[the Mentalist, Big Bang fan-fic] Red Hair Black Heart - Chapter 2.5
[Prologue] [Chapter One] [Chapter Two/1]
Chapter 2
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“What? I thought you didn’t have a plan!” they don’t exactly run, but the last few steps are made in a hurry, Johnny pushing with crude force and rudely Jane with an hand on the small of his back, almost making him fall on the old carpet of the entrance once the door to the Spartan living arrangement is opened. “Johnny, what the hell are you up to? You said you didn’t have a plan, but your reference to timing seems to differ…” as he talks, he follows Johnny, pacing for the room, busy securing every corner from prying eyes. Doors are locked, blinds turned shout, nothing is left to the case as sunset quickly approaches. “Jonny, if you have a plan, I’d like to know it so that I could make something about it….”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“You want to know what you can do? Ok, I’ll tell you what you can do: stay here while I go in the other room. Don’t pull one of your stunts, just keeps the lights off, stall and keep your eyes closed until I tell you otherwise.” He is pushed into the main room, the metallic sound of the lock closing behind Johnny, and all Jane can do is sitting in the dark, on the edge of the bed, sweating palms on his pants and pulse and breathing erratic. He knows, he can feels it. whatever will happen, it will not be just another step into the right direction… whatever it will happen this night, it will be the beginning of the end.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">His time has almost come. He can foretaste revenge on his tongue, the bittersweet taste as strong as never before.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">One minute, three. Five. Maybe ten. Or even more. He doesn’t know. In the dark, with just the sound of the outside traffic, it’s hard to tell exactly how long it has been, and it’s even harden considered the emotional turmoil Jane finds himself feeling at the moment. He has always been a sort of prisoner of his own mind, but never the statement has been as true as it is right now, when all he can see and feel and hear it’s Red John, his voice, his face, his own hate and need for revenge…
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">It’s the cold metal of a gun against his skull to awake him from his reverie- Lisbon has ben right all along. Revenge isn’t healthy, that’s what thinking about killing Red John did, he, Patrick Jane, almighty mentalist, missed something as small as the presence of another human being in his room, a human being he was even waiting for. That’s what thinking about Red John is doing. It’s getting him killed.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">He stands and turns, hands up, in surrender, no words, the gun still cold against his blond curls. LaRoche on the other side of the gun, ready to pull the trigger, ready to kill him, grinning, evil. The man with the small, white dog. He has always knew there was something sick about it, something wrong. Now he knows. LaRoche is a mole if not the mole - and a murderer and a traitor, that’s what is wrong with this man. Not the perfect image of efficiency like Bertram likes to picture him.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“I’m sorry Mister Jane, but, as fond as we all are of you, we can’t allow you to interfere further more into our Master’s planes. I’m sorry to say playtime is over.”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">The use of the plural doesn’t go unnoticed, is the first thing Jane’s brain registers, maybe even before fully comprehend there’s LaRoche actually pointing a gun at him. Plural. It means, like they have always feared, he has always feared, that Red John doesn’t just take allies randomly, every now and there, but that he has a network, fully operative, and that there’s a bigger conspiracy hidden behind his secrets and his lies and deceptions. He remembers another motel room, this time in Mexico, words written on a wall with the blood of a dying man, the same hands that tried to tell them. He is Man. Many. Was that what Jared Renfrew meant, what he tried to share with his last breath? That Red John doesn’t just have followers, but an entire network, people working actively with him as partners in crime? Or, did he meant that the killer has way too much followers, almost a small army? Will he ever know? If the cold metal of the gun against his skin is of any indication, he doubts it.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“Let him go” Johnny’s words echo in the room. Jane gulps, aware that he has almost forgotten the presence of the old friend. A friend who’s in danger because of him, because he played doctor with a psychopath. If Johnny doesn’t have a plan… if Johnny doesn’t have a plan, it will be over for both of them, and he’ll have destroyed yet another life.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“Let. Him. Go” Johnny repeats, his voice firm, strong, fearless and demanding. Run, Jane would tell him, go looking for help, call someone, call Lisbon, but he can’t, doesn’t seem able to perform a single syllable. All he can do is concentrating on the here and now, on the gun pointed right at his forehead, between his eyes, at LaRoche grinning like an evil maniac, at the fact that it’s end, an yet again he is going to turn into empty promises so many things he said… revenging his family, saving Lisbon… nothing is going to matter, soon it will be over. Soon he’ll be dead. It’s not as easy as he thought, and he isn’t like it at all. He isn’t ready as he always claimed to be.