[the Mentalist, Big Bang fan-fic] Red Hair Black Heart - Chapter 3
[Porlogue] [Chapter one] [Chapter two] [Chapter Two.Five]
Chapter Three
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Jane is closed in the bathroom, busy seriously considering the possibility of throwing up, when he hears a knock at the door. He doesn’t move, though, he can’t, doesn’t have the strength to, nor he feels like doing so (and besides, there’s Johnny. And it’s probably for the stuntman anyway, he said he was calling and waiting for back-up). He simply collapses on the pavement, his back against the cold bathtub, feeling the icy porcelain through the texture of his white shirt, shivering, glad to be able to feel.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">He feels. It means he is still alive, that LaRoche didn’t put one between his eyes. But, on the other side… On the other side, there’s a part of him that’s not so relieved by the fact he is still alive. Because it means it’s all true: the secret identity of Johnny, or whatever it is, his powers, or whatever they are, the man he used to know so well looking like a demon, Red John, raising the stake in their little game of cat and mouse, the game itself, on the verge of ending, if what’s going on is of any indication.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">He runs his hands through his hair and cups his face in frustration. There’s simply too much to consider, too many variables, too many things he isn’t aware of yet, too many questions he needs answered to but that he can’t voice them, not yet at least. For example… has Johnny been such a cartoon super-powered being his whole life, or did he got these powers after they parted ways, when Johnny escaped the carnie at his father, a survivor of cancer who fell victim to his own number, died tragically? And how did he get these powers to begin with? How did they work? And why did he choose to get somehow involved with Red John to begin with? He said something about others, some kind of back-up… are those ones the real reason? And why are they involved? He seriously hopes it’s not some kind of battle between crazy elements of the society.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Or maybe he is the one getting crazy and he should just take the Band-Aid off and call Sophie Miller telling her he needs her help once again and that this time he’ll be serious and a good boy, not like the other time, when he faked a good part of his healing. Good woman, he should have listened to her, not just pretended it. Maybe, if he had been honest, if he had tried to do as she had asked him to, right now…
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Voices in the other room murmur something, but he doesn’t pay too attention, the words enter in his mind and then just leave, like they have never been there to begin with. There’s no place for them in his memory palace right now, right now the palace if filled with questions and assumptions and dangerous and crazy and absurd thoughts, something definitely the “old” Patrick Jane has never been too fond of.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">He takes a big breath, and starts counting, hoping that it will help him to calm down a little. He doesn’t think so, though. He isn’t exactly fond of being held at gunpoint, isn’t fond of guns in general. Every time he has to deal with one, he is in shock for days, and this time he has gone that close to the point of no return. As much as he craves revenge… it will take a while. And it’s not good. He hates not being at the top of his game.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">A muffled sound interrupts his musing, like a… like a phone ringing, close. It’s not the one near his bed, because, let’s face it, he never bothered giving that number to anyone, not to tell about his sort of living arrangements (even if Lisbon may have managed to learnt of it in the last few days). No one knows he is there, everybody thinks he spends his nights and days inside that attic of the CBI- which is almost true.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">The phone rings again, and again, and again, until… until, finally, finally, he is fully awake, and he sees it. His jacket, discharged inelegantly on the small carpet right in front of him, the same carpet where he was kneeling until a couple of minutes before, fighting nausea and a serious need to throw up the prison food he had eat at breakfast… Right. His mind and his body start to cooperate, letting him know and remember things, like the fact that last time he had actually put food into his stomach has been at breakfast, and that he had taken the jacket with him in the bathroom because he was cold. He was cold because he was in shock. He still is in shock.