the veil that keeps me blind, 11/15
Title: The Veil That Keeps Me Blind
Chapter: 11/15 (Book III)
Notes: Alright, last part of Book III. Up later than planned as reality continues to kick my ass. Only four more chapters left!
Book III
Chapter 11
xxxxx
It took the FBI much longer to arrive on scene, but within an hour and a half Lisbon had refused further medical treatment and was finally on her way back to San Francisco.
Agent Casper and Agent Savino, a fellow female CBI agent on the task force with whom Lisbon had developed an easy friendship during the early weeks on the case, were among the first to greet her. Casper barely let her out of his sight. Savino did not even let Lisbon get any farther away than five feet. Although they took custody of Stroup, their attention was focused in on Lisbon.
She appreciated their concern, even more now that she knew how worried everyone had been, but the added attention still made her uncomfortable.
Exhaustion caught up with her midway through the drive back, and she nodded off as they sped down the highway. However, when they arrive at the San Francisco Field Office, she jolted awake immediately. Agents Casper and Savino escorted Stroup upstairs, but Lisbon hung back with a third agent, Jerry Danfield, whom she did not know as well as Mike or Julia but respected nonetheless, and waited for a second elevator.
When the elevator car deposited her on the correct floor, she took a deep breath to steady herself before following Danfield and heading toward the bullpen. As they walked, Danfield kept her up to date on the Giants’ offseason moves and the fourth quarter collapse at the Kings’ game the night before. She made comments in all the appropriate places, grateful that the conversation was about something relatively inconsequential -- anything other than her job and the undercover assignment.
The entire task force -- and several other agents whom Lisbon had never seen before -- were gathered in the bullpen, waiting to welcome her back. But it was not the task force who surprised her -- not really.
One of the agents announced that her CBI team had come all the way from Sacramento to help out. When she turned to find them, she saw not the three of them, but the four of them standing together not far from her desk. There, right next to Cho and Rigsby and Van Pelt, was the one man she had been absolutely certain she would never see again. Patrick Jane.
Lisbon passed the next ten minutes in a complete daze, although she hid it well. She was vaguely aware of the fact that she carried on several conversations: with Director Stratton, with Agent Redmond, and finally with her own team as the FBI task force dispersed. However, she had no memory of the conversations themselves, only aware that they occurred and that she took part in them.
All she could think about was the fact that Jane was there, still working with the team enough that he knew to come to San Francisco with them. That he didn’t leave. For months, she had been mentally preparing herself to return home to her life without him. Now she had no idea how to react to his presence.
Lisbon was lucky that Julia Savino had already promised to give her a ride back to her apartment, where Lisbon had been staying prior to going undercover anyway. When Lisbon arrived in the lower level of the parking garage, Julia’s car was there waiting.
During the short drive from the Field Office to Julia’s apartment, Lisbon replayed the events of the day in her head from beginning to end, focusing on the events of the past hour in particular. Even as Julia commented offhandedly about how nice it was that Lisbon’s team had been so concerned for her well being that they came to help out with the search -- particularly mentioning how impressed she had been with the consultant Jane and how insistent he had been in aiding the task force -- Lisbon still could not believe it.
Arriving at Julia’s apartment after 11:00 at night, Julia offered to get Lisbon something to eat or anything that might make her more comfortable. Lisbon thanked her for her generosity but refused, opting to retire early.
Julia’s apartment was spacious and well-decorated, more like a home than Lisbon’s ever had been in the five years she had lived there. The guest bedroom where Lisbon had been staying before she went undercover remained exactly as it had been on the day she left for the shelter. It took the last bit of strength she could muster to rifle through her suitcase to locate an old jersey and a pair of pajama pants amongst her things.
Lisbon reclined on the bed, dazed and overcome with fatigue even as she tried to process everything that had happened. She fell asleep instantly and did not wake up until 5:00 the next evening.
xxx
There were things people had told her about recovering from an extended undercover operation, but there were also things that nobody mentioned ahead of time.
The simple fact of the matter was that she spent so much time focusing on taking on that new identity that she would often forget how to be herself, and adjusting back to her own life consequently proved difficult. This was the reality that Lisbon found herself thrown into.
