Final chapter! I know I could have made this story a lot longer than I did, but I'm afraid I'm much too impatient for that. I wanted a resolution and I hate waiting! Plus, I do need to get back to the rest of my life, which I have been neglecting in favour of this story.

Thank you all so much for reading this and for your wonderful feedback. I hope you find the ending satisfying.

Disclaimer: I also obviously don't own Byron's "She Walks in Beauty", nor the John Donne quote. And I'm not normally much of a poetry person, so I totally blame Jane and Lisbon for the superfluity of poetry in this fic.

Cloudless Climes and Starry Skies

Lisbon opened her front door before Jane even had the chance to knock. She stood to one side, silently inviting him in, and Jane stepped into the room, surreptitiously breathing in her freshly-showered fragrance and noting the dark smudges of exhaustion under her eyes which bore testament to her sleepless night. He held up the bag he was carrying.

"I picked up some croissants," he said. "I figured you probably didn't eat anything last night. Didn't want you to fade away entirely."

Lisbon smiled at him, trying to remember why she usually found him so annoying.

"Thanks," she said. "Do you want some tea? I've just boiled the kettle."

Jane followed her into the kitchen and helped her to make the tea. They didn't say anything, but the silence wasn't uncomfortable. It was a waiting silence, a pregnant pause.

They carried their breakfasts through to Lisbon's living room. She had opened the glass doors onto her garden, and the fresh morning air and the scent of cut grass were being carried in to them on the breeze. It was a very pleasant day.

Jane and Lisbon sat down and looked at each other properly for the first time since Jane had arrived.

"So," Jane said, not knowing where to begin, but feeling it was somehow his responsibility to speak first.

"Yeah," Lisbon agreed, and they both grinned a little.

"I have my computer in my car, if you'd prefer to talk that way," Jane said.

"I don't think that would help, now that I know who you are," Lisbon admitted.

"Yeah, there is that," Jane said, and lapsed back into silence.

"We could always talk about the weather," Lisbon said, looking mischievously at him from under her eyelashes. Jane had always had a bit of a thing for Lisbon's eyes.

"Or poetry," he said. "I'm rather partial to John Donne."

" 'Send not to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee'? Really Jane, you need to need to start reading more cheerful stuff. Anything without death as the subject matter would be a good start."

" 'She walks in beauty, like the night / Of cloudless climes and starry skies; / And all that's best of dark and bright / Meets in her aspect and her eyes.' " Jane was looking at Lisbon with a rather passionate intensity, but his tone was light as he added, "I'm sure Byron must pass the Lisbon cheerfulness test?"

Lisbon blinked at him a little owlishly and took refuge behind her teacup. Jane quoting love poetry to her was... confusing. In a good way.

"Hey," Jane said, suddenly thinking of something, "am I allowed to keep calling you Orion? I'm rather partial to the name."

Lisbon laughed. "If you like. As long as I don't have to call you Shadow."

"Patrick is fine," Jane said, looking at her so hopefully that it made her heart hurt.

"Okay, Patrick," she said, but his name sounded strange on her lips. Strange enough to make them both laugh a little.

They fell silent again, the weight of what was waiting to be said settling over them like a shroud.

"Wow," Jane muttered, half to himself, "this is a lot harder than I thought it would be."

There was so much he needed to say and he had no idea where to begin. He knew that he had to convince Lisbon that he wasn't just the man she knew from work, full of secrets and lies, who kept things from her and played tricks behind her back; a man she had every reason not to trust. He had to prove to her that he was also the open, honest man she had met and fallen for over the internet. He wanted her to understand that if she let him into her private life and her heart, that their relationship wouldn't revolve around him being a creator of chaos and her following behind cleaning up the mess. She needed to believe that the real Jane, the man he'd revealed to her in his letters, was a man she could trust with her love; a man who wanted to protect her, rather than have her protect him; a man who would never play games with her heart, but would guard it with his life.

He didn't for a second believe that he deserved her love or trust or companionship, but his need and desire were too great for him not to try to win her anyway. Besides, what man ever deserved someone like Lisbon? Or any woman, for that matter? Life was rarely a matter of getting what you deserved, and getting what you wanted was mostly a combination of luck and having the courage to reach for the stars. And his constellation of stars was right in front of him, waiting for him to be courageous.

He put down his teacup and moved so that he was sitting right beside her on the couch. He took one of her hands in both of his and looked into her eyes.

"I'm going to start out talking to Orion, because I'm still a little scared of Lisbon."

He smiled at her, and she smiled back, but he could feel the pulse in her wrist racing, and knew that she was scared too. Maybe even more than he was. He was so accustomed to Lisbon's strength that it was easy to forget how fragile she really was.

"I know I'm a mess, and no great shakes as a catch. But all those tricks and games that I play that annoy you so much – I only do that to keep people at arm's length, and I don't want to keep you at arm's length any more. Quite the opposite, in fact. I know I don't deserve you. But I've always been a selfish man, and, well... I want you. And I need you. And if you can believe that I'm not a lost cause, then I might be able to believe it too. Do you believe that I'm not a lost cause?" He was looking intensely into her eyes, trying to read the answer in their green depths.