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">He wants to live, for so many reasons, some still unknown to him but already there, waiting to be faced and accepted, and he didn’t even know until now.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“Oh, look who’s here, what a fortunate coincidence that I come to visit you as soon as I heard that you were out of prison, Mister Jane. How sad that your friend here managed to kill you before I could actually do something to help you… but at least, while he was escaping and refusing to cooperate with us, I shoot and killed him, preventing him for hurting any other poor soul out there. We just should be glad no bystanders got injured in the process…”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Johnny grins, shaking his head, if in disbelief or simply to say no, it’s hard to tell, and walks, slowly, calm, towards the mole, like nothing was happening at all. “I’m going to give you one last chance. Let him go. In exchange, I’ll be merciful, and I’ll make it quick and as painless as possible.”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">LaRoche chuckles, and Jane shivers, as scared as never before for his own life, wondering in what mess he got himself into, how he managed to find himself sandwiched between LaRoche, one of Red John’s friends, maybe even his right hand, and Johnny, who, according to his words, sounds like a crazy killer himself, a revenger like Jane himself would be, even for different reasons- maybe not even a reason at all.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">He shivers, eyes closed like Johnny asked him to, almost ordered him to, the metal of the gun colder against his skin, like a thorn, LaRoche definitely not in the process of letting him go as Johnny is asking to. Johnny. There’s no Lisbon around to save him, ready to get him out of troubles. Only Johnny, Johnny, who’s actually making things worse.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">LaRoche simply laughs. “You? I’m sorry, Mister…Blaze, is it? You are nothing but a stuntman, almost forgotten. Do you honestly have it in you to save your friend? Or yourself, for what it matters….”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">It’s Johnny’s time to chuckles. “First, I was a performer, not a stuntmen, there’s a huge difference, and I just have to snap my fingers to get my number back in Vegas, so, forgotten? I don’t think so. Not that I care so much, considering that riding a bike on a stage isn’t exactly a job, but only the way I make money to live…”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“I’m sorry, Mister Blaze, but somehow I don’t care about your job or your pastimes. I do know, thought, that after you lost your number in Vegas and your precious wife and children, you fell victim to depression, and that’s why you killed Mister Jane here. I’ve been told you used to be friends a long time ago, when he claimed to be a psych. You run the same circles, and you believed him. You asked him to help you, you wanted to talk with your beautiful wife one last time to ask for her advice, because, let’s face it, she was the reasonable one, right? But he refused, told you he was just a fraud, and that’s why you lost it… ” At closed eyes, Jane is even more aware of his surroundings, at least, for what concerns the sounds all around him. He hears everything ten times louder, the secure being discharged, the trigger being pulled. He doesn’t feel the gunshot, only hears it, but it’s different from the times Lisbon or someone from the team fires a bullet. He has looked at Lisbon practicing more than once, and he recognizes few sounds. Right now, he heard a gasp, then metal on the pavement, falling, and then the bullet. He heard it, but didn’t feel it. LaRoche not only missed his target, but he let the gun fall. And the bullet didn’t hit him.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“You should have cared about me more” says a voice coming from Jane’s back. It sounds like Johnny, but at the same time it doesn’t, it’s close but distant as well, human but metallic, almost… he heard once, a man without vocal cords, using a stimulator, and the sound… it’s that but it’s not at the same time, it’s everything and nothing he has ever heard in his whole life, like something beyond comprehension, and it’s not just a weird sound, it’s something… it’s plain scary, it’s something that makes him shiver, makes him wish to pray for the first time in his whole life, something scarier than the sound of bullets hitting him, and he knows. He knows what needs to be done.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Going against Johnny’s orders, Jane opens his eyes, because he has to see it on his own, he needs to understand, and to know. He needs to know if this is just a byproduct of his mind, elaborating a bullet going through his brain and trying to process new nervous connections.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">He slowly and tentatively does it, hands still up in the air in surrender, and the first thing Jane sees it’s him, LaRoche, cuddled in a corner, in silence, shaking like a kid in his room late at night, scared of the dark and of the weird sounds. But he can read LaRoche now, and LaRoche isn’t only scared. He is terrified. Of what exactly, Jane wonders? He focuses on his surroundings, asking if the voice scared the investigator as mush as it scared himself, and then, when everything is covered in darkness and silence, he feels it, at his back, burning, hot, covering the room with a tiny veil of light, just where Johnny was, or maybe still is.