Disclaimer: Not mine. Not now, not ever. I'll just be over here crying in the corner...

Author's Note: Once again I'm one of the last in the tag pool, looking for a free patch of water. :) Hope I'm not being too repetitive!

My eyes close reflexively as the shot rings out, but my heart keeps beating so I open them again, just in time to see her body hit the ground in a cloud of dust. I can smell the blood, though I can't hear if she makes a sound because my ears are ringing with a horrible wrenching scream like someone has just been disemboweled in my immediate vicinity. It takes a moment for my brain to realize it's me screaming, staring at the corpse of the woman I love for the second time in my life and hoping I can kill at least one of these idiots before they shoot me too.

"Jane. Patrick!"

Oh good, she's come to haunt me. It's too much to expect absolution for getting her killed with my stupid plan, but at least she doesn't hate me.

I fall to my knees, surprised when they hit carpet instead of dirt and the breath I heave in smells of cinnamon rather than blood. A second later I feel Lisbon's small hands land on my shoulders, reassuring me I'm not dreaming anymore.

"Patrick, ssh," she soothes as she slides out of bed and kneels beside me. "It was just a bad dream. Okay? Everything's all right."

I grab onto her, pulling her against me and holding her tight enough that I can feel her brave little heart beating against my own frantic one. She doesn't protest, but instead tries to calm me through touch, which works amazingly well. I lay my head on her shoulder while she pets my hair and let gratitude for her continued existence wash over me, displacing the horror of the nightmare.

It's been so long since I've had someone to comfort me. I'd almost forgotten what it feels like.

It doesn't take long for my feeling of peace and well being to curdle into guilt. She was the one in danger today, the one who spent the past few days in prison away from the comforts of home. I should be comforting her.

I did try. She insisted on staying at work until her report was filed and the debrief was over; I stayed too, though I spent most of my time sipping tea and trying to keep my facade intact. When we got home, I respected her need for a solitary shower and busied myself fixing her the salad she'd longed for. I made cheerful conversation over dinner, demonstrated the validity of my claim that she is ticklish while we watched mindless TV, and cuddled her while we confided how much we missed each other. I didn't try to make her talk about our close call because I knew she didn't want to; instead, I applied myself to driving the images out of both our heads. Three orgasms later, she tucked herself into my arms, whispered her love into my ear, and went to sleep with a sweet little smile.

I thought my post coital exhaustion on top of a couple of sleepless nights would translate to a good night's sleep, but no such luck.

Lisbon presses a kiss into my cheek. "You okay?"

I could stay like this all night, but she needs her sleep. "Yeah," I rasp out. My throat is raw from screaming. I hope I didn't wake the neighbors.

She leans back to look at me. "I'll make you some tea."

"No, I can get it," I say, reluctantly letting her leave my lap and stand. She grabs my shirt off the floor and slips into it, leaving me to pull on my boxers as she pads to the kitchen on her adorable bare feet. I follow, distracting myself by admiring her ridiculously cute little toes. "Really. You don't need to wait on me."

"Sit," she commands.

Seated at the table, I watch her fill the kettle and bustle around, loving this little bit of domesticity. Soon she sets the steaming cup of chamomile in front of me, then sits down with her own. I take the choice of herbal tea as a sign that she intends us to get more sleep tonight, even though at 4 a.m. I usually just resign myself to being awake for the day.

"You took good care of me earlier. It's my turn," she says.

I smile at her. "You take very good care of me."

She frowns, so quickly I almost miss it, and reaches for my hand, sliding her fingers along mine. "Patrick," she says softly, and I suppress a shiver of pleasure at the way she says my first name. It's still a novel thrill. "That's the first nightmare you've had since we...since we've been together. It can't be a coincidence. I know you were scared today. I know you hate guns."

I shrug. "That's funny. I was thinking earlier that maybe I should start carrying one."

"You? Carry a gun?" She looks surprised, though I've shot men before. The first time was right in front of her. "Good luck getting Abbott to agree to that."

"He doesn't need to. This is Texas. Pretty much anybody can get a concealed carry permit." Even a man indicted by a grand jury for murder, I'm betting. I wasn't convicted, after all.

"Jane, you don't need a gun. You're supposed to be with a trained agent for protection."

"We both know sometimes it doesn't work out that way."

"Only because you run off. If you'd stayed with Vega—"

"I'd have gotten there in time to find your dead body," I snap. Then I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and say, "I'm sorry. I know the protocols are there to protect me. And I'll try to do better about following them, but not when it's your life at stake, Teresa. Saving you is always going to be more important than anything else."

"I know," she sighs. She squeezes my hand and says, very quietly, "Patrick, it's not like I don't know that in some ways, I'm the worst person you could possibly be with."

"What?" I'm stunned; I always think it's the other way around.

"You've never really recovered from losing your wife. I don't know if you ever will." She rubs a finger along my wedding ring, and I wonder with a jolt if she thinks my wearing it signals something I don't intend. "You shouldn't be with somebody in a risky job where you have to wonder if she'll get killed any given day. Or worse yet, right in front of you. I know that was hard. It was hard for me, too. They were going to kill you first, after all. And I...as much as I didn't want to watch you die, part of me was glad you wouldn't see me die."

"Me too," I whisper.

"That's what you dreamed, though, isn't it?"

I nod, taking a sip of tea to compose myself. My hand shakes a little, and I see her notice.

"I love you," she says, her voice thickening. "And I hate hurting you. But I love my job otherwise, and I don't know what else I could do—"

"I'm not asking you to give up your job," I say quickly. "I'll never make you choose." That way lies disaster, for me if not both of us. I can't say with certainty that she'd choose me, after all.

"But you'd be happier if I wasn't a cop."

