can’t read minds.”
He bites back the urge to answer that neither can he, but he knows that wouldn’t be fair. It might technically be true, but they both know he can guess her thoughts far more readily than she can guess his.
She tries to rein in her anger but she doesn’t hide it.
“The first time I called you I thought, ‘Missed my call’. Second time I thought, ‘He’s busy, okay, he’ll call me back’. The third time, I thought, ‘He’s dead. He is dead in a ditch on the side of the road.’”
His heart constricts at the hurt that crosses her face despite her attempt to minimise it, though his own mask barely changes.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he tells her truthfully, knowing it’s far from enough.
“Well, you did scare me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Okay,” she says — but she looks away from him now and he wouldn’t need to be an expert in reading people to know; it’s not okay. Of course it’s not.
Underneath his facade he’s at war with himself.
He wants to her to pull his mask away, wants her to get angry and demand more of him, better of him. He wants her to forcefully pull the man who loves her more than anything else back to her where he belongs but he knows he is clinging too tightly to this version of himself. The version he wore for almost a decade because it was the only thing that kept the grief and terror at bay enough for him to live.
After all these years, she knows better than to try to pry his fingers loose of anything he chooses to hold onto.
But he also knows she should never have to either; they’re his hands after all, it’s his responsibility to release their grip, to decide what they should hold.
He tries to offer her more truth, aware that it may be the only thing he can offer right now. “I’m working through something and I just need space to think. I can’t soldier on like you, Lisbon.”
“We’re all upset. I can’t just run away from my work here, this job is too important to me.”
“Yeah, I understand,” he says.
It doesn’t sound convincing though. Probably because it’s not entirely true. He understands but he doesn’t. He knows Lisbon, fell in love with her while watching her do this job, understands it’s a part of her as deeply as his past is a part of him.
And yet, his desire to share a life with her free from risk feels monumentally more important than anything else and there’s a tiny resentful part of him that can’t understand why it doesn’t to her.
“What can I do for you to help you figure things out? Just tell me.”
“Time. I just need some time,” he tells her, wanting her to see that he’s trying. It’s not much to offer, not after what he’s robbed her of in his cowardly retreat from her, but she takes it anyway.
“Time’s good, I can give you time. I just need one thing from you.”
“What’s that?”
“Don’t ignore my phone calls.”
“Okay. That’s fair.”
“Alright,” she says, trying to smile, pretend like this is a step forward she should feel grateful for.
After she returns to work he watches her through the glass for a minute, heart aching with regret and a sense of déjà vu. He feels transported back in time, to the CBI office and years of watching her with affection and want, all the while feeling paralysed by the possibility of ever acting on it.
Gabriel tells him a truth he already knows — that he’s being eaten up by fear and grief — and tries to offer him hope.
“The cure will come with the number three.”
It’s all bullshit, of course. He knows this. The problem is, for the first time he properly understands why all his own victims had been so willing to believe him.
There is no simple cure. Just like there wasn’t when he killed Thomas McAllister. That act didn’t relieve him of his guilt or his grief. The only freedom it gave him was from obsession — but the feelings of guilt and grief had remained the same prison they had always been.
As his days passed on the island, his freedom had helped him prise the bars apart little by little. Days filled with nothing but time — nothing but the freedom to choose what to do with that time — had forced him to pay attention to those feelings in a way he had never allowed himself to before. He’d begun to let them to roll in and out with the tide and as he did he slowly discovered that there was space for others. There were waves of missing her; waves of relief that she had survived him; waves of peace in his own survival, in his life.
And slowly, a wave of desire for more that had eventually pushed him right back to her.
The truth he knows he has to accept is that the price you pay for living, and filling that life with love, is that it will always be accompanied by fear. They are natural bedfellows and not even he can magically alter that reality.
But this, maybe even more than all the grief he'd lived in for so long, this he would give anything to have a cure for.
His grief at least had driven him, kept him alive long enough to rediscover that life actually was worth living. But this abject fear is not serving him in any way at all. It’s only driving him further away from the life he wants.
Yet he still can’t seem to put it down, no matter how much his hands ache from gripping it so tightly.
And he refuses to go searching for threes on the advice of a delusional man.