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">He turns, even if the voice asks, terrified, not to, and that’s when he sees it, or maybe him, Jane isn’t sure, he has never faced anything like that…. Something….real, dressed with Johnny’s signatures clothes, the ones he was wearing few minutes before, and… it’s real. And it’s a burning, living, talking and walking skeleton, dressed with his friend’s clothes.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“Paddy?” the skeleton comes closer and closer, so close their noses are almost touching, and while Jane keeps gulping, somehow aware this isn’t just another carnie trick, he, or maybe it, waves an hand in front of the consultant, still in shock.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">The only thing Jane is sure of is that he’ll never laugh at Van Pelt’s beliefs, nor he’ll make fun of Lisbon’s faith. Nope, never again, not after… after whatever it is that this thing is walked past him. Well, close to him, at least. He is even starting to seriously consider the possibility that psychs could actually exist. But only for few a matter of seconds. Maybe, deep, deep, deep down there’s a very rational explanation to everything that’s going on.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Or maybe not.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Light engulfs the mass of dry and stark white bones, and suddenly the skeleton is no more, and where there were bones and fire, here there is, once again, Johnny Blaze, fully human, once again like he used to be, a man like any other and not… whatever it was, or it is. “Paddy? Oh My God, are you all right? Are you seeing something? What are you seeing?” He asks, frantically, shaking Jane for the shoulders.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“Uhm… I’d say I’m seeing you, but I’m rather sure I’m losing my mind, so I believe I should think carefully about my answer, because I’m not exactly sure it’s really you I’m looking at right now… just, out of curiosity… am I dead? Because, you know… you… that thing… it looked like… some kind of… ” he turns around, like to inspection the room to carefully see nobody is there, like he is ashamed of what he is going to say. “like… a demon” he hisses at low voice, gulping and blushing, ashamed of his own theory, something that, though, is safer that the other one, the possibility that he could be actually ready to join Sophie Miller once again in her office to talk about his mental health. Not exactly something he’d look forward to in any occasion, this one included.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“Nothing else, nothing besides me?” he asks, looking carefully at Jane, almost… inspecting him, studying him.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“Uhm… my room, and… dear old J.J. who’s scared to death and cuddled in a corner. Which, by the way, is probably one of the scariest things I’ve ever witnessed. And I’ve seen a lot.”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“Are you sure you aren’t witnessing all your mistakes, your sins and evil actions, that you are not facing the Door of the underworld to be send to eternal damnation?”.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“Oh, well, that… everything I’ve done is always harassing me, like a constant reminder of my mistakes, but… I don’t re-live them. I remember them… they are… you know… memories… is that… what you mean?.”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> Johnny laughs and exhales a breath at the same time, allowing himself the luxury of falling on the carpet, out of relief, and keeps looking at Jane, keeps laughing, like a nervous laugh, and points a finger to his former friend “Well, count yourself lucky, Mister, what happened to you, isn’t usual routine for the likes of me.”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“So…I guess… it’s normal to… end up like… him and…unusual to… be…you know, like me? Like me right now, I mean…”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">He paces the room, the “biker”, running a hand through his short brown hair, his gaze shifting from Jane to LaRoche. “Yeah, uhm, sorry, I didn’t mean to look at you, it’s just that, I hadn’t turned the vengeful stare off yet, and I know I told you to keep your eyes closed, and, well, I thought it was going to take longer to get him…” he stops to look at LaRoche, once and for all, and he exhales a big breath, running now the hand over his face, tired, but mostly… Jane would dare to say he is worried. “Damn, I didn’t think it could work that well on a human being…. I’ll have to call in for back-up if we want to try to bring him in to question your boss about Carter’s whereabouts….”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“Yeah, yeah, sure…” Jane frantically walks across the motel room, eyes on the pavement, lost in silence, lost in his own world. Suddenly, he stops, and lifting his chin, his eyes look for Johnny’s ones. “Johnny, what the hell just happened here?”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Blaze chuckles, once, and then smirks. “ Paddy, my friend, you can’t imagine how right your choice of words has just been, in some kind of twisted way….”
