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The post-Blake-Association-bust groupchat Lisbon made after Jane fled had mistakenly included him. No one corrected that mistake. No one dared after Lisbon mysteriously didn’t bother to lie better that she wasn’t purposely pretending the mistake was nonexistent. Jane had always teased her lying skills. They all had to reluctantly strongly agree with his post-flee “ghost”.
Being on the run and the least tech-friendly (by choice; Grace had once grimly wondered about the dad air it allowed him), he messaged least; as in not at all. One would think Cho would be next least responsive. They would have been correct if it weren’t for the fallout between the Van Pelts and Lisbon after Grace had pointed out the fond tone of Jane’s letters…
Grace had said fond and the fact that Lisbon clearly implicitly heard implied romance was her.. granted when Rigsby had teased about he and Grace betting on their chemically obvious banter barely half a year before Jane had been gone, Grace looked at him with nearly a sour look as deep as Lisbon’s. Cho had been the most responsive before Lisbon had resorted to part-time work as a zoo security guard and high school health educator.
Lisbon and Cho had gotten into a charged vidchat argument where Grace and Rigsby could only gawk as their proverbial uncle (only sometimes for Rigsby) and aunt made her and Jane’s post-Vegas emotional warfare look tame. He’d gone back to school for law and had encouraged Lisbon to do something of similar weight. She didn’t want to listen.
He was angry at how much Jane had taken from her and unfortunately took it out on her… he stopped texting while never leaving the groupchat. And that was how Patrick Jane single-handedly destroyed a groupchat Grace had wanted since six months into her CBI career. His arrival a year and a quarter later would finally revive it when he blackmailed the FBI to bring the gang together for a Chicago-based group. Jane had believed Lisbon would appreciate being home… he was wrong.
That is how the team of five were corraled to the first bar they had been in together since some scarce post-Vegas closed case gatherings. That was how the four of them arrived the same time to a cheerful Patrick Jane they’d already grown tired of from the initial vidchats. The atmosphere was so deflated, Jane quickly offered Cho’s place for hosting.
It was the first time Cho had hosted. The one time they’d gone over to his place back in their CBI era, a collection of vinyls his great aunt and her partner passed onto him before they moved back to Vietnam and a bins of books had featured. It was the same, but the book cases were shinier with less dust perhaps due to Elise’s hand.
The one time Cho had shared an update after the groupchat fallout was to let the team know that he and Elise had worked things out after Jane fleeing knocked some sense into him (and Elise realized she did actually want her tubes tied and had been projecting that debate onto Cho because of her adopted Black parents’ southern values).
There they sat at a poker table with Jane’s grin as if he’d never left for Vegas and sold his soul in the form of fucking Red John’s mistress more willingly than any enthusiastic sex worker ever had their millionaire clients. That was a huge reason Rigsby had joked about him and Lisbon, he had been under the impression she had cast him from her heart after that. Grace knew better as did Cho even if he really didn’t want to believe. There were few situations that ticked off Cho… being Lisbon’s surrogate older brother in law enforcement with one of the most successful con men in North America was one of them.
Fortunately at this point, they had all gone to therapy. Lisbon was the first to go when Jane disappeared and didn't answer any of her thousands of voicemails… one online support group and she never came back after she’d had a huge crying session anonymously online. Red John’s people keeping tabs on her and witnessing this had been the sole reason they had somewhat believed in Jane’s turn… the amount of voicemails his friend, handler, and small-smile-sharer even made Red John side-eye him in ways that made Lorelei strangely genuinely envious of Teresa Lisbon.
She managed to not be envious of her when he nailed her to the motel bedframe because of how much she was side-eying him. In another life, Lorelei Martin saw the appeal of Saint Teresa though she’d never admit because to do so would have torn her from the inside to out acknowledging who she could have been. Red John and Jane both loved the toughest of puzzles.
Grace still saw her therapist monthly for DBT therapy and had roped Rigsby and Cho into it though the former trickled out slowly and ended up learning from her like they were studying their own sign language and Cho ended up joining a swing dance class instead which sped up his and Elise’s reconnecting.
Jane had seen a few while away and when one finally saw saw him in ways Sophie Miller’s unethical flirtations could never rival, he’d ghosted her after five sessions and would only return to her a few weeks before Lisbon almost broke up with him after he disappeared himself a month into their relationship. It was a wonder how the rest of the team didn’t end up pulling an intervention, but their trust in Lisbon still trumped their side-eyes of Jane’s cries for help in the form of finding a love just as if not more powerful than Angela and Charlotte's original.
So it was that evening, they all arrived with some therapy under their belt and a million reasons for why they didn’t want to work on the unit Jane had blackmailed them into. Cho was there for Lisbon. Grace was there for Jane. Rigsby was there for Grace. They were all a tangled mess and yet they were here. And they’d kept his letters and yet they weren’t sure where to begin.