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> The phone rings again, and he finally remembers that he is supposed to answer it, and it’s with utter relief that he reads the name on the screen, Lisbon-mobile. Finally something, or rather, someone, normal. Probably the only fully functional and normal human being in his whole life, Teresa Lisbon, not Cho, stoic and unable to show his true emotions (and sometimes even his colors, if you don’t know how to look carefully at his well studied facade), not Rigsby, still troubled by his youth, divided between hating his father and being there for him and tormented by his upraising, not Grace, with a secret so dark and huge she doesn’t trust anyone with it, unable to fully commit, to make her mind up about what she really wants. Lisbon. Lisbon, who tells him how she feels, tells him if she is mad or sad or depressed, and allows herself the luxury of looking for comfort from time to time in his arms, like any good friend would do, Lisbon, who shared and still shares the nightmare her past has been, divided between love for her family and hate for what it has turned into… he smiles, glassy eyes (not that he would ever admit that) when he finally reaches his mobile and says a simple word, one of his favorite. “Lisbon?”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">There’s silence in the other side for a while, and he can hear her sobbing and trying to control her breathing. He can imagine her, either scared or fuming because she didn’t find him outside the prison. Maybe she is both. Actually, he is quite sure she is both fuming and scared. “What the hell are you doing, Jane? Why are you not at the penitentiary? I told you I was coming! What are you planning? I swear to God, if you went on your own looking for Red John and kept something from me, this time I’ll personally kick your ass outside the CBI right into next year!”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">He smiles. He was right- she is both fuming and scared -for him, not because of him, for once. “I’m in my motel room, Lisbon. Actually, I think you should come over….”
“Jane, tell me you didn’t hypnotize someone to get a lift... or to convince some poor taxy driver to bring you there for free… I thought I had been clear when I told you that hypnotizing people isn’t…”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“Why, Lisbon, I’m such a charmer that I don’t need to hypnotize beautiful women to get a lift, and you should know it. You are the one always driving me around, after all, don’t you?” He smirks, and he is quite sure she is blushing at the other end of the phone, he just knows it, because he knows her and he knows how she is when flattered. Even if, this time, he has just been completely honest, too bad she can’t believe him, not yet, at least, but who knows, maybe, one day.... “Actually, Lisbon, an old friend of mine, from my old carnie days, showed up outside the prison. I thought he had heard about, you know, me shooting a man in front of thousands of witnesses, but… I think it’s slightly more complicated than that….”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">He hears her taking a big breath, and he can sees her, surrounded by a cloak of darkness, running an hand through rebellious dark curls. He almost smiles at the image. Knowing her, she is probably going through all worst case scenarios right now, seeing another Danny Ruskin trying to get back to him for what he has said and done in another life. “Ok, I get it, you are in troubles. We are coming in.” she says, resolute, but somehow… resigned, like this could actually be the only possible outcome when Patrick Jane is involved. Kind of like Murphy’s law, only, with Jane instead of Murphy himself. Whoever they guy was or is.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">The line goes dead, and he just stares like an idiot at the phone in front if him, holding it like a somehow foreign object, like the mobile itself could explain him what she exactly meant with her words. “….What?” he asks at loud, hoping for answers from who knows who, still staring in disbelief at the phone. And then… he sees it, an image he has seen like millions of times in the last 8 years or so, Lisbon relaxing the muscles on her neck, interlacing her fingers making her knuckles snap, preparing her shoulders working the knots, and then….