Lisbon put her free hand out and touched his face, just as she'd wanted to when she'd read Shadow's letter about being a hollow man, and just as she'd often wished she could do at work when Jane had looked at her with those wounded, pleading eyes of his that seemed to beg her to comfort him. It felt wonderful to be able to touch him at last.

"I don't think you're a lost cause," she said, "Difficult, yes. Lost, no."

Jane leaned in and kissed her very softly on the lips. He soon broke it off – far too soon, in Lisbon's opinion – because he wanted to get a better look at the way her eyes were shining. Hovering a couple of inches from her face he said softly, "You are so beautiful. I knew you would be."

"You could tell by my turn of phrase, could you?"

"It was more what you said than how you said it. All that inner beauty couldn't fail to express itself."

Lisbon laughed. Jane backed up slightly, a little embarrassed.

"Hey, you're not supposed to laugh at me when I whisper sweet nothings in your ear!" he said reproachfully. "It's not the done thing. It ruins the moment."

"I'm sorry," Lisbon said, not looking the slightest bit sorry. "I'm sure I can fix that, though."

Taking his face in both her hands so that he couldn't get away this time, she kissed him again, and Jane was quick to respond, bringing both his hands up to tangle in her hair and completely losing himself in the moment.

He laughed a little shakily when they broke apart and said, "So much for talking. This part is, as you put it, as easy as falling off a log."

"You read all my letters again last night, didn't you?" she said.

"As did you," Jane replied. Lisbon had moved away from him a little, so he added, "I take it there's not going to be any more kissing until we've had a proper Talk with a capital T."

Lisbon grinned. "I think I'm going to like having a boyfriend who can accurately read my body language infinitely more than I liked having a colleague who could," she said.

Then she realised what she had said and blushed. Jane ran his fingertips across her cheek, and refrained from teasing her.

"The fact that you already think of me as your boyfriend certainly saves us at least one long conversation," he said. "Let's just state for the record that I'm delighted to hear that you are officially my girlfriend, and move onto whichever other topics you deem necessary, so that we can get back to the kissing without undue delay."

"Oh, please, you don't fool me, Patrick Jane," Lisbon said. "I know how much you love to talk."

"True, but you haven't yet learned how much I love to kiss and, believe me, it trumps talking every time."

Lisbon couldn't decide if he was teasing her or not, but she was relieved that he hadn't been touching her as he said that, because her pulse-rate had done a little erratic leap and she'd just as soon he didn't know the effect he was having on her just yet. Best to try and retain some semblance of control over the situation.

Jane looked at her and took pity. He might as well let her feel like she was in control, since he knew it made her happy. And a happy Lisbon meant a happy Jane, which was a win-win situation.

"Okay, I'll start," he said. "What made you pick the daffodil poem if you didn't know it was me? If I hadn't been so busy hyperventilating about the fact that you wanted to meet me, I would have found 'For oft, when on my couch I lie, in vacant or in pensive mood' quite spooky. Perhaps you knew it was me on some subliminal level."

"Oh, Shadow often reminded me of you, actually. It didn't for a moment occur to me that it was you, though, because I never thought you would confide in someone so openly and honestly. Shows how much I know. As far as the poem goes – that was triggered by you, not me. You mentioned Wordsworth, and the daffodil poem is one of his most famous, so perhaps it was more a case of you sending me subliminal messages about who you were and me missing it completely."

"Or it was just a coincidence."

"I thought you didn't believe in coincidences?"

"When I have such astounding evidence to the contrary? I'd much prefer to believe in coincidences than in fate."

"Jane, that's so sweet. You secretly think fate brought us together." Lisbon's face was alight with teasing mischief.

"Didn't I just say that I didn't believe it was fate?"

"Nope. You said you'd prefer not to believe it was fate, not that you didn't believe."

"Potayto, potahto," Jane said, a little grumpily. He'd never been very good at graciously conceding defeat when he'd been outmanoeuvred. "What I meant was that coincidence is simply the laws of probability playing out in someone's life. To that person it seems extraordinary, but actually they're just an inevitable statistic. Take us meeting on the internet, for instance. Let's say the chances of that happening are one in fifty million, which makes it sound astronomically unlikely. But when you remember that there are a lot more than fifty million people using the internet, then you realise that it's simple maths that this apparently astonishing coincidence is bound to happen to a very tiny percentage of internet users. Because it happened to us, it seems extraordinary, but it was going to happen to someone, so why not us?"

"Thank you for the treatise on statistical probability, Professor. And there was me thinking you found numbers boring."

"People are more quirkily interesting, but numbers have a certain magic of their own. Music, for instance, is just numbers expressed in sound. And computers and the internet function on numbers, so all our correspondence was humble ones and zeros miraculously transformed into life-changing words."

