"I can't believe I let you talk me into this."

"Shut up."

Jane shut up. It was only polite, after all, and he could very well believe he'd let her talk him into this. It was an apology of sorts, for the way he'd behaved on their last case. He'd let his temper and his beliefs get the better of him, indulged in a couple fits of ranting that even he thought were over the top and ill-mannered, and this made Van Pelt feel better.

Which did not mean he had to enjoy being dragged out to Midnight Christmas Mass.

He hadn't even ever been Catholic. Most of what was being said was so much sound and fury to him, signifying so many things in terms of social structure and commentary and touching him nowhere. This wasn't his faith. As far as religion was concerned he had no faith, although he wouldn't have said he had none. Depending on the context.

The singing had been pretty at least. And now they were into the lecturing. Jane didn't fidget, had never been tempted to fidget, but his mind wandered very far away and it was probably a good thing that Van Pelt wasn't paying him enough attention to notice. He didn't want to rebuff her attempts to make peace. She meant well; she meant to comfort him when she'd discerned that he'd be spending Christmas alone this year, as he had every year for the past five years. And it wasn't that he didn't have anywhere to go; her family would have welcomed him, if nothing else. But he didn't want to.

(he didn't deserve it)

So, Christmas, alone, with a short glass of rum and a sparse meal of bread and cheese and whatever else he could choke down. As was traditional these days. And he'd had that earlier in the evening, and then Grace had picked him up for midnight mass and now here they were.

He hated it here. He didn't want to hurt her feelings, but he did.

There was more singing. He even joined in on some of it, with a smile as Grace looked over at him and smiled back with eyes all a-sparkle, a sparkle that wasn't met in his eyes. But she wasn't paying attention now. She was only seeing him smiling, and that was good. That would reassure her, make her leave him alone for five minutes, make her feel as though she had done some good and she did need that. It made her look the other way, too, as he slipped through the pew and around the other few people in the aisle with him and down to the doors at the end of the hall. He just needed to get away. All this faith, all this trust in something that if Jane did believe in it even for a moment, it was to mistrust and rage against it. It made him uncomfortable.

The belltower was safer. Even with the chime of the bells, when they did chime because they weren't at the moment, it was peaceful. The harmony of the bells was preferable to the cacophony of voices, to the endless array of smiles and well-wishes and earnest eyes and the pressure all around him. The pressure of faith. When he had no faith anymore, no belief, in a higher power or otherwise. He had faith in others, to an extent. He had the strength of his conviction that the world was chaotic and random and subject to the actions of six billion people, none of whom knew what they were doing and too few of whom paid attention to anything but themselves. Not much of a conviction to build a life on, but there it was.

His faith in anything better, his hope for anything more of good had died five years ago. And Grace didn't understand that. Rigsby, Lisbon, they didn't understand. Cho, he thought, might have an idea. Maybe. There was no higher power in the world; how could Jane have faith in a higher power that allowed good people to die for no reason other than the actions of a couple of arrogant, malevolent men?

Grace meant well, but she didn't realize that bringing him to this was not an act of inspiration but an act of subjecting him to the same pressures that she felt whenever he took off running about no God and no psychic powers.

Patrick Jane walked through the belltower, tracing the air above the walls with his fingertips, the air in the direction of the bells, before tucking his hands back into his jacket pockets.

He thought, aimlessly and ambling as he walked in slow circles at the top of the tower, that it must have surprised at least Grace that he wasn't turning into a complete Grinch over the holidays. A recluse, certainly, but not a grinch. There was no point to it. And as much as he cared for anyone else, he did care for the team, and he did think on what Lisbon and the others thought of him. No need to be rude. No need to be hurtful. It was his job to protect the people who couldn't protect themselves against bad men, and that included protecting his team from himself.

Someone should have protected her from him. Someone should have told her and taken her and their little girl far, far away, before.

Throat tight, eyes hot and blinking, mouth wobbling like jello, just for an instant. One instant before he took a breath and squared his shoulders back because no one had been there to see the masks slip. It was too late for should haves now. It was over and done with.

Downstairs Grace was probably wondering where he'd gone off to, and at least it was Grace. Lisbon would have been wondering what kind of trouble he was getting himself into. Young Miss Van Pelt had a charity of spirit that he hoped was never worn out of her. He didn't think it would be. She, too, had the strength of her convictions.

The bells began to toll, and he made it out of the tower before the noise became too deafening and into the stairwell where it was somewhat muffled. One hand on the railing, feeling the chill of winter despite the fact that it was California, it never got too cold, and he was indoors to boot. Perhaps not the chill of winter outside but the winter of his own discontent, a winter in which it was always frozen over, blinding snow and jagged ice. No glorious summers for Patrick Jane.

The last time he had been in a church he remembered those church bells. He remembered the shouting and the throwing of festive bits of paper into the air, hats and the like. Doves out of hats and so on; the party a few days beforehand at the Magic Castle resulted in a fair number of those. Smiles, everywhere, and brightness, and laughter. And the world had been a better place, then. The church bells had been farther off and musical, the sun was warmer then, the sky had been blue as birds. And she had been so beautiful.

Patrick stumbled down the last set of stairs, leaned into the corner of the stairwell, and cried.

Go to the top! For you have reached the bottom.