3) conversations, though we utter not a sound

"I think it's cabin fever, Lisbon," he tells her. "Check my temperature. It could be terminal."

He's lying on her couch again, regarding her and the room from his reclining position. She has a textured paint ceiling. He's not sure he approves of the decorating choices, but then again Lisbon probably never looks up.

"It's been one day, Jane," she says. "It's not possible that you can't cope with one day. You've been to jail, for Pete's sake."

"It was different there," he says idly. "They locked the doors so I couldn't get out."

"Do you want me to handcuff you to the couch? Will that help? Because that can definitely be arranged."

This is the point where Jane usually makes a joke; bounces it back to her so they can keep playing the same way they always have. She worries; he takes risks. He flirts; she stammers and backs off. The two of them are as safe as houses, he thinks, looking at the ceiling again.

And it's on the tip of his tongue to reply – something about her control issues or how fake-hurt he is by her lack of trust. But he doesn't. He takes a long moment, and then he looks at her. She's sitting at the table still, although they've cleared away dinner, hands linked in front of her like a child saying prayers. Since polite after-dinner conversation didn't seem to be forthcoming, Jane had made himself comfortable.

Lisbon has untied her ponytail and her hair falls around her face in waves. Jane thinks about the photo of her he'd unearthed earlier. He'd always liked her hair shorter, but there's something softer about her these days.

"Sunshine or rain, Lisbon?"

"What?"

"Sunshine or rain?"

"Maybe you do have a fever," she grumbles. "Sunshine. Obviously."

"But what if there was more to the question?" he muses. "Sunshine, alone. Alone for good, maybe forever. Rain with someone you – with someone important to you."

"That's changing the question," Lisbon says uneasily.

"Yes," says Jane. "So it is."

She twitches almost imperceptibly whenever he walks past the covered windows, as though she's imagining he'll throw back the curtains and invite the world in. So rather than test her anxious frame of mind he's been imagining the stars and the night outside. It's deepest midnight blue in his mind, dark and soft, studded with the tiniest points of light that are almost not there. Since there's no reason not to go all the way, he adds in a beach and the sound of waves and the scent of coconuts. It's been a long time since he's spent any time at the beach.

He's worked on this skill before. This isn't his first house-arrest rodeo, but somehow, like he told her, this is different. He isn't quite sure if he should walk into FBI headquarters in broad daylight and commit hara-kiri with Lisbon's unloaded gun, or run as far away as he can. The problem with either of those scenarios, of course, is Lisbon.

Lisbon doesn't keep her guns loaded; that's something he's never known about her. When he asks her about it, she looks at him blankly and says "They're semi-automatics, Jane," as though that should mean something to him. She keeps her apartment cool and turns off lights whenever she leaves a room. She arranges her kitchen in a way that makes no logical sense to him – flatware drawers are made standard for a reason, Jane thinks. Her running shoes are well-worn and she has a handwritten and folded copy of Psalm 23 tucked between books on her shelf.

It's never been one of Jane's favorites.

He's finding out little details about her, final puzzle pieces falling into place. It all makes sense; these are all things that he could have imagined about her, knowing her as he does, or divined from her reactions if he'd questioned her. But somehow, there's something missing.

He wants more.

He wants more and he wants to know; not surmise, not make an educated guess. And it would be ridiculous, and it's definitely not the way the two of them work, and how would he even phrase it? "Lisbon, please tell me what you think about in the last moment before you fall asleep, and where is your favorite place to be kissed, and what was your dog's real name, and do you truly believe good people go someplace wonderful after they die?"

It just seems like he's missing so many important pieces of information.

Jane had kissed her once. They'd been late-night brainstorming in her hotel room and she'd kept yawning, apologizing, then yawning again. He'd told her there was nothing that couldn't wait until morning, and he'd been tired too, and kind of punch-drunk from too much caffeine and the heat of the summer's day. There had been a long moment, suspended in conditioned air and the pull of the stars through her window, where he'd been about to just say goodnight and leave.

And then he'd thought about the crime-scene photographs in the file sitting on the end of her bed, and thought about what they'd seen wrapped in garbage bags in a dry desert riverbed that morning. He'd felt that familiar flash of rage that always turned itself back into melancholy, and he'd reached out and hugged her.

