Author's Note: This story both starts and goes AU at the end of S6E7 (The Great Red Dragon).

I. The End

The CBI was an overturned ants' nest of activity, the invading army of FBI agents apparently planning to unravel the Blake Association through sheer strength of numbers. Patrick Jane knew it shouldn't matter to him. It would have been more convenient for all this to happen a day or two later, but it wasn't as if he had any illusions that he was going to be nosing around crime scenes with the team next week, after all this was over. After Red John was dead. After McAllister was dead. He had to get used to saying the name, to his enemy being a specific individual rather than a faceless bogeyman.

But the topsy-turviness of the FBI takeover did bother him. The CBI had become his home over the past decade, the solid ground under his feet amid the swirling chaos of a random universe, and he would have liked to imagine it continuing on just the same as it always had been, even if he wasn't able to be part of it anymore.

So he sought out his most basic comfort: a cup of tea. Sophie Miller had given him this refuge, thus setting herself unwittingly on the path to having her severed head stowed in her own oven. There were so many things you couldn't control in the world, that you couldn't know no matter how precise your perceptions. You couldn't bring your wife and child back from the dead. You couldn't intuit a killer's identity from a perfectly manicured crime scene. You couldn't even stop the visions of blood from blooming behind your eyelids every time you tried to sleep. But you could make a cup of tea. You could choose a cup and boil water and dunk the teabag the exact right number of times for that varietal, and the outcome would be the same every time. Tea was real, tangible, reliable. The taste was better if you could manage loose leaf in a pot, of course, but that required too much equipment to be readily available in almost any kitchen, business or home, and therefore it was inferior for Jane's purposes.

The kitchen was blessedly free of federal agents – no one apparently thought evidence of corruption was hiding in the refrigerator – and by the time his Oolong was brewed, he felt more like himself again. Cutting ties with the CBI slightly ahead of schedule would not significantly impede his plans, not now that the endgame was at hand. The confusion might even play to his advantage, with Blake Association members more worried about their own potential arrest than following orders from above.

He made his way back to the SCU bullpen, and he was glancing up, momentarily distracted by the look of distress on Lisbon's face, when someone knocked into him, and as he lurched off balance the saucer slipped from his hand. He grabbed at it, smooth ceramic slipping past his fingertips, and by some miracle of physics the cup's handle caught on the tip of his little finger even as the saucer smashed into the floor. He stared down at the cornflower blue shards littering the ground at his feet, the cup caught precariously above disaster, his heart pounding, and as he raised his other hand to secure the surviving half of the set, the kaleidoscope of his mind spun abruptly into a new pattern, taking in the slenderness of chance that separated salvation from destruction, the unpredictable forces that could arrive from nowhere and alter the outcome of even the most pedestrian of activities, and the ease with which something that had through sheer familiarity become precious could be lost forever.

Patrick Jane looked up, taking in the horrified faces of the rest of his team, whose eyes were fixed on the broken saucer as if it were a dropped baby, and the feds who continued their activities without the slightest interest, and he understood that he had been unforgivably short-sighted.

"You think we should do what?" Lisbon demanded two hours later, as the team huddled around Grace's living room for Jane's urgently requested meeting.

"Find out if we can trust Abbott, and bring in the FBI," Jane repeated. The whole team was staring at him as if he'd grown a second head. He really felt they ought to be more used to surprises by now.

"Right, but why?" Van Pelt asked.

"What's the con?" Cho added.

"There's no con," Jane told them, spreading his hands in a gesture of peace. "If we're going to clean up this mess properly, we're going to need law enforcement resources, and that means a working relationship with the Feds. We'll hardly be able to get anywhere if we're still suspects ourselves."

Four faces gazed back at him with rank disbelief.

Cho's mouth twitched minutely downward, an indication of severe displeasure. "If we're going to set fire to our careers by double-crossing the FBI," he said flatly, "we deserve to know how and why. In advance."

"That's not what's happening here," Jane assured them. "I promise. This is going to salvage your careers, not ruin them." It occurred to him, belatedly, that this was in fact true. He really was a reprehensible human being. But it was so hard to worry about trivial bureaucratic details like job prospects when so many fates far worse than unemployment hung over all of their heads.

Lisbon's face scrunched in the expression of mingled fury, mistrust, and desperation that had begun appearing after the debacle in Las Vegas. Since he'd abandoned her on the side of the highway on the drive to Malibu, it had surfaced on a near-hourly basis. Jane found it surprisingly painful to have directed at him, but he supposed that once things were over, one way or another, he'd be unlikely to encounter it on such a regular basis.

"A word," she growled at him, jerking her head toward the kitchen.

