KittySpace - FanFiction

Patrick Jane is shaking, hands clutching the phone, thumbs stabbing at buttons that seem to be appropriate but all he can see is the blood on the wall and all he can think is wake up. Please wake up. The officer asks him the nature of the emergency and all he can do is shout because what the hell does she think the nature of the emergency is? He doesn't realize she can't see through the phone.

His hands are red. Sticky, covered in blood. Rocking his little girl, his baby girl, rocking back and forth. It's okay, baby. It's okay, sweetie pie. It's going to be okay.

It's a good day. A nice day. Patrick Jane comes into the bedroom full of energy and she tells him shh. You'll wake our little girl.

She smiles when she says it, though. She's always smiling, or even if not she gives the impression that she is, and it's one of the things he loves about her. That quiet steadiness. When everything else is driving him insane he can always depend upon her quiet touch, the center-point, the touch stone. The eye of his personal, powerful storm.

He tells her all about the successful interview, the show he put on, the way he charmed everyone. She tells him of course he did.

He kisses her in triumph and asks how her day was, how their baby girl is. Sleeping, now, and well. Very proud of her daddy.

He drifts off to sleep some time later, blissfully content, almost smug with the most beautiful, perfect woman in the world here in his arms where she wants to be, that she wants to be there is the greatest triumph of all. That and the tiny form sleeping in the room down the hall.

Patrick Jane is a suspect for a short while, interrogated in a room by cops who are spun into circles in naught point seven five seconds. They show him pictures of the scene, the smiling face on the wall, the bodies that no longer are his wife and daughter. Broken shells, broken pieces. No life to them, no breath or smile or warm touch or steadiness when he can feel the world tilting. Her beautiful hair in golden ringlets, now tacky and brittle and down in the cold cold morgue. He asks something about taking her a blanket when he remembers; fortunately no one pays him any attention by now because he's in the police station, obviously in shock, poor man.

The media is crowded around the police station with their flash bulbs and their gull-like shrieking cries. Greedy bastards. He stands before anyone can stop them and gives them a show, the sad-eyes, the trembling lip. One or two tears, just there, perfect. No one notices the ice. Or the knife's edge.

He spends a few days secluded at the home of a friend who has no idea who he's housing while the police go over his home. When he comes back, when he's finally allowed to come back, he spends a few days taking all the pictures down from the walls, methodical, unthinking. Putting her toys back in her room, closing up the old piano to gather dust. He's never played it. He won't, now.

He doesn't sleep in their bed, still blood-spattered with the sections cut out of the mattress for forensic analysis. For one hopeful, blazing night he hopes that if he doesn't sleep in their bed he won't dream. But he does dream. And in those dreams...

... he's coming home early from a day at the studio; the police don't need his help today and he's deliberately set aside all other bookigns and told no one.

By now they're used to him working long days at a stretch, not coming home until hours after the shoot is done, and he surprises them as the car turns up the curve.

"Daddy! Daddy!"

And then there's a tiny form clinging to his waist and there's a beautiful woman to come home to, the perfect woman, and he kisses her hello and says "I'm all yours for the rest of the day." It's an apology, of sorts, for the horrible misunderstanding. It's also his need to know they're there and close, not that he'll admit it, not that she'll mistake it for anything but.

They have a day out with a picnic dinner because every day is a beautiful day here, and as the storm clouds roll in it's already time to go inside so it doesn't matter too much. They make a game of it, racing each other to get everything in, laughing, drenched. She drapes a towel over both of them and he kneels down and towels his baby girl off, ruffling her head with appropriate noises except.

Then. He lifts the towel from her head and it comes away bloody. And she's on the floor, bloody, unmoving. Because it was real, it was all real, please god no let it all be a dream just a bad dream please, god, please...

They're calling him for the interview. He's fallen asleep in the green room, although he hadn't meant to. "I'll be there in a minute."

Another interview in an endless stream of them. The publicity hounds are a nightmare. They keep after him, wanting to know how it feels (how do you think it feels you sick bastards) and if there's anything they can do to catch him and why haven't the police caught him yet, what's going on, what's happening?

The worst are the digging questions. The sneering questions, hey mister psychic, why haven't you caught him yet? Can't you see where he is? Who he is? Why haven't you caught him, why haven't you found him, why isn't he brought to justice? The letter hasn't been released to the press, not in its entirety, not that last message. If you were a real psychic, you wouldn't need to open the door.