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“CBI! STAND STILL AND HANDS WHERE I CAN SEE THEM!” mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> Right, the scream, the door falling under her vigorous thrust, such an unbelievable force in such a tiny body, and sometimes gunshots. He just hopes she’ll not fire her weapon- the landlord will already have his head for the door, he’d rather prefer not enraging that sick and twisted little man furthermore. Unless it’s Lisbon asking for his head first. Which is not unlikely, considered how she sounded over the phone. Or maybe Cho. He can see Cho trying to rip his head off.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“LISBON!” he screams, tip-toeing outside the room, hands up in mock surrender just in case, quickly but yet carefully checking the main room before daring to actually stepping out of his hiding corner- a bullet between his eyes isn’t something he is looking forward to.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">And that’s when she sees her, standing still, in shock, pointing a gun at Johnny, Cho and Rigsby at two other men, a fifty something elegant gentleman and a younger red hair man, while he can hear sobbing, a young girl he’d say, coming from a corner he can’t see, a spot probably at Lisbon’s back, the same direction Van Pelt is looking at. Lisbon… she is staring at LaRoche, still curled in the same corner, still like in trance. He feels like she’ll put the blame on him for this.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“JANE!” she hisses between closed teeth, quickly turning her face to give him a once-over, and at the same time the ok. Obviously, she thought, still thinks, he is some kind of prisoner. AND she is mad, very, very mad, on the verge of tears and firing at something or better yet someone kind of mad. The kind of mad that doesn’t allow him to say a single sentence or actually end the ones he tries desperately to pronounce. “What the hell is going on? And why LaRoche is there, in trance? What did I tell you about hypnosis? Just… are you able or not to connect your brain before doing something? Oh, wait, don’t answer that, you obviously don’t, otherwise we’d never be in this mess to begin with! But no, you have to go and do as you please, because you are golden boy Patrick Jane and you…”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“LISBON!” he screams, and that awakes her attention- and stops her non-stop tongue from indulging furthermore in insults. He cleans his voice, and than, like nothing happened at all, he starts talking, going at the same time closer and closer to her until he is at her side, and, while holding her gaze, Lisbon blushing, he carefully takes the gun away from her hand. She doesn’t even try to stop him, she simply blushes and holds his gaze. Johnny must be right, his eyes are hypnotic.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">She lowers her weapon allowing him to take it, and, assured, Cho and Rigsby do the same, but still staying vigil, eyes focused on the men, staying in silence, hands at their hips.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> “Good. Now, Lisbon, calm down and listen to me carefully. As strange as it may be, you are between friends here. Johnny, my friend from the carnie days, saved my life. He has been the one saving me from LaRoche.”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“LaRoche?”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">He nods, offering her the gun back, and looking in her green eyes as she put it back in the holster at her hip; only every now and then her eyes fly from Jane to LaRoche to the trio- and the purple-haired girl Jane recently saw at Lisbon’s back, who has finally stopped crying but is still clearly upset. “Apparently, the secret I was supposed be aware of was that he was working with or for Red John.” A pregnant pause, and she gulps, seeing something deep, a bit scared, tense. She knows the Jane working the Red John cases, and she hates him, is actually scared of him. And she hates being scared of Patrick Jane, because she knows him, knows his potential. Life’s not fair, definitely. “Lisbon, LaRoche tried to shot me dead. Johnny was the one who stopped him, but please, don’t ask me how….”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“He damned his soul, condemning him to see right before his eyes all his sins and his mistakes, allowing his body to still live. He’ll be here and he’ll not be here yet at the same time until his dying breath, awake but yet never present, ever again.” the red head man says, his voice low, sensual, but strong and sure as well, somehow hard, all the while getting closer and closer, hands casually in his pockets, cat-like movements, Lisbon ready to take again her gun out, ready to react if he’ll dare to step any closer. Which he does, but, unlikely what she thought, when he gets in front of her he merely takes her hand in his one, removing it from the holster, and he kisses the back, like the perfect gentleman. “You must be Agent Teresa Lisbon. I guess we can say I’m a fan of your work on the Red John case…and these must be your people, your… team.”