It’s far easier to go to a bar and get drunk.
He falls asleep under the stars, surrounded by long grass.
He hasn’t actually slept in the Airstream since he left. The lie he tells himself is that he’s taking advantage of the opportunity to reconnect with nature; it’s the one thing he truly missed after leaving the island.
The truth though, is that he can’t bring himself to sleep in that bed without her.
Not that he’s been sleeping all that much anyway. His dreams have been getting in the way of that. The sound of only his own breathing might also be a significant factor.
Tonight though, the booze does a good enough job of flooding his subconscious with so much nothing that his dreams can’t find a way in, and he sleeps through the night almost peacefully. When the sun wakes him he hears himself murmur, “Good morning,” before he’s properly alert enough to remember there’s no one beside him.
In all the years after Angela’s death he never once woke up expecting her to be there. He’s not sure what to make of this contrast.
As he stretches and begins to contemplate what to do with his day, the appearance of a three legged dog strikes him as an absolute mockery of his refusal to buy into Gabriel’s lies and go in search of threes.
He doesn’t really know what else to do with his time if he’s not working with Lisbon or driving the Airstream across the state in search of something he knows, deep down, he won’t find any place that doesn’t include her, so he concedes that he might as well follow it.
Gabriel’s ‘omen’ leads him to a run down little cabin of all things. He can’t quite explain the feeling that washes over him when he sees it but it sets his mind humming the way the first inkling of a plan usually does and he feels his hands loosen ever so slightly. Just enough for his mind to consider all the other things they could hold again if he would just let them. Pencils and tools; a cold beer in one hand and hers in the other.
It’s a start, he thinks.
When he pulls out his phone to check the time, he sees he missed a call from her last night and his stomaches lurches, imagining her hurt and disappointment when he didn’t answer — again.
The hollow feeling in his chest returns but for the first time since Vega’s death, it’s not the fear of losing her to a bullet or a knife that consumes him. He realises, with an almost heart crushing clarity, that the greatest threat to her isn’t violence; it’s him.
He is causing her pain.
And just like always, just as she’s done for their whole partnership, she’s accepted it as though it’s simply her burden to bear. Her pain in exchange for minimising his.
He’d told her he couldn’t just soldier on like her and he’d said it like an accusation. Twisted up in his own self centred-ness he’s allowed himself to forget that she doesn’t do that by choice; it’s just the role everyone else has forced her to play all her life.
Her own accusation, from their first case together at the FBI, comes back to him now.
You ran away again, Jane. Not just from the FBI, you ran away from me.
Before he’d left — run — she’d told him he couldn’t keep pulling her from the path of oncoming trains and he knows she’s right.
But more to the point, now he knows he can’t let himself become the oncoming train that someone else eventually needs to pull her away from.
When she sees him arriving she looks away and he feels his universe tilt off it’s axis. It’s like watching a video play in reverse because this is not how this scene goes.
In all their years working together, when he arrives at a crime scene, she has always looked towards him.
It’s not something he’s ever actively thought about until now but the change scares him and this time he doesn’t let himself pull the mask on again.
This time the first thing he offers her is an apology.
“I’m sorry I missed your call last night, I didn’t mean to.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m back,” he declares, wanting it to be as simple as that; knowing that it isn’t.
She doesn’t hide the scepticism in her voice when she asks, “What does that mean exactly, you’re back?”
“It means I’m figuring things out. I’m figuring it out.”
He can’t put better words to it than that, can’t find a way to explain that he’s taking direct steps to plaster over the cracks in his heart. So he tells her what he can, what does come easily and honestly.
“It’s good to see you.”
“It’s good to see you too,” she offers in return, smiling just enough to let him breathe easily for a little while.
He doesn’t believe in God or The Universe but if he did he would be sure he was being tested. His day had begun by offering him a seed of hope.
It ends with violence.
They find Gabriel hung and he wants to run again, can’t keep his brain from reimagining the image with her body instead and it makes him sick.
He never really had the stomach for violence but over the years he’d forcefully desensitised himself to it in service of his revenge quest. He simply doesn’t have it in him to do that anymore and he knows he can’t look at it day in, day out, without going mad.