Chapter 2
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“What? I thought you didn’t have a plan!” they don’t exactly run, but the last few steps are made in a hurry, Johnny pushing with crude force and rudely Jane with an hand on the small of his back, almost making him fall on the old carpet of the entrance once the door to the Spartan living arrangement is opened. “Johnny, what the hell are you up to? You said you didn’t have a plan, but your reference to timing seems to differ…” as he talks, he follows Johnny, pacing for the room, busy securing every corner from prying eyes. Doors are locked, blinds turned shout, nothing is left to the case as sunset quickly approaches. “Jonny, if you have a plan, I’d like to know it so that I could make something about it….”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“You want to know what you can do? Ok, I’ll tell you what you can do: stay here while I go in the other room. Don’t pull one of your stunts, just keeps the lights off, stall and keep your eyes closed until I tell you otherwise.” He is pushed into the main room, the metallic sound of the lock closing behind Johnny, and all Jane can do is sitting in the dark, on the edge of the bed, sweating palms on his pants and pulse and breathing erratic. He knows, he can feels it. whatever will happen, it will not be just another step into the right direction… whatever it will happen this night, it will be the beginning of the end.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">His time has almost come. He can foretaste revenge on his tongue, the bittersweet taste as strong as never before.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">One minute, three. Five. Maybe ten. Or even more. He doesn’t know. In the dark, with just the sound of the outside traffic, it’s hard to tell exactly how long it has been, and it’s even harden considered the emotional turmoil Jane finds himself feeling at the moment. He has always been a sort of prisoner of his own mind, but never the statement has been as true as it is right now, when all he can see and feel and hear it’s Red John, his voice, his face, his own hate and need for revenge…
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">It’s the cold metal of a gun against his skull to awake him from his reverie- Lisbon has ben right all along. Revenge isn’t healthy, that’s what thinking about killing Red John did, he, Patrick Jane, almighty mentalist, missed something as small as the presence of another human being in his room, a human being he was even waiting for. That’s what thinking about Red John is doing. It’s getting him killed.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">He stands and turns, hands up, in surrender, no words, the gun still cold against his blond curls. LaRoche on the other side of the gun, ready to pull the trigger, ready to kill him, grinning, evil. The man with the small, white dog. He has always knew there was something sick about it, something wrong. Now he knows. LaRoche is a mole if not the mole - and a murderer and a traitor, that’s what is wrong with this man. Not the perfect image of efficiency like Bertram likes to picture him.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“I’m sorry Mister Jane, but, as fond as we all are of you, we can’t allow you to interfere further more into our Master’s planes. I’m sorry to say playtime is over.”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">The use of the plural doesn’t go unnoticed, is the first thing Jane’s brain registers, maybe even before fully comprehend there’s LaRoche actually pointing a gun at him. Plural. It means, like they have always feared, he has always feared, that Red John doesn’t just take allies randomly, every now and there, but that he has a network, fully operative, and that there’s a bigger conspiracy hidden behind his secrets and his lies and deceptions. He remembers another motel room, this time in Mexico, words written on a wall with the blood of a dying man, the same hands that tried to tell them. He is Man. Many. Was that what Jared Renfrew meant, what he tried to share with his last breath? That Red John doesn’t just have followers, but an entire network, people working actively with him as partners in crime? Or, did he meant that the killer has way too much followers, almost a small army? Will he ever know? If the cold metal of the gun against his skin is of any indication, he doubts it.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“Let him go” Johnny’s words echo in the room. Jane gulps, aware that he has almost forgotten the presence of the old friend. A friend who’s in danger because of him, because he played doctor with a psychopath. If Johnny doesn’t have a plan… if Johnny doesn’t have a plan, it will be over for both of them, and he’ll have destroyed yet another life.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“Let. Him. Go” Johnny repeats, his voice firm, strong, fearless and demanding. Run, Jane would tell him, go looking for help, call someone, call Lisbon, but he can’t, doesn’t seem able to perform a single syllable. All he can do is concentrating on the here and now, on the gun pointed right at his forehead, between his eyes, at LaRoche grinning like an evil maniac, at the fact that it’s end, an yet again he is going to turn into empty promises so many things he said… revenging his family, saving Lisbon… nothing is going to matter, soon it will be over. Soon he’ll be dead. It’s not as easy as he thought, and he isn’t like it at all. He isn’t ready as he always claimed to be.