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">She quickly takes possession once again of her hand, and looks at the man, not any longer staring, mesmerized by his charms and his looks, but actually studying him, like the perfect investigator she is. There’s something…. unsetting about this very man, she doesn’t know exactly what. It’s like she has seen him, or someone like him, but she can’t put the finger to when or where or who they were. She just know there’s danger involved, and she likes it lesser and lesser. And the fact that Red John, according to Jane, is involved, it only makes things further worse. “I want to know what’s going on, and I want to know right now” she turns to look at Jane, holding his gaze. She doesn’t look at him like she really is mad and furious or scared, but she meets his eyes in the only way she knows he’ll never back up. She looks hurt, betrayed, and scared. She knows he’ll never deny her anything, not when she is like that, not when, in her eyes, there’s still a shadow of memories of what happened just few days before, when he abandoned and betrayed her to go after his nemesis, putting her life at risk, in the line of fire. Literally. “Jane, look at me. what’s going on? Please, don’t lie, ok? We are… I am your family, and I want to help, I need to help at least you. Please, just, please, don’t lie and be honest for once…” she barely resist the urge to cry, and he knows, he understands every single word she just said, because, even if he tells her otherwise, he doesn’t merely read her. He knows her. He knows how being unable to help and save her family almost destroyed her, how broken she felt, and here she is, begging him to not hurt her furthermore, to allow her to save at least her surrogate family, at least what can be still saved.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“My name, ladies and gentlemen, is Stephen Strange, I’m a Doctor of many things, an healer of the body and of the soul, among my many talents.” the dark, tall and handsome gentleman says, getting closer but not daring to kiss her hand like the redhead did. “The young girl you scared, her name is Megan, I took upon me the weight of teaching her responsibility and everything that will make her better, while those men, they are my associates, Daimon Hellstorm, expert in theology despite his appearance and his manners” he indicates with his hand the man at his left, the redhead, who grins, and Lisbon stares, this time in disbelief. There’s nothing about this man, charming and ruggedly and devilish handsome that could actually suggest that he spent a good part of his life knelt on books about faith and God. “and Jonathan Blaze. Mr. Blaze here… he… had an encounter with… a sort of associate of the man you are hunting, so to say”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“He wasn’t an associate, he was his bloody damn father, and he tricked me into accepting his proposal killing my own father in the process!”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“Don’t go on any further. Before you tell us more, we have to mirandize you.” Cho says, stoic and cold as always- something that, strange enough, makes the Doctor smiles of a bright smile.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“There’s no need to, Cho, what they’ll tell us, I doubt that it could be explained or used in a court of law” Jane tells them, serious, but… Lisbon isn’t sure she has already seen him like that, he seems… scared? It has to be the shock, she tells herself, for Patrick Jane is never scared. “Johnny, what do you mean that Red John’s father killed your own? Did he sabotaged the bike or the securities of the show?”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Johnny makes a step towards them, ready to explain, lips already open, but Strange lifts his hand, stopping him on the spot. “You should listen to your friend you all. No one will believe your story, our story, even if there’s only truth behind it. But you have to understand, it’s a strange world, the one we live in, and humanity has a short memory. What once was common, is now forgotten, labeled as blasphemy by your science…”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“Excuse us, sir, but I don’t get your whole point. Nor I understood a single word of what you just said….” Rigsby interrupts him, only to be interrupt by Van Pelt himself.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“He means that there are things that a long time ago were easily accepted and explained like the intervention of supernatural forces, while, with the arrival of modern science, humanity forgot all about them, feeling the compulsory need to explain everything by the means of a rational science instead of a metaphysical one, and juts like that, they forgot, like it had never been there to begin with, just like… a dream, or fantasy. Some sort of fairytale.”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“And besides, people gets scared of what they don’t understand. You see” Hellstorm starts, again closer, too closer, invading her own personal space. “when Strange here told you I’m an expert in theology, he wasn’t quite right. I’m more some kind of an occultist, so to say. Like Doc and Johnny boy here as well, and like dear little Megan is trying to become as well.”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“you know what? I think I have the point now. I gather you are all crazy.” Rigsby jokes, but his hand as ready as never before on his gun. “Jane, tell them there is no such a thing like psychs. I mean, you don’t believe them, right?”
“There’s no time for this! Either we made them forget they have been here and have seen us, or we just show them! We don’t have the luxury of staying here sucking our thumbs like children!” Lisbon shivers the moment Hellstorm shouts with Strange, his face transfiguring into something entirely different, something that doesn’t even seems human… animal fangs and red eyes, blazing and shining of a red light so strong it seems like they are burning out with fire. She takes a couple of steps back, her head soon colliding with Jane’s chin, his hands sure on her shoulders, strong and protective, a clear sign that he has every intention of keeping his promise, at least in this installment.