He opens the door every night in his mind. It's not that he needed to because he didn't know what was behind there, although he didn't until he saw the note on the door, it was that he needed to because he had done it. He had finally done it. His arrogance had been his downfall and this was his punishment and why, oh god, why was it hers too? Why was it theirs? Why did my beautiful baby girl, why did my love, my heart, why did my world have to die to punish me for this pride? What did I do that was so wrong?

"... I'm right here with you, always."

She always says that as she smooths down his coat, smooths down his hair, her hands soft and gentle on his shoulders. He sighs, allows himself that sigh and that slump of the shoulders because he knows she's there to catch him when he sags into her. And she rests her cheek against his and smiles and tells him in her even, caramel-smooth and steady voice that it's all right. He's all right.

"Of course it's all right," he murmurs, one hand covering her hand at his waist. "I've got you here with me, don't I?"

Always.

Till death do us part.

One hand over hand and gold touching gold, a small symbol as far as it goes but it means so much. It was an appropriately lavish ceremony and full of magicians and press and it still meant so much. Not just empty gestures. And that she had stayed by him all these years, with all he had done, oh yes. He knew. He knew the worth of a good woman and a good partner. And the woman who stands with him now and always is just that.

And then when she leans against him he turns to gather her into his arms and hug her tight one last time before he's off to his evening performance, except that she doesn't move with him as she usually does. She's gone limp. Dead weight. Dead. In his arms, hollowed out, scooped out, blood all over both of them and dead eyes staring up at him with no life to them and the pain of it reaches up and pulls his throat and chest tight and he can't breathe cannot breathe for the sobbing and the screaming, no, no, this isn't happening, this is a mistake, no, it can't be, no. Please, no. Please.

Okay, he isn't, but he might as well be. Useless as he is to anyone, to his managers and agents and handlers, to the police he used to work with who understand at least part of what they're seeing even if they don't know the full depth of his destruction. Useless to the press who can't get anything publishable out of him.

Useless to his wife, who loved him and counted on him. Useless to his daughter, who trusted him to keep her safe.

These are the words written across from him on hospital white walls as he sits against the head of the bed, legs stretched, ankles crossed. He blinks if he has to, he eats, he breathes, but he doesn't live. He moves forward because he doesn't deserve to die, to end. He's useless. Not worth the effort to put a bullet through his head. Useless. He takes up space. He fills a bed, a pair of shoes, a suit of old clothes. That's all he is. Useless. Just a...

"Waste of a good bunch of parts."

She thwacks him lightly on the arm as they turn up the path to the house. "Don't you say that. Don't you dare."

"No, I'm serious," he says, but he's smiling at her when he says that. "I mean... I could be helping the police more, curing... making world peace or something, I don't know."

"You don't have the patience for that kind of thing, and I do know," she turns to face him as they step into the house. "Patrick Jane. My dear Patrick."

He kisses the palm of her hand as she passes it along his cheek, brushing her fingers through his hair and making it almost as untidy as possible. Smiles and waits for her to finish what he's thinking.

"You'd be bored to tears in any other line of work, and you know how you get when you're bored..."

"Like a five year old child," he finishes with a smile. They've had this conversation before. "I know. You're right, of course, as always."

"Of course I'm right. You know I'm always right," she smiles, kisisng his cheek. "I don't even know why you bother to argue by now."

"What about when you turned me down for dinner? Twice?"

"I was right, then, too. It wasn't the right time. You needed to be told no before you would listen to a yes."

She was right, of course. She was always right, he did get restless and petulant and five years old when he was bored. He did need to be told no before he would listen to yes.

Ankles crossed, leaning up against the head of the bed, he was wasting time and space sitting here feeling sorry for himself. He could picture the look she would give him, tired, exasperated, patient as she always was but no less rebuking for all that. She had remarkable tolerance and still managed to know when to call him out on his bad behavior, and how to do it so that he listened.

Or she had done. But she was gone, now. And there was no one there anymore to call him out on his bad behavior.

But someone did need to be called out on their bad behavior. Someone who had been very bad indeed.

More than one someone, by the stack of case files that pretty young Agent Lisbon had left by his bedside. At the behest of her senior agent, no doubt. He sat up a little straighter, thumbed through them. The senior agent had left a note and a phone number paperclipped to the top folder. Jane was about to pocket it when he remembered he was wearing hospital blues. No, that would never do.

Patrick Jane walks out of the hospital with his hands in his coat pockets, vest loose and tie nowhere to be found, whistling a jaunty tune. His hair is touseled and shining and gold, his eyes are bright blue-gray. He's even smiling, just a little.