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">He wants to live, for so many reasons, some still unknown to him but already there, waiting to be faced and accepted, and he didn’t even know until now.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“Oh, look who’s here, what a fortunate coincidence that I come to visit you as soon as I heard that you were out of prison, Mister Jane. How sad that your friend here managed to kill you before I could actually do something to help you… but at least, while he was escaping and refusing to cooperate with us, I shoot and killed him, preventing him for hurting any other poor soul out there. We just should be glad no bystanders got injured in the process…”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Johnny grins, shaking his head, if in disbelief or simply to say no, it’s hard to tell, and walks, slowly, calm, towards the mole, like nothing was happening at all. “I’m going to give you one last chance. Let him go. In exchange, I’ll be merciful, and I’ll make it quick and as painless as possible.”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">LaRoche chuckles, and Jane shivers, as scared as never before for his own life, wondering in what mess he got himself into, how he managed to find himself sandwiched between LaRoche, one of Red John’s friends, maybe even his right hand, and Johnny, who, according to his words, sounds like a crazy killer himself, a revenger like Jane himself would be, even for different reasons- maybe not even a reason at all.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">He shivers, eyes closed like Johnny asked him to, almost ordered him to, the metal of the gun colder against his skin, like a thorn, LaRoche definitely not in the process of letting him go as Johnny is asking to. Johnny. There’s no Lisbon around to save him, ready to get him out of troubles. Only Johnny, Johnny, who’s actually making things worse.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">LaRoche simply laughs. “You? I’m sorry, Mister…Blaze, is it? You are nothing but a stuntman, almost forgotten. Do you honestly have it in you to save your friend? Or yourself, for what it matters….”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">It’s Johnny’s time to chuckles. “First, I was a performer, not a stuntmen, there’s a huge difference, and I just have to snap my fingers to get my number back in Vegas, so, forgotten? I don’t think so. Not that I care so much, considering that riding a bike on a stage isn’t exactly a job, but only the way I make money to live…”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“I’m sorry, Mister Blaze, but somehow I don’t care about your job or your pastimes. I do know, thought, that after you lost your number in Vegas and your precious wife and children, you fell victim to depression, and that’s why you killed Mister Jane here. I’ve been told you used to be friends a long time ago, when he claimed to be a psych. You run the same circles, and you believed him. You asked him to help you, you wanted to talk with your beautiful wife one last time to ask for her advice, because, let’s face it, she was the reasonable one, right? But he refused, told you he was just a fraud, and that’s why you lost it… ” At closed eyes, Jane is even more aware of his surroundings, at least, for what concerns the sounds all around him. He hears everything ten times louder, the secure being discharged, the trigger being pulled. He doesn’t feel the gunshot, only hears it, but it’s different from the times Lisbon or someone from the team fires a bullet. He has looked at Lisbon practicing more than once, and he recognizes few sounds. Right now, he heard a gasp, then metal on the pavement, falling, and then the bullet. He heard it, but didn’t feel it. LaRoche not only missed his target, but he let the gun fall. And the bullet didn’t hit him.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“You should have cared about me more” says a voice coming from Jane’s back. It sounds like Johnny, but at the same time it doesn’t, it’s close but distant as well, human but metallic, almost… he heard once, a man without vocal cords, using a stimulator, and the sound… it’s that but it’s not at the same time, it’s everything and nothing he has ever heard in his whole life, like something beyond comprehension, and it’s not just a weird sound, it’s something… it’s plain scary, it’s something that makes him shiver, makes him wish to pray for the first time in his whole life, something scarier than the sound of bullets hitting him, and he knows. He knows what needs to be done.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Going against Johnny’s orders, Jane opens his eyes, because he has to see it on his own, he needs to understand, and to know. He needs to know if this is just a byproduct of his mind, elaborating a bullet going through his brain and trying to process new nervous connections.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">He slowly and tentatively does it, hands still up in the air in surrender, and the first thing Jane sees it’s him, LaRoche, cuddled in a corner, in silence, shaking like a kid in his room late at night, scared of the dark and of the weird sounds. But he can read LaRoche now, and LaRoche isn’t only scared. He is terrified. Of what exactly, Jane wonders? He focuses on his surroundings, asking if the voice scared the investigator as mush as it scared himself, and then, when everything is covered in darkness and silence, he feels it, at his back, burning, hot, covering the room with a tiny veil of light, just where Johnny was, or maybe still is.