Chapter Three
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Jane is closed in the bathroom, busy seriously considering the possibility of throwing up, when he hears a knock at the door. He doesn’t move, though, he can’t, doesn’t have the strength to, nor he feels like doing so (and besides, there’s Johnny. And it’s probably for the stuntman anyway, he said he was calling and waiting for back-up). He simply collapses on the pavement, his back against the cold bathtub, feeling the icy porcelain through the texture of his white shirt, shivering, glad to be able to feel.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">He feels. It means he is still alive, that LaRoche didn’t put one between his eyes. But, on the other side… On the other side, there’s a part of him that’s not so relieved by the fact he is still alive. Because it means it’s all true: the secret identity of Johnny, or whatever it is, his powers, or whatever they are, the man he used to know so well looking like a demon, Red John, raising the stake in their little game of cat and mouse, the game itself, on the verge of ending, if what’s going on is of any indication.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">He runs his hands through his hair and cups his face in frustration. There’s simply too much to consider, too many variables, too many things he isn’t aware of yet, too many questions he needs answered to but that he can’t voice them, not yet at least. For example… has Johnny been such a cartoon super-powered being his whole life, or did he got these powers after they parted ways, when Johnny escaped the carnie at his father, a survivor of cancer who fell victim to his own number, died tragically? And how did he get these powers to begin with? How did they work? And why did he choose to get somehow involved with Red John to begin with? He said something about others, some kind of back-up… are those ones the real reason? And why are they involved? He seriously hopes it’s not some kind of battle between crazy elements of the society.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Or maybe he is the one getting crazy and he should just take the Band-Aid off and call Sophie Miller telling her he needs her help once again and that this time he’ll be serious and a good boy, not like the other time, when he faked a good part of his healing. Good woman, he should have listened to her, not just pretended it. Maybe, if he had been honest, if he had tried to do as she had asked him to, right now…
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Voices in the other room murmur something, but he doesn’t pay too attention, the words enter in his mind and then just leave, like they have never been there to begin with. There’s no place for them in his memory palace right now, right now the palace if filled with questions and assumptions and dangerous and crazy and absurd thoughts, something definitely the “old” Patrick Jane has never been too fond of.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">He takes a big breath, and starts counting, hoping that it will help him to calm down a little. He doesn’t think so, though. He isn’t exactly fond of being held at gunpoint, isn’t fond of guns in general. Every time he has to deal with one, he is in shock for days, and this time he has gone that close to the point of no return. As much as he craves revenge… it will take a while. And it’s not good. He hates not being at the top of his game.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">A muffled sound interrupts his musing, like a… like a phone ringing, close. It’s not the one near his bed, because, let’s face it, he never bothered giving that number to anyone, not to tell about his sort of living arrangements (even if Lisbon may have managed to learnt of it in the last few days). No one knows he is there, everybody thinks he spends his nights and days inside that attic of the CBI- which is almost true.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">The phone rings again, and again, and again, until… until, finally, finally, he is fully awake, and he sees it. His jacket, discharged inelegantly on the small carpet right in front of him, the same carpet where he was kneeling until a couple of minutes before, fighting nausea and a serious need to throw up the prison food he had eat at breakfast… Right. His mind and his body start to cooperate, letting him know and remember things, like the fact that last time he had actually put food into his stomach has been at breakfast, and that he had taken the jacket with him in the bathroom because he was cold. He was cold because he was in shock. He still is in shock.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> The phone rings again, and he finally remembers that he is supposed to answer it, and it’s with utter relief that he reads the name on the screen, Lisbon-mobile. Finally something, or rather, someone, normal. Probably the only fully functional and normal human being in his whole life, Teresa Lisbon, not Cho, stoic and unable to show his true emotions (and sometimes even his colors, if you don’t know how to look carefully at his well studied facade), not Rigsby, still troubled by his youth, divided between hating his father and being there for him and tormented by his upraising, not Grace, with a secret so dark and huge she doesn’t trust anyone with it, unable to fully commit, to make her mind up about what she really wants. Lisbon. Lisbon, who tells him how she feels, tells him if she is mad or sad or depressed, and allows herself the luxury of looking for comfort from time to time in his arms, like any good friend would do, Lisbon, who shared and still shares the nightmare her past has been, divided between love for her family and hate for what it has turned into… he smiles, glassy eyes (not that he would ever admit that) when he finally reaches his mobile and says a simple word, one of his favorite. “Lisbon?”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">There’s silence in the other side for a while, and he can hear her sobbing and trying to control her breathing. He can imagine her, either scared or fuming because she didn’t find him outside the prison. Maybe she is both. Actually, he is quite sure she is both fuming and scared. “What the hell are you doing, Jane? Why are you not at the penitentiary? I told you I was coming! What are you planning? I swear to God, if you went on your own looking for Red John and kept something from me, this time I’ll personally kick your ass outside the CBI right into next year!”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">He smiles. He was right- she is both fuming and scared -for him, not because of him, for once. “I’m in my motel room, Lisbon. Actually, I think you should come over….”