Back at the office he sits on his couch behind her while she does the necessary paperwork. There’s no real reason for him to be here but he panics at the thought of letting her out of his sight again. He doesn’t say it, knows that telling her that won’t keep her close to him, so he just sits in her presence drinking in the sight of her very much alive, hoping it will be enough.
Every now and then she turns to look at him, or maybe to check if he’s actually still there, but she doesn’t ask if he’s okay, doesn’t make him a cup of tea, and he understands she’s afraid of trying to care for him.
When she begins gathering her things to leave for the night he finally speaks, a nervous rush of, “You haven’t eaten in hours, let me make you something to eat.”
The surprise on her face adds another wound to his collection but she soothes it quickly enough with a small smile and a visible softening of her shoulders as she answers quietly, “Thank you, I’d really like that.”
Over dinner at the Airstream she doesn’t stray far from the topic of the case at hand, clearly hesitant to broach anything personal between them, and he doesn’t know where to begin either. So they talk and theorise, and this at least still feels easy and familiar even if he also knows it could never be enough again.
He could never go back to just this with her.
He doesn’t really expect her to stay but he doesn’t want to say goodbye to her, and is fairly certain she wouldn’t welcome him parking the Airstream outside her house to keep watch over her, so he just doesn’t mention the time, prolonging her presence with him as best he can. Eventually though, she yawns and says, “I don’t think I can stay awake any longer, Jane.”
But she doesn’t open the door to head out to her car. Instead she stands and pulls a set of pyjamas from one of the tiny cupboards he keeps his own clothes in and starts unbuttoning her shirt.
He doesn’t mean to sound so surprised when he asks, “You’re staying?”
She freezes and her face hardens for a moment. He braces for anger, or worse hurt, but instead she offers him quiet defiance.
“Yeah. I’m staying.”
She looks at him with expectant eyebrows, as if daring him to tell her to leave.
Lost in all this mess of grief and fear, all he seems to have done is make her doubt that he wants her — and despite that she keeps telling him she’s not going anywhere.
Not for the first time, he finds himself thinking that she is so brave and he is such a coward. There’s so much he knows he should say to her but the only words he can find are, “Thank you.”
“I don’t want to be alone tonight, Jane,” she says, almost defensively. It’s a clear message. I’m doing this for me, not you.
“I wouldn’t want you to be,” he tells her honestly.
She changes the subject abruptly, asking, “Is my toothbrush still here?” and he can’t help but wonder if there are different words underneath this too. Did you try to erase me?
“Of course it is,” he replies softly, desperately hoping she can hear his answer. I could never.
She makes him go first, telling him she has to wash her face as well as clean her teeth, but as he lies in bed on his back waiting for her, he wonders if this is what she was trying to avoid. Waiting for him, alone, in his bed.
He can’t blame her. It feels like standing at the edge of a cliff blindfolded, no way of knowing what the next step will yield. Shame twists through him as he considers it probably feels like standing at the edge of a cliff, waiting for a gift, only to be abandoned without a word.
It feels like an eternity before she slides in beside him, reaching over him briefly to turn off the light, but the familiarity of her body next to his is almost startling in it’s effect on him. He’s seen his hypnosis techniques create almost instant calm on hundreds of other people but he’s never really felt it himself; until now.
There’s a quieting of his mind, as if there’d been static playing underneath all the other sounds and now it’s been switched off. He can practically feel the walls of his memory palace reform, sliding everything back into it’s proper places.
He intentionally pulls up his memory of Angela and Charlotte on the floor, allowing himself to fully feel the pain of it, and then he recalls Lisbon sitting in front of him in a TSA holding cell as he leaned across the table and kissed her for the first time.
Nothing blurs or bends; the memories stay intact exactly as they are. The worst pain he’s ever felt — and the greatest joy.
She rolls onto her side facing him but she doesn’t speak. They lie in silence for a while and then she cautiously lifts her hand and rests it on his chest.
The tenderness of it almost makes him cry.
Instead he brings his own to cover hers gently, holding her hand in place above his heart and he finally talks to her, “I uh, went to the Grand Canyon.”
“You said.”
“For about five seconds, it was the most peaceful thing I’d ever experienced and I thought I’d made the right decision. But I was wrong. After that five seconds, that feeling of peace just vanished again and all I felt was lost.”