She starfished, as usual, arms tense and out to her sides in the first moment, but then she'd relaxed and hugged him back. He never allowed himself too much human contact: it was safer for his continued stability. But now he breathed in her hair and in an impulsive second, went to kiss her on the cheek. And Lisbon had – actually, he didn't know exactly what Lisbon had done, but he'd found himself with his lips pressed against hers.

It was a fraction of a second of contact, but it had haunted his thoughts for weeks afterward. He'd felt guilt and hot shame and and a kind of exasperation with himself for being melodramatic – Lisbon had drawn back calmly, after all, and then told him she'd see him in the morning as though nothing had happened – but he couldn't seem to lock the memory into a box and file it away. It kept coming back at inconvenient moments: in line at the sandwich place; sitting in early-morning traffic; when he was waiting for water to heat or the elevator to arrive.

It was, he supposes, a natural progression. Lisbon had been invading his sleeping dreams for years, by that point.

And even that was normal and perfectly sane, just something that happens when you spent a lot of time with someone – once he'd dreamed Minelli was his roommate, after all – but in dreams, as in real life, Lisbon somehow always manages to be different from everyone else.

He'd be walking along the beach with Angela on their honeymoon, and Lisbon would be sitting on the sand, staring out to sea as though they weren't there, the wind blowing her hair back against her face. He'd be arguing with his father in their trailer while Lisbon puzzled over paperwork at the table, tapping her pen against her lips as she thought. Once, memorably, she was Red John, mocking drawl somehow a combination of her voice and the odd, distorted intonations that had been on constant repeat in his head, and in his dream-logic he'd thought of course, of course, how could I not have known? as she'd sliced open his stomach with a curved knife in her right hand.

He'd woken from that one heartsick, nauseated, aroused, pulse pounding. He'd cold-showered it away, but been shaky and atonic for the rest of the day.

Sometimes he hates sleep.

He's remembering hotel rooms a lot today. Hotel rooms and gas stations and diners and seafood restaurants with questionable kitchen hygiene.

Nostalgia covers some of his memories, at least, with syrup-heavy sweetness. Remember the hotel room - hotel was probably too strong a word - where he could see the manager's two horses, snorting and eating hay, out back in their corral through the window? Remember Grace leaning against the SUV, rufescent hair glorious in the last of the day's light, watching with loyal eyes as Lisbon talked to a highway patrol officer? Remember Cho buying a granola bar at the gas station they'd stopped at on some coastal road, throwing it into Jane's chest on his return as though Jane had asked for it? Remember? Remember?

Lisbon's eyes in the moment before he shot her. Lisbon's voice: rasping, terrified, on the phone, reassuring him that she was all right. Lisbon's hand, small and warm in his, and he'd thought it was the end of the world. So much of all of this was coming back to Lisbon.

"They need probable cause," she's explaining to him like he's five years old. "If they're watching the apartment and they see you? If someone gives them a credible lead that you're here? That is beyond probable cause, Jane. They'll be here in seconds. If they even suspect - do you even have a plan B?"

Jane ignores that. "Beyond probable cause," he murmurs instead. "Definite cause."

"It's not a joke."

"We're-absolutely-certain cause." He stops when he sees her face, then stands up and moves over to the table. He pulls out a chair – beside her, this time, instead of the adversarial cater-corner she'd chosen before – and leans forward to touch her arm. "Try not to worry."

She looks up at him, eyes searching.

"We'll just say I was holding you hostage," he says easily.

She lets go of an exasperated breath. "No-one would ever believe that, Jane."

"Because I'm too good a person."

"Because I would kick your ass in the first five minutes and arrest you."

"You are very feisty," Jane agrees, tapping a finger against his lip. "What if I drugged you?"

"I can't believe we're having this conversation," Lisbon mutters.

Later, he decides he likes the sound of water running in her shower and the faint dampness it brings to the air, even as far away as here downstairs. The weather channel's predicting rain, and he finds himself strangely disappointed by the fact that there's absolutely no way he can go outside and experience it for himself; no way to feel the spatter of droplets on his skin. Jane has always liked wild weather; he hopes for electrical storms and hail and punishing winds. Nature has a way of forcing change.