“Jane, tell me you didn’t hypnotize someone to get a lift... or to convince some poor taxy driver to bring you there for free… I thought I had been clear when I told you that hypnotizing people isn’t…”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“Why, Lisbon, I’m such a charmer that I don’t need to hypnotize beautiful women to get a lift, and you should know it. You are the one always driving me around, after all, don’t you?” He smirks, and he is quite sure she is blushing at the other end of the phone, he just knows it, because he knows her and he knows how she is when flattered. Even if, this time, he has just been completely honest, too bad she can’t believe him, not yet, at least, but who knows, maybe, one day.... “Actually, Lisbon, an old friend of mine, from my old carnie days, showed up outside the prison. I thought he had heard about, you know, me shooting a man in front of thousands of witnesses, but… I think it’s slightly more complicated than that….”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">He hears her taking a big breath, and he can sees her, surrounded by a cloak of darkness, running an hand through rebellious dark curls. He almost smiles at the image. Knowing her, she is probably going through all worst case scenarios right now, seeing another Danny Ruskin trying to get back to him for what he has said and done in another life. “Ok, I get it, you are in troubles. We are coming in.” she says, resolute, but somehow… resigned, like this could actually be the only possible outcome when Patrick Jane is involved. Kind of like Murphy’s law, only, with Jane instead of Murphy himself. Whoever they guy was or is.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">The line goes dead, and he just stares like an idiot at the phone in front if him, holding it like a somehow foreign object, like the mobile itself could explain him what she exactly meant with her words. “….What?” he asks at loud, hoping for answers from who knows who, still staring in disbelief at the phone. And then… he sees it, an image he has seen like millions of times in the last 8 years or so, Lisbon relaxing the muscles on her neck, interlacing her fingers making her knuckles snap, preparing her shoulders working the knots, and then….