“Jane,” she speaks his name like it can take the place of all the soothing words she’s afraid to say to him.
I’m here. It’s okay. I love you.
(From her lips it can.)
He continues, “So I closed my eyes and tried to picture where I could go next. But all I could conjure was a memory of that feeling. Somewhere else I had felt that sense of peace. And the truth is, that image came to me so quickly, so easily, I would have to be stupid to ignore what that tells me. And I’m not stupid.”
She raises her eyebrows at him and he can’t help but chuckle a little as he defends himself. “Reckless, thoughtless, yes. But not stupid.”
“No, you’re not stupid,” she agrees fondly, smiling at him properly for the first time since he returned. “So, where did you see? The island?”
He shakes his head. “You know when you wake up in the morning and you first open your eyes and you can’t really focus yet but you know where you are because of what’s in your peripheral vision?”
“Sure.”
“That’s what I saw. The thing that’s always in my peripheral vision when I wake up. Well, was — before I took an ill advised road trip.”
“And what’s that, Jane?”
He turns his head finally to meet her eyes and lifts his hand off hers to reach over and touch her hair softly. “This.”
“My hair?” she scoffs, surprised and confused.
“Yes. It’s the first thing I see when I wake up next to you. Spread all over the pillow. It’s how I know you’re still with me each morning. And that, that is the place that makes me feel at peace, Teresa.”
Her eyes fill with tears and she closes them as she inhales sharply and confesses, “I really hated waking up without you.”
He rolls over properly now, pressing soft kisses to her forehead as he wraps an arm around her, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry I did that to you.”
She ducks her head under his chin and buries her face against his chest and allows herself to truly cry as he holds her close and tries to soothe her, “I’m here, it’s okay, I love you.”
Later as she’s finally falling asleep, his arm still around her, she tells him in a sleepy whisper, “To be honest, I don’t really know what you mean about the thing in your peripheral vision. Takes me too long to be able to open my eyes. But when I wake up, I feel you. Always touching me in some way. That’s how I know where I am.”
He spends the night drifting between sleep and wake, equal parts soothed by the feel of her in his arms and afraid that if he sleeps too deeply he’ll let go of her without knowing it.
When she wakes the next morning he feels her fingers brush his arm, still anchored around her waist, and a moment later she murmurs, “Hi.”
He promises himself she’ll never wake without knowing he’s there ever again.
“Morning,” he replies softly.
She turns in his arms a few minutes later and opens her eyes, smiling as he brushes her hair out of her face for her.
“There’s something I want to show you this morning,” he tells her.
“Okay. After coffee,” she mumbles, pressing into him a little more, with no indication she plans to move any time soon.
“After coffee,” he agrees happily.
Two hours later he’s leading her to his cabin with his hands over her eyes while she jokingly asks him if he bought her another horse. In his excitement he does wonder briefly whether he could keep a horse on the property for her. He already has so many ideas in mind for how to make her happy here and he’s so sure this is the solution to their problems that he fails to read the uncertainty on her face until she voices it.
“I’m glad that you got it, I am. But I have needs too.”
“Like what?” he asks, stepping closer as he tries to convey that he’s listening, really listening.
“I need to know you’re not gonna run away again.”
“I won’t,” he promises her with absolute honesty.
“I need to know you’re committed to this, to us,” she continues bluntly.
“I am, that’s why I wanna do this,” he says gesturing somewhat wildly at the cabin behind him, wishing it’s symbolism made more sense to her.
He feels almost stupid for not being able to explain, doesn’t understand why it’s so hard to just use words to tell her exactly what he means. That for as long as she’s known him, he’s had no roots, no real home, just transient places of shelter. Motel rooms, abandoned attics, the Airstream.
He loves it but he knows now it was a mistake. It hadn’t been conscious at the time but with hindsight it’s so clear to him; in buying it he’d been giving himself a method of escape.
And he doesn’t want that anymore. He doesn’t want to give himself anything that will make it easier to run from her. He doesn’t want to run. But he understands that sometimes it will be fear that drives him and the best safeguard he can think of is to rid himself of escape routes and build himself a refuge to run to instead.