"You wouldn't be. And that's what's important. I wasn't lying, Teresa, when I told you that the most important thing to me is that you do what makes you happy. I'm...I'm happy and grateful that it turned out being with me makes you happy. But being a cop is a big part of who you are. If it's hard for me to deal with sometimes, that's my problem, not yours."

She shakes her head. "Your problems are my problems. That's how this couple thing works, right?"

"Yes. But you've made enough sacrifices for me, and I don't want you to make any more. I will find a way to deal with my fears. I've been doing it for years, after all. Every time some idiot has pointed a gun at you or strapped a bomb on you or called on your phone to tell me he had you—" My voice cracks, and I stop talking and take a long sip of tea. I'm still emotional over the nightmare, and if I keep thinking about all her close calls, I'm going to break down completely.

Her voice is soft and a little shaky as she says, "I know. I feel the same way every time you nearly get yourself killed. You're not the only one who's afraid this might all end badly. I'm right there with you."

Then she takes a deep breath and fixes me with a look I recognize, but don't understand. It's the look she gave me when she handed me her gun so I could go off and exact my revenge, fear and love and longing all at once, wrapped up in the near certainty of impending loss. But there's no need for that now. She's not going to lose me. Not if either of us can help it.

"I want you to know," she says slowly, her voice fading nearly to a whisper, "that I want you to be happy, Patrick, more than anything. If that means finding somebody whose life isn't in danger daily, then I understand."

"What?" I stare at her for a second before horrified realization kicks in. "No! I told you, I'll deal with it."

Tears well up in her beautiful eyes, shimmering on her lashes. "I wish I could be better for you."

This feels like a breakup. My whole body tenses, adrenaline kicking in as my stomach churns and my mind starts gibbering in panic. I realize I'm squeezing her hand much too hard and loosen my grip, swallowing as I try to find the words to stop this. Finally I croak out, "Your answer to my being terrified to lose you is to make me lose you?"

"What? No! God, no, Patrick," she assures me, looking at me in shock. "I just meant, if it gets to be too much for you, if you decide to leave, I'll understand."

I shake my head vigorously. "I won't leave. I'll never leave. When have I ever given up on anything I wanted, Teresa? When have I ever gotten over anyone I loved? I've never fallen out of love, and I'm not going to start with you!"

How can she think I'd leave her? The answer hits me almost immediately: because I have before, of course. "Look, I know my past history isn't good. I know you have reason to distrust me."

She makes a little sound like she's going to protest, but I don't give her the chance. "But no matter how many times I've run off, Teresa, I have always come back. To you. Every single time. You're the one person I can't live without, the person I want with me every day. Whatever else I was trying to accomplish, it always came back to that. I could walk on the beach every day, but in the end, it didn't make me happy. I realized that indentured servitude with the FBI was better than my life of leisure because I could be with you. I will never walk away from you for good. You're stuck with me for as long as you want me." And probably longer, but I manage not to say that part out loud.

Lisbon wipes at her wet cheeks with her free hand. "Good. I—I guess I wasn't sure what you thought this was going to be."

"Darling, just because I don't have some grand master plan to sell you doesn't mean I don't envision a future for us." I knew I should have tried to explain this to her after Pike provoked our short discussion about it. "It just means that I need more information before I can know where we're headed. Because our future will be about what you want, every bit as much as it's about what I want. I—I didn't mean to imply a lack of commitment. I just wanted you to understand that nothing is predetermined. That we have infinite possibilities to choose from, and we'll make those choices together."

She's beaming at me, and I let myself relax a little. She's not going to end this out of fear, or because she thinks it's for my own good. She just needed a little reassurance.

"And one of the choices I'm going to make is that next time Abbott wants to pull the plug on an operation and send you home to me, I'm going to let him, instead of thinking up clever but dangerous ways to get the bad guy that put you at risk."

"You couldn't have known Cole was a stone cold killer. He hadn't killed anybody before that we knew of." She fixes me with her firm gaze, every trace of the misty-eyed romantic now submerged beneath the rational cop. "And I don't want you to let criminals get away because you're afraid I might stub my toe or something."

"You can stub your toe all you like. But I think I will start carrying a gun for when I have to retrieve a situation that's gone downhill fast."

"Mm. If you're going to start shooting at people standing next to me, I think we're going to have to spend some time at the range," she says. I can't quite tell if she's joking.

"Fine. I'll let you indulge in some shameless frottage under the guise of teaching me to shoot straight." It's not like I've missed when I've needed to shoot someone.

"Frottage?" She grins at me.

"Mm hm. Would you like me to demonstrate?" I waggle my eyebrows suggestively.

She chuckles. "Drink your tea so we can go back to bed. To sleep," she clarifies quickly.

"Cruel woman. You know I can't resist you in my shirt." I pout at her.

She smirks. "I'd put on the vest if I could find it."

Now that's an image that's sure to keep me awake. Maybe it's time to put the vests back into the wardrobe rotation.

"I had a nightmare. I won't go back to sleep unless you wear me out."

"I thought I didn't have to make any more sacrifices?" She gets up to put her mug in the sink, giving me a saucy glance over her shoulder.

"Ouch. Making love with me is a sacrifice?" I don't have to work to look hurt by that one.

"A sacrifice of sleep is what I meant," she says, coming over to drop a kiss on my head.

I slip an arm around her waist and lean my head against her breasts. "Oh. Good. For a minute there, I was worried."

"Liar," she says, and I can hear the smile in her voice. "Come on. One thing I learned in jail is that I can't sleep without you anymore."

"Good, because I had the same epiphany." I get to my feet and take her hand, letting her lead me back to bed.

We're done talking for the moment, which is fine with me. We have issues to work through, like any couple. But we have a solid foundation of love and friendship, based on thorough knowledge of each other.

And we're both stubborn when it comes to getting what we want.

I think we'll be fine.