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“CBI! STAND STILL AND HANDS WHERE I CAN SEE THEM!” mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> Right, the scream, the door falling under her vigorous thrust, such an unbelievable force in such a tiny body, and sometimes gunshots. He just hopes she’ll not fire her weapon- the landlord will already have his head for the door, he’d rather prefer not enraging that sick and twisted little man furthermore. Unless it’s Lisbon asking for his head first. Which is not unlikely, considered how she sounded over the phone. Or maybe Cho. He can see Cho trying to rip his head off.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“LISBON!” he screams, tip-toeing outside the room, hands up in mock surrender just in case, quickly but yet carefully checking the main room before daring to actually stepping out of his hiding corner- a bullet between his eyes isn’t something he is looking forward to.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">And that’s when she sees her, standing still, in shock, pointing a gun at Johnny, Cho and Rigsby at two other men, a fifty something elegant gentleman and a younger red hair man, while he can hear sobbing, a young girl he’d say, coming from a corner he can’t see, a spot probably at Lisbon’s back, the same direction Van Pelt is looking at. Lisbon… she is staring at LaRoche, still curled in the same corner, still like in trance. He feels like she’ll put the blame on him for this.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“JANE!” she hisses between closed teeth, quickly turning her face to give him a once-over, and at the same time the ok. Obviously, she thought, still thinks, he is some kind of prisoner. AND she is mad, very, very mad, on the verge of tears and firing at something or better yet someone kind of mad. The kind of mad that doesn’t allow him to say a single sentence or actually end the ones he tries desperately to pronounce. “What the hell is going on? And why LaRoche is there, in trance? What did I tell you about hypnosis? Just… are you able or not to connect your brain before doing something? Oh, wait, don’t answer that, you obviously don’t, otherwise we’d never be in this mess to begin with! But no, you have to go and do as you please, because you are golden boy Patrick Jane and you…”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“LISBON!” he screams, and that awakes her attention- and stops her non-stop tongue from indulging furthermore in insults. He cleans his voice, and than, like nothing happened at all, he starts talking, going at the same time closer and closer to her until he is at her side, and, while holding her gaze, Lisbon blushing, he carefully takes the gun away from her hand. She doesn’t even try to stop him, she simply blushes and holds his gaze. Johnny must be right, his eyes are hypnotic.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">She lowers her weapon allowing him to take it, and, assured, Cho and Rigsby do the same, but still staying vigil, eyes focused on the men, staying in silence, hands at their hips.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> “Good. Now, Lisbon, calm down and listen to me carefully. As strange as it may be, you are between friends here. Johnny, my friend from the carnie days, saved my life. He has been the one saving me from LaRoche.”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“LaRoche?”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">He nods, offering her the gun back, and looking in her green eyes as she put it back in the holster at her hip; only every now and then her eyes fly from Jane to LaRoche to the trio- and the purple-haired girl Jane recently saw at Lisbon’s back, who has finally stopped crying but is still clearly upset. “Apparently, the secret I was supposed be aware of was that he was working with or for Red John.” A pregnant pause, and she gulps, seeing something deep, a bit scared, tense. She knows the Jane working the Red John cases, and she hates him, is actually scared of him. And she hates being scared of Patrick Jane, because she knows him, knows his potential. Life’s not fair, definitely. “Lisbon, LaRoche tried to shot me dead. Johnny was the one who stopped him, but please, don’t ask me how….”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“He damned his soul, condemning him to see right before his eyes all his sins and his mistakes, allowing his body to still live. He’ll be here and he’ll not be here yet at the same time until his dying breath, awake but yet never present, ever again.” the red head man says, his voice low, sensual, but strong and sure as well, somehow hard, all the while getting closer and closer, hands casually in his pockets, cat-like movements, Lisbon ready to take again her gun out, ready to react if he’ll dare to step any closer. Which he does, but, unlikely what she thought, when he gets in front of her he merely takes her hand in his one, removing it from the holster, and he kisses the back, like the perfect gentleman. “You must be Agent Teresa Lisbon. I guess we can say I’m a fan of your work on the Red John case…and these must be your people, your… team.”