It’s time to make himself a home again, one that’s theirs — together.
He just needs her to see it.
But instead she blindsides him with a question that sends a sudden jolt of pain through him almost as badly as the news of Vega’s death had.
“Okay. And are you gonna take off your wedding ring?”
She tries to hide it, but he hears it anyway, the tiny tremor in her voice that gives away her hurt and uncertainty and before he can even speak she says, “It just seems like you don't want to let go of it.”
“It’s not that,” he tries to explain, unsettled by the realisation that he hadn’t even thought about his choice to still wear it.
“I understand why it’s difficult for you,” she tells him cautiously
“It’s just that I’m used to it,” he hears himself say, though the thought underneath it is, Why didn’t I consider that it’s difficult for you too.
“I know,” she says as her phone interrupts them and he turns back towards their little cabin for reassurance.
He can picture them there so clearly.
He’s going to show her, he’s going to prove to her that she can trust him with their future.
When Tork makes the idiotic suggestion to feed Jane to the media, it’s impossible to stave off the wave of guilt and grief it triggers, and all he can do is walk away.
But as he does, he’s hit with a wave of fear too, that he’s just given her another reason to think he’s holding back from her.
He wonders if it will ever end, if he’ll ever be able to truly patch up all the holes he’s punched through her trust over the years.
By the time he’s made his cup of tea, she’s already seeking him out and though she begins with news about Gabriel, he knows that’s not really why she’s here.
“I shouldn’t have asked about the ring, I’m sorry,” she tells him and her apology fills him with self loathing.
For so long he’s allowed himself to ignore how much she’s been withholding, how much she bends herself to him and his needs, and maybe worst of all how much he leaves in her in the dark by all the things he doesn’t tell her.
The irony has always been that he’s a wordsmith when it comes to trickery and charm; he doesn’t have to think about the words, they just roll right out of him. But when it comes to truth and sincerity? He stumbles, is unsure, terrified that if he gets it wrong he’ll lose her.
But he’s learning, perhaps a little too painfully, that if he doesn’t at least try, he will lose her. He can see it in her eyes still, the question that’s plagued her since he returned no matter how hard she tries to ignore it.
Is he worth it?
And he knows it’s not a question of love. Or rather, it is in a sense, he supposes. She worries that loving him will only hurt her in the end. He can’t blame her for that but he is determined now to show her that it won’t. He won’t.
So he tells her, “Yes, you should have, Teresa. Don’t apologise for that. You had every right to ask that question. You’re right, you have needs and it’s high time I get a hell of a lot better at thinking about them and not just my own.”
“Jane…” she tries to speak, already softening her tone in that way she does with him when she thinks she needs to tread lightly. God, he loves her for it. The gentleness with which she loves him makes his heart expand almost painfully.
But he’s let it go too far, for too long; he needs her to know that she has the right to speak her feelings without fear of breaking him. He needs to offer her the same gentleness in return.
“No, let me finish. Please.” He puts his teacup down carefully and looks down at his hand, brushing a finger across the gold band lightly before looking back at her. “I’ve been wearing this for so long I think I forget that no one else really know what it means.”
“I know what it means, Jane,” she says solemnly, with so much love in her voice it almost eclipses the edge of sorrow that’s there too.
Almost.
“No, I know, Teresa. That’s not really what I mean. What I mean is… you can’t know how my relationship with it has changed. Not if I don’t tell you. For such a long time it was a promise I was keeping. To Angela and Charlotte. To myself. Sometimes, I think it was my way of keeping Red John from winning. I never chose to not be married, so if I didn’t take this ring off he couldn’t really rob me of that. But it isn’t right for me to wear it now that I’m with you. It’s not fair for people to see this ring on my finger and wonder what that makes you. The truth is, I hadn’t even considered that and it was so selfish of me.”
“Jane, I don’t care about that, what other people think of us.”
“Yes, you do,” he tells her, gently but firmly, challenging her to deny that he knows her this well; knows her values and her faith and how they’ve shaped her. “Maybe not as much as you would have a few years ago but, still.”
She does it again, softens her voice and her eyes as she rests her hand on his arm, “It’s not more important than how you feel about Angela and Charlotte.”
He knows she’s completely sincere.