Lisbon reached out and took his hand, linking her fingers through his. Jane smiled at her. He'd forgotten how much he loved to touch and be touched by a woman he loved.

"Well," Lisbon said firmly, "I have no problem believing that fate brought us together. Twice, because we were too stupid to figure it out the first time."

"Speak for yourself," Jane said, with a grin. "I always thought we'd end up together eventually; I just hadn't yet figured out the right strategy to get us to that point. You're not exactly... how shall I put this?...uh, approachable."

"This from the man who claims he can seduce anyone."

"But I didn't just want to seduce you. I wanted you lock, stock and barrel. That's a lot trickier."

He tugged her hand to pull her closer to him, so she shifted until she was leaning against him. He bent down and said softly in her ear, "I love you."

She turned her big eyes to him in surprise, then a smile tugged up the corners of her lips and she said, "I love you too."

Jane grinned. "Well there's a conversation stopper, if ever there was one. Surely that's our cue to move on to more exciting activities?"

"I haven't slept in over 24 hours, and I bet you haven't either. Right now, that seems like the most exciting activity in the world."

Lisbon did look as though she was fading a bit. She wasn't as accustomed to sleep deprivation as Jane was.

"I guess that's proof that we're not 22 anymore – if we'd needed any proof," Jane said, stroking her hair off her face and realising just how tired she looked. "Are you going to send me home to pine, or can I stay and sleep here?"

"Stay," Lisbon said. "You can even sleep next to me on my bed, if you promise to be a gentleman."

Jane was a little sceptical about his chances of remaining a gentleman for any significant length of time, but he was willing to give it a shot. He'd certainly never try anything without Lisbon's encouragement, so it was really entirely up to her what did or didn't happen. She was, after all, the boss.

"Your wish is my command," he said, and, in this context at least, he was being perfectly truthful.

00000

When Lisbon woke many hours later, she found that it was already getting dark. She was lying on her side, and could feel the warm, solid length of her favourite Shadow lying at her back. One of his arms enclosed her protectively and she could tell by his breathing that he was sleeping peacefully. She very carefully shifted herself onto her back so that she could look at him, and as she moved, she heard a piece of paper rustle beneath her shoulder. She reached up to see what it was and discovered a piece of folded paper on the pillow next to her with the words "My beautiful Orion" on the front.

Glancing at the still sleeping man beside her, she opened his letter and read it in the gathering gloom.

"My darling Teresa

"Sometimes it's easier to say the things you want to say in a letter, and there are so many things I want to say to you that might never get said if I don't write them down. I want us to keep writing to each other, so that we never lose what we found when we were Shadow and Orion. Does that make me a coward? While there are many things I want to say to you in person, my love, there are many others that I'd prefer to put in a love letter. It helps me to break through barriers that I can't seem to shift any other way, and enables me to learn new habits that I might otherwise be afraid to learn. Plus, I can be as soppy as I like without getting distracted by you laughing at me. And I should warn you – I can be very soppy indeed. If you thought the other incarnations of Patrick Jane were a handful, you might want to brace yourself for Patrick Jane in love!

"Thank you for waiting for me, Lisbon. Thank you for accepting me in all my glorious failure. Thank you for loving me in spite of myself.

"I want you to know that although the ones I have loved and lost will always be a big part of who I am, my love for them does not in any way diminish what I feel for you. If anything, my loss has taught me to love more wonderingly, more passionately, more tenderly and more truly than I was ever capable of before.

"I can never tell you enough how beautiful you are and how much I love you.

"Yours always, Patrick"

Traitorous tears forced their way out of the corners of Lisbon's eyes, and trickled down her cheeks. How had she known this man for so many years and yet had no real idea of what he was like under the mask he always wore? He was as vulnerable as a tortoise without a shell and as sweet and romantic as a twelve year old girl.

Deciding he wouldn't mind if she woke him up, she began to kiss him softly, first on the eyelids and then on his lips. Jane responded immediately, even though he was still half-asleep. He hadn't been joking about how much he liked to kiss. She could feel him smiling against her lips.

"I take it you read my letter," he said, as her lips strayed off his mouth and along his chin. "There's nothing like a good love letter to get a girl to abandon her principles and toss the requirement for gentlemanly behaviour out the window."

Lisbon smacked his chest hard enough to make him remember that she was a lot tougher than he was, but she didn't stop kissing him, so he didn't much mind. He did think, though, that it was high time he got the physical upper hand in their relationship, so without warning he rolled her over until he was lying on top of her, looking down into her startled face. Captivated, they gazed at each other for a few breathless, motionless moments, then Lisbon said softly, "Yes, I'd love us to keep writing to each other. You can write letters like that to me all day long if you want to."

Jane gave her a big smile, which she returned. Both of them were at that moment happier than they had ever imagined they could be. And since happiness was such a rare, capricious visitor in their lives they were both eager to let go of all their worries and cares and concerns and lose themselves in their moment of unexpected joy. Tonight was the start of a new chapter in their lives, and they intended to make it memorable.

THE END