As the rest of the task force gathered evidence, went on raids, and finally (finally) had enough information to link the crimes to Mehler, but Lisbon was barely involved. She spent most of her time working through the details of her case report, with the help of Casper whenever he could spare time away, and had to sit through several psych evaluations, which although expected were never enjoyable.
Summers and Stroup both gave Mehler up in their confessions, striking a deal with the DA. Summers made her deal quickly, while Stroup held out a little longer. The damning piece of evidence that made Stroup cave was the fact that three years ago Melanie Pearson, the woman Lisbon had saved that night outside the diner, had been a resident at the shelter for eight months. Her name had been highlighted in the records that Summers copied.
Mehler was charged and taken into custody, but she could not sit in on the interrogation because she was in the emergency room being evaluated for her injuries. (Casper made her go; she never would have given in on her own.) Stroup may have only gotten a few hits in, but he still managed to break a few of her ribs in the process.
Soon enough, over a week had passed since her departure from the shelter, and the task force was disbanded. The matter of returning home to Sacramento, which even just a few days previously had seemed like something in the remote future, was suddenly upon her.
Lisbon knew that she had time off coming to her, at least a month’s worth if her calculations were correct, but she did not want to take it right away. What she really wanted was to get back to work, to get back to her team, and to see what exactly happened while she was away.
More importantly, she needed to see what had really happened with Jane, and she knew the longer she put off seeing him again, the harder it would be.
Before she left San Francisco, she called Hightower and set up an appointment to come in the next day.
xxx
When Van Pelt asked her to dinner, Lisbon had been completely blindsided.
Lisbon never intended for the team to corner her like this. Oh, she appreciated the gesture and the idea of taking her out to dinner had been a wonderful way to make her feel welcomed back to the CBI and to the team, but they had picked Arturo’s, of all places.
At first, the dinner was a little bit awkward and uncomfortable by circumstances alone. Arturo’s was her and Jane’s place, one of the few restaurants they started frequenting together years ago, long before they had become, well, whatever they had become.
(Lisbon herself still wasn’t sure, despite nearly six months of trying to define it and six months trying to move past it.)
Memories, mostly positive ones, flooded her the moment she walked inside the restaurant. When the team proposed a toast and Jane gave her a brief but meaningful look, she knew he remembered as well.
After a few questions about her time in San Francisco that left her feeling a little too vulnerable in front of her team, the conversation steered itself to a case that the team had handled while she had been gone, and then took off from there. The change in direction allowed Lisbon to relax fully for the first time since they arrived. She ordered a glass of Chianti and the chef’s special ravioli, both of which she suspected were Jane’s predictions for her meal, and let the food and wine and company envelop her, reminding her slowly of who she really was now that Teresa Miller was no more.
The team lingered over coffee and dessert, a necessity at Arturo’s, until finally Lisbon found herself stifling a yawn. She had woken up early to drive back to Sacramento that morning and had spent the day working on unpacking the boxes she had stored in her attic while she was away, all before going in to meet with Hightower to get everything lined up for her to return to work on Monday. The team followed her lead and paid the bill. In a matter of ten minutes, the other three had driven off, leaving her alone with Jane.
Lisbon shivered and hugged her new coat closer to her; the coat had been a rare impulse buy from the weekend before when Julia demanded that they go out and do something together before Lisbon returned to Sacramento.
“I, uh... I had nothing to do with choosing the restaurant.” She looked away as she spoke, somewhat hesitant and unable to meet his gaze as she felt the strength of it, studying her. “It was Cho’s idea.”
Jane shrugged his shoulders noncommittally. Lisbon wished, not for the first time, that she could read him as well as he seemed to be able to read her.
“They know you like it here. It was a nice gesture.”
“Still,” Lisbon equivocated, “if I had known ahead of time...”
“Don’t.”
The brevity of his command, the harshness of it, was so unlike him that she almost stepped backwards in disbelief.
She laughed in an attempt to cover her unease but knew, of course, that he saw right through her. She tried changing the subject, instead.
“So, Rigsby and Van Pelt. How long before they’re back at it?” After a moment of quiet contemplation thoughtfully adding, “Or are they already?”
“Not yet,” Jane answered.