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">She quickly takes possession once again of her hand, and looks at the man, not any longer staring, mesmerized by his charms and his looks, but actually studying him, like the perfect investigator she is. There’s something…. unsetting about this very man, she doesn’t know exactly what. It’s like she has seen him, or someone like him, but she can’t put the finger to when or where or who they were. She just know there’s danger involved, and she likes it lesser and lesser. And the fact that Red John, according to Jane, is involved, it only makes things further worse. “I want to know what’s going on, and I want to know right now” she turns to look at Jane, holding his gaze. She doesn’t look at him like she really is mad and furious or scared, but she meets his eyes in the only way she knows he’ll never back up. She looks hurt, betrayed, and scared. She knows he’ll never deny her anything, not when she is like that, not when, in her eyes, there’s still a shadow of memories of what happened just few days before, when he abandoned and betrayed her to go after his nemesis, putting her life at risk, in the line of fire. Literally. “Jane, look at me. what’s going on? Please, don’t lie, ok? We are… I am your family, and I want to help, I need to help at least you. Please, just, please, don’t lie and be honest for once…” she barely resist the urge to cry, and he knows, he understands every single word she just said, because, even if he tells her otherwise, he doesn’t merely read her. He knows her. He knows how being unable to help and save her family almost destroyed her, how broken she felt, and here she is, begging him to not hurt her furthermore, to allow her to save at least her surrogate family, at least what can be still saved.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“My name, ladies and gentlemen, is Stephen Strange, I’m a Doctor of many things, an healer of the body and of the soul, among my many talents.” the dark, tall and handsome gentleman says, getting closer but not daring to kiss her hand like the redhead did. “The young girl you scared, her name is Megan, I took upon me the weight of teaching her responsibility and everything that will make her better, while those men, they are my associates, Daimon Hellstorm, expert in theology despite his appearance and his manners” he indicates with his hand the man at his left, the redhead, who grins, and Lisbon stares, this time in disbelief. There’s nothing about this man, charming and ruggedly and devilish handsome that could actually suggest that he spent a good part of his life knelt on books about faith and God. “and Jonathan Blaze. Mr. Blaze here… he… had an encounter with… a sort of associate of the man you are hunting, so to say”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“He wasn’t an associate, he was his bloody damn father, and he tricked me into accepting his proposal killing my own father in the process!”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“Don’t go on any further. Before you tell us more, we have to mirandize you.” Cho says, stoic and cold as always- something that, strange enough, makes the Doctor smiles of a bright smile.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“There’s no need to, Cho, what they’ll tell us, I doubt that it could be explained or used in a court of law” Jane tells them, serious, but… Lisbon isn’t sure she has already seen him like that, he seems… scared? It has to be the shock, she tells herself, for Patrick Jane is never scared. “Johnny, what do you mean that Red John’s father killed your own? Did he sabotaged the bike or the securities of the show?”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Johnny makes a step towards them, ready to explain, lips already open, but Strange lifts his hand, stopping him on the spot. “You should listen to your friend you all. No one will believe your story, our story, even if there’s only truth behind it. But you have to understand, it’s a strange world, the one we live in, and humanity has a short memory. What once was common, is now forgotten, labeled as blasphemy by your science…”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“Excuse us, sir, but I don’t get your whole point. Nor I understood a single word of what you just said….” Rigsby interrupts him, only to be interrupt by Van Pelt himself.
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“He means that there are things that a long time ago were easily accepted and explained like the intervention of supernatural forces, while, with the arrival of modern science, humanity forgot all about them, feeling the compulsory need to explain everything by the means of a rational science instead of a metaphysical one, and juts like that, they forgot, like it had never been there to begin with, just like… a dream, or fantasy. Some sort of fairytale.”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“And besides, people gets scared of what they don’t understand. You see” Hellstorm starts, again closer, too closer, invading her own personal space. “when Strange here told you I’m an expert in theology, he wasn’t quite right. I’m more some kind of an occultist, so to say. Like Doc and Johnny boy here as well, and like dear little Megan is trying to become as well.”
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“you know what? I think I have the point now. I gather you are all crazy.” Rigsby jokes, but his hand as ready as never before on his gun. “Jane, tell them there is no such a thing like psychs. I mean, you don’t believe them, right?”
“There’s no time for this! Either we made them forget they have been here and have seen us, or we just show them! We don’t have the luxury of staying here sucking our thumbs like children!” Lisbon shivers the moment Hellstorm shouts with Strange, his face transfiguring into something entirely different, something that doesn’t even seems human… animal fangs and red eyes, blazing and shining of a red light so strong it seems like they are burning out with fire. She takes a couple of steps back, her head soon colliding with Jane’s chin, his hands sure on her shoulders, strong and protective, a clear sign that he has every intention of keeping his promise, at least in this installment.