“And that is one of the many reasons I love you. And that…that is just more important than this ring.”
Her face crinkles in confusion now, “What is?”
Despite the seriousness of this conversation he can’t help but smile a little. That furrow between her brow, the tiny downturn of her mouth — it’s one of his favourite expressions on her. He wonders if he’s ever even told her why. He’s always loved it, but the reason has changed over the years. In the beginning, it was merely amusement. He liked confusing her. Over time it morphed into affection and he found himself unable to deny how adorable he found her face in those moments. And one day she’d made that face at him and he’d been struck with the realisation that, in an odd sort of way, it was a symbol of her trust in him. She allows herself to be confused by him rather than assuming she understands or can guess his intentions. She trusts him to reveal himself and there is so much love in that gesture it still sweeps him off his feet a little.
So he answers her question now, as honestly and as sincerely as he can.
“That I love you. I love you, Teresa, and you’re the only future I can picture. The only future I want. And it’s important to me that you know, wearing my wedding ring this whole time was never a sign that I was still living in the past. It’s just been a part of me, that I didn’t always think about or notice, because it had always been there. And because of that, I allowed myself to be oblivious to what it might mean to you, what it suggests to others, and I am truly sorry for that.”
“It’s okay, Jane, really. I’m okay.”
He believes her, but just to be sure she really understands his meaning he steps closer, lifting a hand to her cheek and tells her, “It is time to take it off. I’m not married Teresa, but I think one day I’d like to be again.”
Her eyes go wide and there’s a hint of panic in her voice, “Please tell me this isn’t you proposing?”
He just smiles softly and runs his thumb across her cheek as he reassures her, “No. No, I would never propose in such a mundane fashion. You deserve something…”
“Not elaborate or public,” she interrupts with a firm tone to her voice.
“No. Not elaborate or public,” he reassures her softly, watching her face relax again. “But something more intentional than this. If, that is, a proposal is something you would be amenable to?”
It takes her a moment as she properly processes the conversation and she doesn’t actually say anything, just gives him a little nod and a smile that she tries to hide with her lip between her teeth.
“Good,” he says with a small sigh, pulling her in for a quick non-sanctioned work hug that he hopes she’ll forgive him for under the circumstances. “I’m glad to know that.”
It all spirals out of control so quickly.
An innocent man is killed and they have no real leads so he hears himself offering to Abbott, “Okay, well, uh, do we try Tork’s idea?”
It’s as much about proving to her that he is not driven by his past anymore as it is about preventing any further deaths.
She sees through him and tries to stop him but he won’t let her, and her devotion to staying with him through each and every interview, watching him with worried eyes, just spurs him on.
All he can think about is catching this killer so he can set his mind to the more important task of building his future with her, extinguishing every last doubt she has about his commitment to them, making sure she never feels obliged to suppress her own needs or feelings for his sake ever again.
When Lazarus calls he feels sure that they’ve got him. When Abbott calls and informs him they were set up he feels his sense of control slipping. When Teresa calls it takes everything he has to rein in his terror that he’s about to relive the same nightmare all over again.
But he ends his call with her, partially reassured that she’s safe and on her way back to the office, and he tells himself this story is different. Because she is different. They are different. They work together, protect each other — and Lisbon will never be alone for hours in a big house with nothing to protect her and no inkling she could even be in danger.
This story is not the same, he tells himself again as he climbs into Tork’s car, intending to repeat it until he can feel her again.
When the light flashes across his vision, he understands what’s about to happen and every thought is wiped from his mind except for one.
Teresa.
And from the moment he wakes up in the home of a serial killer, her name remains the constant hum beneath all his other thoughts, the one thing that gives him enough clarity to remain in control and plan his escape.
A week ago he hadn't known how to guide himself back to her; now it’s his only imperative.
She comes to his rescue.
Of course she does.
He can barely think through the ringing in his ears and the smoke in his lungs but she pulls him up and he focuses on the feeling of her arm around him.
“Don’t you ever do that to me again, ever,” she chokes out as she bears his weight to get him to her car.
When he’s safely in the passenger seat and she closes her own door, her hands grip the steering wheel and she slumps forward and sobs.
