This is a short story called: "Punished."

Disclaimer: I do not own the Mentalist.

Chapter 1- Community Service

It was all Jane's fault. Yes, she knew it sounded childish. But there was indeed a lot of truth in that one sentence. It had been all his fault. The whole thing! Urg, she thought. Why did he have to go and get her into so much trouble all the time, he never thinks of other people! He just has to be so damn thoughtless.

Teresa Lisbon gripped the steering wheel angrily. Everyone on Lisbon's team had seen her angry before. But nothing compared to fury building inside her at that moment. It was nothing short of outrageous. And there was only one man, one consultant rather, that could make her that aggravated.

Patrick Jane is a very annoying man, she thought. In fact, you're so damn annoying that all I want to do right now is find you and punch you in the nose. The thought of Jane whimpering in the pain of a broken nose, presented a cool kind of pleasure for Lisbon. All the way to work she thought about that idea, smiling the whole way.

Why was she so angry? Well, first of all it wasn't just Lisbon who was angry. It was everyone. The team, her boss, her boss' boss and practically the whole CBI, not to mention the richest family in Sacramento and their $1000 an hour lawyers breathing down the CBI's back.

And the object of their anger? None other than one Mr. Patrick Jane. Between all of this anger, Jane himself thought it quite funny. He didn't think he'd done anything wrong. "Just working the case, Lisbon," as he'd put it. Well screw him, she thought honking the car horn at an innocent pedestrian so that she could blow through another red light, without realizing it. Lisbon was too caught up in her thoughts, in her anger to really think about what she was doing. All she knew was that she had to get going and that she was late. If she didn't get to the CBI on time, her butt would definitely be on the line, and even more so than it already was.

Some people –obviously before meeting him—would wonder how one man could ever stir up such a mess. It was quite simple really. That week, the team had been working a case, following leads and such, when out of the blue Jane announced that he knew who the killer was. Lisbon had declined him when he'd presented her with another one of his schemes to catch the killer, but he'd gone ahead with it anyway.

His plan involved taking the suspected killer back to the crime scene; the home/ mansion of the richest family in Sacramento; the Vandito's, and shaming the suspect into confessing. Unfortunately the family of eight, hardly ever left the house together, so Jane couldn't assure that it was empty before bringing in and interrogating the suspected killer. So in order to get the house relatively empty, Jane marched up to their front door flashing his CBI card and announcing that the killer might have broken into the Vandito family safe, (obviously it was a complete and utter lie) which they kept in their basement. As expected the whole eight family members rushed downstairs to check, anxiously, during which time Jane put a padlock on the basement door and locked the Vandito family in their basement.

Long story short, Jane got the killer to confess and within 20 minutes of releasing the Vandito family from their basement, several of the Vandito's millionaire lawyers were suing the state. This cost the state, city and the CBI a lot of money. And it all boiled down to Jane.

This time when Hightower had called Lisbon and Jane into her office, yesterday, she'd threatened that it was the last straw and that if something such as this 'funny business' ever happened again, Lisbon would be fired. Not Jane, not the man who had caused all of the commotion, but Lisbon.

They didn't get off that easy though. No, this time when Jane messed up it was blamed on Lisbon and this time Lisbon took the whole team down with her, serving a little thing called "community service." (the "community" of course being the CBI)

Hightower had assigned Lisbon's team a "special case." They were to arrive the at the CBI, the next morning at 4 a.m, and play "janitors." The real janitors had been working ruthlessly for weeks, without a break so Hightower had decided to give them the weekend off. Problem was there were A LOT of things to do, to clean that hadn't been taken care of, and that's where they came in.

And that is why Lisbon was so mad, how she ended up speeding down the freeway in her SUV at 3:47 in the morning on a Saturday no less. Who wouldn't be mad, the whole team was.

One thing was for sure. She was never going to forgive Jane for this one.

Okay, I know it was a bit short but it's only the introduction. I warn you, though this is going to be a short story. PLEASE PLEASE, PLEASE REVIEW!