He obediently followed her. Once the door swung shut behind him, he leaned against the counter and gave her a pleasant smile, the picture of confident relaxation.

"You have been telling us since the day we met that Red John is yours and yours alone. You were so desperate to keep me out the showdown you ditched me at the side of the road, and I'm supposed to be your partner. And now, suddenly, you're bringing in a whole FBI team? I don't buy it."

"I was right to ditch you," Jane protested. "You think who survived that bomb and who didn't was an accident? It was not. And which side of the room do you think you'd have been lying on when the dust cleared if you were there? What better way to weaken me before the final act than to kill or kidnap you?"

Lisbon visibly restrained herself from punching him. "All you're telling me is that Red John walked into that room – into what was supposed to be your big clever trap – with a better plan than you did. Which proves exactly what I've been telling you all along – you can't do this alone. You need backup."

"Yes. Hence, the FBI."

She shook her head. "I don't believe you. Come on. What are you actually planning?"

He saw that they could butt heads all day without making any progress. Well, her suspicions made sense based on the information she had about him and his intentions. He was no longer in a position to demand blind trust. "I admit that my plans are still developing, and that when we finally get Red John out of the shadows, I'd rather be the only person in the room. But since I'm the bait for any trap we set, I'm not too concerned about missing the action." She opened her mouth to interject and he raised a finger to stop her. "But I have had a change in perspective." He closed his eyes for a moment and let the mask of calm fall away. When he opened them again, he knew she would see the truth in him.

"The fantasy of me killing Red John and having my bloody vengeance was exactly that. A fantasy. Something to get me out of bed in the mornings. Any child knows that you daydream about slaying the dragon, not watching your friend lead it away in handcuffs. There's nothing viscerally satisfying about hearing my wife's killer read his Miranda rights. So yes. I fixated on my preferred outcome. And I also… bought into Red John's pretense that this was just between him and me. Everything was so personal. It warped my thinking. But I see clearly now. If it was just about bringing Red John down, I'd still be trying to do it my way. But the Blake Association isn't personal. And I have no personal vendetta against however many disciples he still has running around. Yet those are the resources he will bring to bear on our confrontation, and I'd be fool to go mano a mano against a whole strike force. Not to mention that even after he's dead – which is still the only acceptable outcome, because you know as well as I do that there's no way he'll ever face a fair trial or serve out a prison sentence – there are going to be some very angry minions out there desperate for revenge. Who we will be in no position to investigate and arrest if we're out in the cold."

Lisbon's expression had warmed from hostility to wariness. She was still trying to decide how much she could trust him. "So you'd be all right with an outcome that isn't you killing him yourself?"

He looked into himself and tried to find an honest answer. She deserved that much. Besides which anything he admitted too glibly would be discounted as insincere. "I… can live with just being there to watch him die. But we have to be on the same page here. There isn't going to be a trial."

He watched her wrestle with it. Finally her chin jerked in a nod. As an officer of the law, she couldn't bring herself to verbalize an agreement to extrajudicial killing. But as a pragmatist, she knew he was right. "But what if the FBI keep you out of it?"

He shot her a dazzling grin. "Never you worry about that. I'll handle the FBI." He put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her toward the door. "Let's go tell the team about the plan!"

She shot him a glare over her shoulder, communicating her resentment of the fact that he had failed to tell her anything about the plan, but she tolerated his manhandling, so she wasn't really mad.

As soon as they were back in the living room, the others could tell from their expressions that Jane had convinced their boss.

He clapped his hands together as soon as he was seated back on the couch. Lisbon was wearing the resigned glower that meant she'd agreed to one of his schemes without being persuaded it wouldn't blow up in her face. "So here's what we're going to do," he said. "Rigsby and Cho will return to the CBI and find Agent Abbott. Cho will say he needs a private word and get him into an office, while Rigsby waits outside and makes sure there are no interruptions. Cho, you'll verify whether he's Blake Association. Try 'Tyger, Tyger' on him. If he doesn't respond to that, get him to show you his left shoulder. If there's no tattoo, tell him you can help him catch Red John sooner rather than later, but he can't bring in anyone we haven't individually vetted. Maybe talk up Red John's obsession with me, say I can lure him into a trap and I want to work together. Get him out of the building to a meeting with us. Van Pelt, I'll need you to find a back door into the CBI systems so we can access our case files. I'll give you a list of what we'll use to convince Abbott that he needs me to get to Red John, and that the threat of Blake Association moles is greater than he thinks."

"You think Abbott's going to go for it?" Van Pelt asked.

"I think he's not as by-the-book as he might appear," Jane told her. "He's having a hell of a lot of fun shutting down the CBI, but it's not just a power trip. He enjoys a degree of chaos and improvisation, as long as he's confident it won't come back and bite him in the ass." He shrugged. "I'll know if he'll do what we need him to after we meet."