“Hey, it’s okay, I’m okay,” he tries to reassure her with a gentle hand on her back. “Not my first explosion, remember.”
She sits up abruptly and when she turns her face to him it’s not relief that fills her face, it’s anger.
“God, you think you love me more than I love you but you don’t, Jane,” she yells at him, hitting the steering wheel with her hands.
It hurts to shake his head and he’s still a little in shock, his brain moving much slower than usual as he tries to make sense of her words, “No, I don’t think…”
“Yeah, you do, Jane,” she retorts, her yelling morphing more into crying, “Because you put yourself at risk, and you spout off crap about how it’s fine for you to walk into danger to protect me because you dying wouldn't hurt you. And yet with all your insight and skill at reading people, somehow it doesn’t even occur to you how much you dying would hurt me. It would hurt me, Jane. It would hurt me the way it hurt you,” she says in a shaky voice.
She doesn’t say it directly, doesn’t invoke Angela’s name, but he knows that’s what she means. Losing him would do to her what losing Angela did to him. He’s never really considered that possible before because he’s so sure he’s far less worthy of love than Angela was.
If he didn’t know better he would actually believe she could read his thoughts for once because she continues, almost pleading with him, “I need you to understand that. I need you to understand just how much I love you, how much I need you.”
The anger seems to leech out of her as she leans her head back against her seat now, closing her eyes and letting the tears run freely down her cheeks.
He twists in his seat towards her, swiping them away with his fingers and holding her face gently between his palms.
“I do,” he chokes out, voice cracking as his own tears threaten to spill over. “Teresa, I promise you, I know that. And I swear, I will do everything I can to make sure I never hurt you again. I’m not going anywhere, I promise.”
“Well, you’re damn well going to the hospital,” she tells him bluntly, opening her eyes to him finally.
“Okay,” he agrees gently, letting his forehead rest against hers until her breathing starts to settle.
He’s nervous but he tries to hide it.
“Is it me or does it seem like the house slants a little bit to the left?” she asks, curiously.
“Optical illusion.” It’s all he can manage as he tries to pull his thoughts together, get his words right.
She glances over at him, reading the charged feeling in the air between them, but unsure of the reason for it. Until she sees it. The change he’s made.
“You’re not wearing your ring,” she observes, surprised, as though she hadn’t really expected him to take it off after their conversation.
“I’m not married,” he reminds her matter of factly. “The ground is slant-y so it makes it look like the structure is leaning but it is in fact not. It’s just an optical illusion.”
What he means to say is, the wedding ring on his finger has been nothing more than the illusion of a marriage for a long time. He’ll get better at this, the stripping away of double meaning so that he can just tell her exactly what he means, what he feels.
But for now, he knows she understands. “Slant-y huh?” she smiles at him.
“Technical term.”
He pulls the ring out of his pocket and contemplates it, “When I first took it off, I was surprised by how right it felt not to wear it. I was afraid it might linger, like a phantom limb but it was the opposite actually. I felt a sense of relief. But then, I couldn’t quite figure out what to do with it so I just put it in my pocket, hoping the right thing would come to me.”
“Has it?”
“It has. You gave me the answer, actually.”
“Me?”
“It occurred to me that as much as the ring is a symbol of my past, a connection to Angela and Charlotte, it’s also connected to you. If I’d never worn that ring, I would never have met you. That’s a strange dichotomy to sit with. I could never not wish they hadn’t been taken from me. But the truth is, I could also never wish for a version of my life that didn't lead me to you. So I think this ring doesn’t just belong to me anymore. Now, I’m not expecting you would ever wear it, but I want to share it with you.”
He reaches for her hand and holds it palm up as he places the ring on it and curls her fingers closed around it.
“I’m entrusting it to you now and what you do with it is entirely up to you.”
“Why?” she asks, visibly shaken by the gesture.
“Because I trust you. You’re the reason I have a future, the reason I’ve been able to grieve properly, and let myself love again. I’m giving it to you so that you know you have all of me. So that you never have to be afraid that they’re tucked away in some corner of my heart that I can’t give to you because I promise you, that’s not true. It’s yours, all of it.”
“Jane, I don’t know what to say.”
