Author's Note:: This is my first attempt at fanfiction, and I'm not entirely sure what I think of it, yet. Would you mind helping me form an opinion?

Red Light, Green Light

Most people have endured unforgettably tragic experiences within their lives, sometimes so catastrophic that they never recovered. Some liken these events to metaphorically watching in utter helplessness as the walls of their lives came crumbling down around them. The ideas of time and sleep and air become incomprehensible. Any hope of returning to a state of normalcy is shattered. However, some are eventually able to salvage what is left of who they were. Some learn to cope and find themselves living relatively peaceful lives. Some survive.

Some don't.

If Lisbon had been there, she would have saved him from his-what, misery? She would likely have told him to take it in stride, count backward from one hundred, recite a poem in his head. Perhaps she might have, given the circumstances, touched his hand in her surprisingly gentle way and asked if there was anything she could do. But that was the thing about Teresa Lisbon: Jane had never known how she would react to him, to anything. Always a mystery, which had been so refreshing to him after years of knowing everything about a person at the first glance.

Chuckling quietly, he slid his hands across his thighs until they gripped his knees and leant forward. With monumental effort, he managed to push himself away from his beloved sofa into a standing position. His bones quivered under the stress; in that moment, he felt ancient.

He turned to face the wall behind his sofa and cocked his head to one side; he could not remember what had inspired him to return tonight. It had been very late when he had left, but Lisbon was still filling out paperwork, despite everyone else in the building having gone home hours before. Jane had tried to convince her to have a late night drink with him, but she had politely refused. Something about her expression made him give up sooner than he normally would. Forty-five minutes later, he was at the stoplight outside CBI Headquarters, his left signal blinking on and off, no one else on the highway.

Before the light changed to green, he'd sped through and was back in the parking lot. He'd had something to say to that woman, something that could not wait any longer to be said.

Now, as he looked at the red smiley face on the wall above his sofa, and at Teresa Lisbon's cooling body on the floor-he could only wonder at how some miserable person would manage to get all of that blood out of the carpet.

He picked up a desk phone, dialed nine-one-one.

"CBI Headquarters," he said, and started at the calmness in his voice. "Come quickly."

Sitting back down on the sofa, he glanced once more at green eyes, now glassy and staring at things they could not see.

Then, he closed his own and took a deep breath.

"One hundred. Ninety-nine. Ninety-eight. Ninety-seven..."