Okay, so her assumption was correct. There had been a few moments during dinner when she thought she had seen the rekindling of an old spark between her two junior agents. As long as they kept it out of the office this time, she had no problem with it. If they could work through the roadblocks that arose the first time around, they deserved to be happy.
“I give them until New Years,” she quipped as she rolled her eyes.
At that, Jane could not conceal the hint of a smile, disguised by shadows and barely visible, but present. “That’s very astute, Agent Lisbon. They were really quite subtle about it tonight, but I wouldn’t bet against you.”
“The guys will be disappointed they missed this. The great Patrick Jane, turning down a bet.”
Jane appeared to be deep in thought, and she waited patiently for him to voice whatever it was on his mind. They were treading in unfamiliar waters here; they both knew it. When Jane did not say anything for several minutes, Lisbon found herself succumbing to her own fatigue, yawning once more. This time, she did not try to disguise it.
The quiet, subdued, reflective Jane before her scared her more than anything she’d ever seen from him before. Even on his angriest, most volatile days. Lisbon looked up at him and felt like she was seeing him for the first time, with every last mask torn away.
“It’s really good to see you, Jane,” she whispered, before she could stop herself.
Embarrassed, she retreated quickly to her car and drove away. When she arrived home, she still found herself a little out of breath.
xxx
Jane surprised her yet again when he showed up on her doorstep that next evening, first asking probing questions and then declaring that he had fallen in love with her. Lisbon had no idea what to make of his questions, and she certainly had no idea what to make of his confession.
So when he leaned forward and kissed her, she did not fight it. In fact, she welcomed the contact, responding easily to the familiar motions of it; even the pain from her broken ribs seemed to dull in the heat of the moment. Somewhere in the back of her mind, rational thought was telling her to put a stop to this and to push him away immediately, but for once, she let her thoughts get eclipsed by her feelings. She just let herself go.
It was Jane who broke the contact, leaving her vulnerable before him.
“Like I said, Teresa.” The emphasis on her given name was barely noticeable as he whispered in her ear, but it thrilled her nonetheless. He only used her given name on rare occasions, and now he’d used it twice in the course of fifteen minutes. “I never even had a chance.”
And then he was gone; vanished out the door before she can gather enough of herself to stop him.
xxxxx
Chapter: 11/15 (Book III)
Notes: Alright, last part of Book III. Up later than planned as reality continues to kick my ass. Only four more chapters left!
Book III
Chapter 11
xxxxx
It took the FBI much longer to arrive on scene, but within an hour and a half Lisbon had refused further medical treatment and was finally on her way back to San Francisco.
Agent Casper and Agent Savino, a fellow female CBI agent on the task force with whom Lisbon had developed an easy friendship during the early weeks on the case, were among the first to greet her. Casper barely let her out of his sight. Savino did not even let Lisbon get any farther away than five feet. Although they took custody of Stroup, their attention was focused in on Lisbon.
She appreciated their concern, even more now that she knew how worried everyone had been, but the added attention still made her uncomfortable.
Exhaustion caught up with her midway through the drive back, and she nodded off as they sped down the highway. However, when they arrive at the San Francisco Field Office, she jolted awake immediately. Agents Casper and Savino escorted Stroup upstairs, but Lisbon hung back with a third agent, Jerry Danfield, whom she did not know as well as Mike or Julia but respected nonetheless, and waited for a second elevator.
When the elevator car deposited her on the correct floor, she took a deep breath to steady herself before following Danfield and heading toward the bullpen. As they walked, Danfield kept her up to date on the Giants’ offseason moves and the fourth quarter collapse at the Kings’ game the night before. She made comments in all the appropriate places, grateful that the conversation was about something relatively inconsequential -- anything other than her job and the undercover assignment.
The entire task force -- and several other agents whom Lisbon had never seen before -- were gathered in the bullpen, waiting to welcome her back. But it was not the task force who surprised her -- not really.
One of the agents announced that her CBI team had come all the way from Sacramento to help out. When she turned to find them, she saw not the three of them, but the four of them standing together not far from her desk. There, right next to Cho and Rigsby and Van Pelt, was the one man she had been absolutely certain she would never see again. Patrick Jane.