He breathes in now and tries to steady his voice. “Say that you’ll marry me. I want to spend the rest of my life with you, Teresa, and I want you do it as my wife. If you’ll have me.”
She opens her hand for just a moment to glance down at the gold band inside it and then carefully curls her fingers around it once more and answers him, “Yes. I would love to marry you.”
Her smiles breaks at the same time her tears spill over and his heart settles so perfectly inside him, so steadily and so peacefully.
“I’m glad that’s over, I was a little nervous.”
“Oh, you knew I was going to say yes.”
“No, even after all these years you’re still a mystery to me,” he grins.
“I am?” she asks, smiling in surprise at the idea of that.
“Thank you,” he says quietly as he leans in to kiss her.
He allows himself to indulge, kissing her lazily as time passes around them. For the first time in a long while, he feels no sense of urgency, just absolute contentment. He end their kiss and leans back against the log behind them, just watching the water for a minute until her voice gently breaks the quiet.
“You know, Jane, has it ever occurred to you that the only reason I’m a mystery to you is because you don’t ask?”
“Ask what?”
“The things you really want to know.”
“I think I’m starting to learn that,” he smiles at her.
He watches as she gets dressed the next day and when she raises her arms to fasten her cross around her neck, the glint of a gold band catches his eye. It’s not what he’d expected. He thought she might have put it somewhere special, safe inside the box of letters she kept from him, maybe.
But not this. Not resting near heart on her most precious possession.
He’s not sure what to make of it and for a moment he worries that she thinks she has to treat it with some kind of reverence and he worries she’s misunderstood his intention. But then he remembers — she doesn’t have to be a mystery to him, he can just ask her.
“Why did you decide to wear it with your cross?”
She answers without having to pause and collect her words at all, “Because this cross is a symbol of my faith. And I want you to see, every day, that you have mine. Not just my love, but my faith. In you, in us, in our partnership — whatever form that takes.”
Guilt sweeps through him as he thinks about all the ways he’s hurt her through the years, let her down, betrayed her even, and his voice cracks a little, “I’m not entirely sure I deserve that.”
She just smiles at him like she knows something he doesn’t, “That’s the point, Jane. It doesn’t matter if you think you deserve it; I do. I give you my faith so you don’t have to carry the weight of your doubt. You are a good man —” She pauses now and makes sure he meets her eyes before she continues, “— and I know all the worst sides of you, and I love you.”
“Faith,” he repeats carefully, exhaling as he takes in her face, the determined look in her eyes as she waits for him to argue with her. He’s surprised to find that he doesn’t want to, that the gift of her faith does exactly does exactly what she intends it to. “You know, I don’t think that word ever held much meaning to me until now.”
“You’re gonna let me have faith in you?” she teases with a raised brow, “I’m surprised. I thought I might’ve had to beat you into submission first.”
“No beating necessary, I’m perfectly willing to submit to you.”
“Oh really,” she smirks, “That sure would be a first.”
He lifts her hand to his mouth, kissing her skin softly, “Anything for you, Teresa. For the rest of our lives. I just want to make you happy.”
“You do,” she tells him softly, stealing her hand back from his to run her fingers down his face, “You make me so very, happy.”
He leans down to kiss her and as she sighs with that happiness against his lips, he finds himself asking a new question between kisses, “So, where would you like to go on our honeymoon?”
She pulls back to look at him properly and throws her arms around his neck with a smile, “How about the Grand Canyon? I’ve heard it’s big.”
“Huge,” he laughs, taken by surprise at her answer.
“I’ve heard it’s beautiful too,” she says, a little more seriously now, telling him that this is a sincere suggestion.
“It is,” he agrees. “But not nearly as beautiful as you.”
He does take her to the Grand Canyon and he wraps his arms around her waist as she gazes out at it’s vastness.
“Thank you for bringing me here, it’s incredible,” she tells him, leaning her head back against his chest.
“It is,” he agrees quietly, but his eyes are closed and he’s listening to the rhythm of his heartbeat while his thumb strokes back and forth across her stomach, thinking about the heartbeat now growing inside her.
Her hair blows in the breeze and tickles his face.
He doesn’t need to open his eyes to see it, or anything else; he is completely at peace and he has complete faith that nothing at all can take it from him.