"And if he won't?" Rigsby asked.

"Then we get rid of him."

"Jane-" Lisbon said, horrified.

"Relax, Lisbon. I just meant I'll hypnotize him so he forgets our conversation."

It was a mark of how far they'd come, he reflected, that they all seem satisfied with this.

"Fine," she said. "So what are you and I doing next?"

"I am going to refine the rest of the plan," he told her. "You can… find me a bag of breadcrumbs."

She shot him a look that meant Really? He replied with the serene countenance of a man who meant what he said.

Jane allowed himself three full minutes to enjoy and memorize the sight – even the smell – of Tom McAllister's corpse. It was going to have its own private room in his memory palace, and he anticipated visiting frequently.

It had all ended just as it was supposed to. After Jane went in to the Alexandria Cemetery chapel, Abbott's team and Lisbon's surrounded the building and silenced Red John's guards. Jane played bait and distraction, and once McAllister stepped in and worked himself into a lather of gloating self-aggrandizement, once Jane had feigned defeat and gotten him into position, he'd thrown the pigeon into McAllister's face, and in the ensuing moment of panicked disruption, Lisbon stepped out from behind the altar and took her shot. She approached, kicked McAllister's gun away, and knelt down to check for life. That was when he surged up at her with a linoleum knife that appeared from nowhere. But she'd twisted his wrist and thrown her weight at him, forcing his blade into his own neck. He twitched several times and then went still.

Jane looked down at his own pristine suit, then at the puddle of blood spreading around McAllister. Lisbon had arterial spray across her chest. She stood across from him, watching him as he watched the body. He wasn't going to leave until he was sure there was no chance for emergency room heroics, until brain death was assured.

Once he had every detail fixed in place, he raised his gaze to Lisbon, who was watching him like he was a ticking bomb that she didn't think she could defuse. He had, for once, no idea at all what his face was telling her.

"You got him," she said slowly, voice low and calm. He glanced down at her bloody hands – she'd wiped them on her Kevlar vest, but it hadn't done much. "I know this isn't what you hoped for," she continued, hesitant but determined to get the words out, "but I'm glad he didn't take you down with him. You walk out of here free and clear. It's over. You can do anything now. You're free of him. That's the last thing he would have wanted. He didn't get to take anything else from us. I'm glad we didn't give him that satisfaction."

He nodded to indicate he'd taken the words in. Though of course she wasn't right. It wasn't over yet. And he'd taken all the time he could spare.

"Get Abbott in here," he said. "And have them bring in everyone they rounded up outside, but they're to stay at the back of the chapel, separated. I'll need to speak with them one at a time."

"Jane…" she said, voice aching with emotion.

Whatever it was she wanted from him, he couldn't give it to her. "Listen to me, Teresa," he said. "Ten minutes ago, McAllister was the head of two separate criminal enterprises. He was the only one who decided who got killed when. In an hour, his death will be all over the news, and every psychopath who thought he was their personal savior is going to come hunting for our heads. Yours and mine. We have to find them before they get to us. So I'm afraid whatever conversation you'd like to have with me is going to have to wait. We need to get to work. Now."

And work they did. Abbott led the search for Blake Association members from the FBI's Sacramento field office, while Lisbon's team (they'd all been deputized as acting federal agents so they could continue working with the CBI still disbanded) tackled Red John's disciples, starting with the woman they'd caught trying to enter the chapel during the showdown. Jane hopped back and forth between them, spending his days in interrogation after interrogation and his nights combing through evidence the team dug up at McAllister's properties, searching for new leads.

At his insistence, none of them went anywhere alone or unarmed. His paranoia was validated when Rigsby shot down one of McAllister's disciples going after Jane in a diner restroom. That was followed by a Red John copycat who successfully slaughtered a rookie agent of Abbott's.

Then Lisbon's attempted murderer made her move in the FBI parking lot, a stroke of luck resulting in a quick arrest and an extremely fruitful set of interviews.

Still, it was over a month until they felt confident that any followers left were either insignificant or incompetent enough that another murder attempt was unlikely. By that time the Blake Association investigation was chugging along nicely, with the main players under arrest and the FBI focusing primarily on identifying which specific criminal cases they'd subverted. The California Attorney General was going on a hiring spree trying to drum up enough judges and prosecutors to re-try the hundreds of convictions that were in the process of being thrown out due to tampering.

After the last wannabe serial killer was taken from FBI holding to jail awaiting trial, Jane turned to Lisbon and said, "Now it's over."

Then he lay down on his couch in their new bullpen and slept for thirty-eight hours straight.