Lisbon passed the next ten minutes in a complete daze, although she hid it well. She was vaguely aware of the fact that she carried on several conversations: with Director Stratton, with Agent Redmond, and finally with her own team as the FBI task force dispersed. However, she had no memory of the conversations themselves, only aware that they occurred and that she took part in them.
All she could think about was the fact that Jane was there, still working with the team enough that he knew to come to San Francisco with them. That he didn’t leave. For months, she had been mentally preparing herself to return home to her life without him. Now she had no idea how to react to his presence.
Lisbon was lucky that Julia Savino had already promised to give her a ride back to her apartment, where Lisbon had been staying prior to going undercover anyway. When Lisbon arrived in the lower level of the parking garage, Julia’s car was there waiting.
During the short drive from the Field Office to Julia’s apartment, Lisbon replayed the events of the day in her head from beginning to end, focusing on the events of the past hour in particular. Even as Julia commented offhandedly about how nice it was that Lisbon’s team had been so concerned for her well being that they came to help out with the search -- particularly mentioning how impressed she had been with the consultant Jane and how insistent he had been in aiding the task force -- Lisbon still could not believe it.
Arriving at Julia’s apartment after 11:00 at night, Julia offered to get Lisbon something to eat or anything that might make her more comfortable. Lisbon thanked her for her generosity but refused, opting to retire early.
Julia’s apartment was spacious and well-decorated, more like a home than Lisbon’s ever had been in the five years she had lived there. The guest bedroom where Lisbon had been staying before she went undercover remained exactly as it had been on the day she left for the shelter. It took the last bit of strength she could muster to rifle through her suitcase to locate an old jersey and a pair of pajama pants amongst her things.
Lisbon reclined on the bed, dazed and overcome with fatigue even as she tried to process everything that had happened. She fell asleep instantly and did not wake up until 5:00 the next evening.
xxx
There were things people had told her about recovering from an extended undercover operation, but there were also things that nobody mentioned ahead of time.
The simple fact of the matter was that she spent so much time focusing on taking on that new identity that she would often forget how to be herself, and adjusting back to her own life consequently proved difficult. This was the reality that Lisbon found herself thrown into.
As the rest of the task force gathered evidence, went on raids, and finally (finally) had enough information to link the crimes to Mehler, but Lisbon was barely involved. She spent most of her time working through the details of her case report, with the help of Casper whenever he could spare time away, and had to sit through several psych evaluations, which although expected were never enjoyable.
Summers and Stroup both gave Mehler up in their confessions, striking a deal with the DA. Summers made her deal quickly, while Stroup held out a little longer. The damning piece of evidence that made Stroup cave was the fact that three years ago Melanie Pearson, the woman Lisbon had saved that night outside the diner, had been a resident at the shelter for eight months. Her name had been highlighted in the records that Summers copied.
Mehler was charged and taken into custody, but she could not sit in on the interrogation because she was in the emergency room being evaluated for her injuries. (Casper made her go; she never would have given in on her own.) Stroup may have only gotten a few hits in, but he still managed to break a few of her ribs in the process.
Soon enough, over a week had passed since her departure from the shelter, and the task force was disbanded. The matter of returning home to Sacramento, which even just a few days previously had seemed like something in the remote future, was suddenly upon her.
Lisbon knew that she had time off coming to her, at least a month’s worth if her calculations were correct, but she did not want to take it right away. What she really wanted was to get back to work, to get back to her team, and to see what exactly happened while she was away.
More importantly, she needed to see what had really happened with Jane, and she knew the longer she put off seeing him again, the harder it would be.
Before she left San Francisco, she called Hightower and set up an appointment to come in the next day.
xxx
When Van Pelt asked her to dinner, Lisbon had been completely blindsided.
Lisbon never intended for the team to corner her like this. Oh, she appreciated the gesture and the idea of taking her out to dinner had been a wonderful way to make her feel welcomed back to the CBI and to the team, but they had picked Arturo’s, of all places.
At first, the dinner was a little bit awkward and uncomfortable by circumstances alone. Arturo’s was her and Jane’s place, one of the few restaurants they started frequenting together years ago, long before they had become, well, whatever they had become.
(Lisbon herself still wasn’t sure, despite nearly six months of trying to define it and six months trying to move past it.)
Memories, mostly positive ones, flooded her the moment she walked inside the restaurant. When the team proposed a toast and Jane gave her a brief but meaningful look, she knew he remembered as well.