Lisbon's hair curls wildly in the steam from a shower; that's something else he'd never known about her. She's already showered today, but she clearly needs room and something to do. He hadn't really factored in how much his presence was going to impact her or how much she had to process. Of course, he hadn't really factored in anything, he'd just let his feet move him here. There's probably something to be said for letting his body parts do the thinking for him.

She's in jeans – he's always liked her in jeans – and a button down shirt and she braids her hair while simultaneously typing out texts and frowning at her phone.

"I have to go out," she tells him abruptly.

"Oh?" Jane says, affecting disinterest. He's doing the crossword puzzle in her newspaper, and he doesn't look up. "Who were you talking to?"

There's a long moment before she speaks, and he looks up.

A look crosses her face that he can't quite decipher. "I can't tell you."

Jane looks down at his paper; back up at her. "I understand," he says quietly.

This time, her expression clearly says I don't believe you as she gathers her things and gets ready to leave. He hears how slow her movements are though, and knows she's hesitating. He stares down at the newspaper, unseeing.

"What are you thinking about?" she asks, so softly he almost doesn't hear her.

For once, he replies honestly. "People we've lost along the way. We've lost a lot, Teresa."

"I know," she says, looking uncertain. "Your family - "

"My family," he agrees. "Our colleagues. Friends. Innocents." He hears himself say it, and thinks: innocence. And then: sleep. Youth. Mental health. Trust. Happiness. Hope.

Lisbon takes a step closer and ducks her head to look into his eyes. "I never wanted it to end like this," she says.

Jane weighs that in his mind, and then, suddenly, his pensive mood twists.

No, he thinks. You didn't want it to end like this. You wanted Red John on trial; in jail, like there was a prison cell that would hold him or a law enforcement agency he couldn't compromise. She would have let him go, shrieks the hind part of his mind, roiling red-hot inside his head.

And he must have given something of that away on his face, because Lisbon, studying him, blinks. Then her jaw comes up and he sees that light come on in her eyes that would make him nervous, if she wasn't on his side.

"What?" she asks slowly, tempered steel in her tone.

"Nothing," he says automatically, brushing her away like he has a hundred times before. Sometimes he forgets that he's alone in this; that Red John is and always has been his responsibility and his promise, no-one else's. He was bound to Red John by the blood of his family. Lisbon could never really hope to understand.

Although – he falters, as the red fog of anger starts to clear. Lisbon has lost, too. He thinks about what she'd said about the bureau - the whole CBI, about Bosco, about the fact that she has a smooth gray stone and a Glock 19 in her nightstand where normal people would keep books, or their knitting, or condoms, or anything but this symbol of how unsafe she was. Of how unsafe Jane had made her.

He weighs this in his mind, considering, then stands up and moves to walk past her, thinking he'll make a cup of tea and contemplate.

But she stops him with an outstretched hand. "Jane," she says.

He composes his face before looking at her expressionlessly. "Tea, Lisbon?"

"No," she says firmly. "Tell me."

He feigns ignorance, stepping around her grasp and avoiding her eyes. "There's nothing to tell," he says blandly.

She's at his side like a shot, eyes blazing. "You don't think you owe me a little truthfulness?"

Oh, that was a low blow, he thinks, even for Lisbon, who has always known where to stick the knife in him, even though she almost always refrains from doing so. There is one weak point she's never hit before, though. This is one weak point that she's never quite figured out.

He does owe her, of course. He loves her as well. He's not stupid enough to refuse to admit it to himself, even though he'd withstand torture before saying the words out loud. Before saying the words out loud again.

It would put her at risk, he thinks, to say it. Better to show her with apples and a smooth stone paperweight he'd found at the side of the road and late night phone calls because he'd finished a book he thought she'd want to hear about. So she's never quite understood what she means to him. If she had, things could have gone very differently.

He would have, he thinks desperately, looking at her marine eyes; at the wisp of curled hair coming free from its braid. Thinking about that gun and that stone. He would have stopped it all, to protect her.