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">He turns, even if the voice asks, terrified, not to, and that’s when he sees it, or maybe him, Jane isn’t sure, he has never faced anything like that…. Something….real, dressed with Johnny’s signatures clothes, the ones he was wearing few minutes before, and… it’s real. And it’s a burning, living, talking and walking skeleton, dressed with his friend’s clothes.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“Paddy?” the skeleton comes closer and closer, so close their noses are almost touching, and while Jane keeps gulping, somehow aware this isn’t just another carnie trick, he, or maybe it, waves an hand in front of the consultant, still in shock.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">The only thing Jane is sure of is that he’ll never laugh at Van Pelt’s beliefs, nor he’ll make fun of Lisbon’s faith. Nope, never again, not after… after whatever it is that this thing is walked past him. Well, close to him, at least. He is even starting to seriously consider the possibility that psychs could actually exist. But only for few a matter of seconds. Maybe, deep, deep, deep down there’s a very rational explanation to everything that’s going on.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Or maybe not.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Light engulfs the mass of dry and stark white bones, and suddenly the skeleton is no more, and where there were bones and fire, here there is, once again, Johnny Blaze, fully human, once again like he used to be, a man like any other and not… whatever it was, or it is. “Paddy? Oh My God, are you all right? Are you seeing something? What are you seeing?” He asks, frantically, shaking Jane for the shoulders.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“Uhm… I’d say I’m seeing you, but I’m rather sure I’m losing my mind, so I believe I should think carefully about my answer, because I’m not exactly sure it’s really you I’m looking at right now… just, out of curiosity… am I dead? Because, you know… you… that thing… it looked like… some kind of… ” he turns around, like to inspection the room to carefully see nobody is there, like he is ashamed of what he is going to say. “like… a demon” he hisses at low voice, gulping and blushing, ashamed of his own theory, something that, though, is safer that the other one, the possibility that he could be actually ready to join Sophie Miller once again in her office to talk about his mental health. Not exactly something he’d look forward to in any occasion, this one included.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“Nothing else, nothing besides me?” he asks, looking carefully at Jane, almost… inspecting him, studying him.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“Uhm… my room, and… dear old J.J. who’s scared to death and cuddled in a corner. Which, by the way, is probably one of the scariest things I’ve ever witnessed. And I’ve seen a lot.”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“Are you sure you aren’t witnessing all your mistakes, your sins and evil actions, that you are not facing the Door of the underworld to be send to eternal damnation?”.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“Oh, well, that… everything I’ve done is always harassing me, like a constant reminder of my mistakes, but… I don’t re-live them. I remember them… they are… you know… memories… is that… what you mean?.”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> Johnny laughs and exhales a breath at the same time, allowing himself the luxury of falling on the carpet, out of relief, and keeps looking at Jane, keeps laughing, like a nervous laugh, and points a finger to his former friend “Well, count yourself lucky, Mister, what happened to you, isn’t usual routine for the likes of me.”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“So…I guess… it’s normal to… end up like… him and…unusual to… be…you know, like me? Like me right now, I mean…”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">He paces the room, the “biker”, running a hand through his short brown hair, his gaze shifting from Jane to LaRoche. “Yeah, uhm, sorry, I didn’t mean to look at you, it’s just that, I hadn’t turned the vengeful stare off yet, and I know I told you to keep your eyes closed, and, well, I thought it was going to take longer to get him…” he stops to look at LaRoche, once and for all, and he exhales a big breath, running now the hand over his face, tired, but mostly… Jane would dare to say he is worried. “Damn, I didn’t think it could work that well on a human being…. I’ll have to call in for back-up if we want to try to bring him in to question your boss about Carter’s whereabouts….”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“Yeah, yeah, sure…” Jane frantically walks across the motel room, eyes on the pavement, lost in silence, lost in his own world. Suddenly, he stops, and lifting his chin, his eyes look for Johnny’s ones. “Johnny, what the hell just happened here?”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Blaze chuckles, once, and then smirks. “ Paddy, my friend, you can’t imagine how right your choice of words has just been, in some kind of twisted way….”