After a few questions about her time in San Francisco that left her feeling a little too vulnerable in front of her team, the conversation steered itself to a case that the team had handled while she had been gone, and then took off from there. The change in direction allowed Lisbon to relax fully for the first time since they arrived. She ordered a glass of Chianti and the chef’s special ravioli, both of which she suspected were Jane’s predictions for her meal, and let the food and wine and company envelop her, reminding her slowly of who she really was now that Teresa Miller was no more.
The team lingered over coffee and dessert, a necessity at Arturo’s, until finally Lisbon found herself stifling a yawn. She had woken up early to drive back to Sacramento that morning and had spent the day working on unpacking the boxes she had stored in her attic while she was away, all before going in to meet with Hightower to get everything lined up for her to return to work on Monday. The team followed her lead and paid the bill. In a matter of ten minutes, the other three had driven off, leaving her alone with Jane.
Lisbon shivered and hugged her new coat closer to her; the coat had been a rare impulse buy from the weekend before when Julia demanded that they go out and do something together before Lisbon returned to Sacramento.
“I, uh... I had nothing to do with choosing the restaurant.” She looked away as she spoke, somewhat hesitant and unable to meet his gaze as she felt the strength of it, studying her. “It was Cho’s idea.”
Jane shrugged his shoulders noncommittally. Lisbon wished, not for the first time, that she could read him as well as he seemed to be able to read her.
“They know you like it here. It was a nice gesture.”
“Still,” Lisbon equivocated, “if I had known ahead of time...”
“Don’t.”
The brevity of his command, the harshness of it, was so unlike him that she almost stepped backwards in disbelief.
She laughed in an attempt to cover her unease but knew, of course, that he saw right through her. She tried changing the subject, instead.
“So, Rigsby and Van Pelt. How long before they’re back at it?” After a moment of quiet contemplation thoughtfully adding, “Or are they already?”
“Not yet,” Jane answered.
Okay, so her assumption was correct. There had been a few moments during dinner when she thought she had seen the rekindling of an old spark between her two junior agents. As long as they kept it out of the office this time, she had no problem with it. If they could work through the roadblocks that arose the first time around, they deserved to be happy.
“I give them until New Years,” she quipped as she rolled her eyes.
At that, Jane could not conceal the hint of a smile, disguised by shadows and barely visible, but present. “That’s very astute, Agent Lisbon. They were really quite subtle about it tonight, but I wouldn’t bet against you.”
“The guys will be disappointed they missed this. The great Patrick Jane, turning down a bet.”
Jane appeared to be deep in thought, and she waited patiently for him to voice whatever it was on his mind. They were treading in unfamiliar waters here; they both knew it. When Jane did not say anything for several minutes, Lisbon found herself succumbing to her own fatigue, yawning once more. This time, she did not try to disguise it.
The quiet, subdued, reflective Jane before her scared her more than anything she’d ever seen from him before. Even on his angriest, most volatile days. Lisbon looked up at him and felt like she was seeing him for the first time, with every last mask torn away.
“It’s really good to see you, Jane,” she whispered, before she could stop herself.
Embarrassed, she retreated quickly to her car and drove away. When she arrived home, she still found herself a little out of breath.
xxx
Jane surprised her yet again when he showed up on her doorstep that next evening, first asking probing questions and then declaring that he had fallen in love with her. Lisbon had no idea what to make of his questions, and she certainly had no idea what to make of his confession.
So when he leaned forward and kissed her, she did not fight it. In fact, she welcomed the contact, responding easily to the familiar motions of it; even the pain from her broken ribs seemed to dull in the heat of the moment. Somewhere in the back of her mind, rational thought was telling her to put a stop to this and to push him away immediately, but for once, she let her thoughts get eclipsed by her feelings. She just let herself go.
It was Jane who broke the contact, leaving her vulnerable before him.
“Like I said, Teresa.” The emphasis on her given name was barely noticeable as he whispered in her ear, but it thrilled her nonetheless. He only used her given name on rare occasions, and now he’d used it twice in the course of fifteen minutes. “I never even had a chance.”
And then he was gone; vanished out the door before she can gather enough of herself to stop him.
xxxxx