the ocean in the shell

Summary: Two years apart. Lisbon misses many things, Jane only one. OneShot, drabble-esque.

Warning: -

Set: Between s06ep08 and s06ep09. Spoilers for s06ep09.

Disclaimer: Standards apply. Merry Christmas to all of you! (2013)

There is a saying that people only realize they love something when they lose it.

Teresa Lisbon thinks the proverb is bullshit.

She loved her job before she lost it. She liked the changes in her daily routine, the meetings that bored her to death, the case-closed pizza with her team in the evenings. She liked driving along endless roads towards places she'd never seen before. She liked working with them – Cho, Rigsby and van Pelt – and she liked them as people. She'd gone even so far as to say she loved them. They were her friends, not merely her colleagues. Teresa liked the paperwork, so boring and yet so precise and calming, and the state of order it brought with it. She liked walking into the bullpen to see the hustle and bustle of activity and she liked it when it was completely deserted and quiet. She liked the coffee the machine in the small kitchen provided and the scent of take-out food that permeated the air at lunchtime. She liked the coughs and burps of the copy machine, the endless ringing of busy phones, the creak of black markers on the whiteboard and the typical, chemical scent they had. She liked how barely one day would be like the other during one week and during the next she would hide a grin at an obviously bored-to-death Rigsby and a secretly impatient Cho when nothing seemed to happen for weeks. Those times, she liked very much: weeks to sort through old files, weeks to complete long-overdue paperwork. Weeks when no case meant everything was alright in Teresa's small world. She did not like the death and the losses that came with her job, but she liked the justice she sometimes was able to dispense by solving a case and catching a murderer. And she liked working with Patrick Jane.

I will miss you.

Bastard, she thinks and her life continues.

[Are you happy now?]

She returns to the place she started from. Another thing worth a proverb but she glares her subconsciousness into submission in the mirror and straightens the tie that already is ramrod straight as she clears out her life and gets back to work. The uniform is itchy in some places at the beginning and more than once her hand falls to her hip where she searches for her badge in vain but overall, it is bearable. And that is the way it is supposed to be, isn't it? If life's not bad it is bearable and if it is bearable it means life isn't bad. Teresa runs patrols in the shopping district, watches children cross the street and visits school classes. She writes her reports and returns home in the evening to a dark apartment and a cold bed. Nothing has changed. And she likes her job – she really does – there is so much she can do and whatever badge she wears she can wear it with pride and she watches the people and the children and the worst there is is a hit-and-run or a DOI and no homicides and Teresa really, really could get used to her life except there is no van Pelt, no Rigsby and no Cho, and this is not the CBI and this is not her office and wherever she looks she cannot see Jane anywhere.

Teresa sits in her dark living-room one day when something clatters into her mail box. Jane's first letter is delivered with a sandy, ragged piece of cloth that wraps around a kauri shell and after reading it she lifts the shell to her ear and closes her eyes. There is an ocean within every shell. She goes over Jane's words in her head a second time and comes to the conclusion that he sounds happy. She never wanted anything else.

[She thinks.]

Abbot purposely echoing Jane's words when they meet in her small office that still doesn't feel entirely familiar even after two years tells her a lot. The way he almost cannot contain his grin and the sneer on his face mock Teresa and tell her he knows. Has known for the entire time. She hadn't thought she might be capable of hating another person again after Red John but the FBI agent proves her wrong.

Do you miss it?

It is a simple question she asks Wayne and she realizes she knew his answer before he did. Of course he does not miss the CBI. It was a job for him and he has a new job now. It is safer for him, safer for Grace and safer for their relationship. He lives a good life, does what he likes doing and the people he love are close to him. It's not as if Teresa isn't content. She also doesn't regret working in her new job. There simply are many other things she misses.

She misses the way the morning sun shone over the roof of the building she could see from her office, the one she always wondered who lived and worked inside. She misses the people dressed in casual suits passing her in the corridor, throwing her a smile or a sneer and greeting her by her name. She misses the small coffee kitchen and the way there was a shelf that contained nothing but a cup, a saucer and a box of tea. Teresa misses Grace smiling at Rigsby from behind her computer, Rigsby yawning like a child on boring days and Cho's silent, watchful presence. She misses the sounds that drifted into her office when the door was open, the cool metal tables in the interrogation room, the silence behind the double mirror and the bullpen at night. Teresa suddenly misses people she hasn't seen for years: old colleagues, old friends and old rivals. She misses the smooth wood of her desk and the creaking of her desk chair, the contents that were haphazardly mixed in her desk drawers, the coffee ring on the right corner right in front of her monitor and the silent whirring of the ventilation system. She misses the way the bullpen looked through her open windows when she closed the door – a world of its own, just outside of her door, moving and alive without any sound – and the way people would knock and enter, making her part of it again as naturally as breathing. And more than anything, Teresa misses the white sofa in her office.

[There is a saying that time heals all wounds but she only gets used to the pain.]

Patrick Jane misses only one thing.

He left his life behind and started again: he is happy, happy and more relaxed than ever. He has a good place to stay, nice people who talk to him and help him when he needs their help (which he doesn't sometimes, sometimes they should simply mind their own business, but sometimes there's something he needs and everyone is so helpful, almost overeager). He has the ocean and time and food, he can think and wander and remember and for the first time in nine years he feels like he can remember without tingeing the memories of his wife and daughter red with blood and hate. Patrick doesn't think of the events but of the results. It all comes down to Red John is dead and he is gone and everything is over. He writes letters to Lisbon because she is his friend and he supposes – correctly, too – that she misses him. But the one thing Patrick misses is someone who speaks and understands English.

Besides that, he is happy.

[He thinks.]

Patrick writes letters and reads the newspaper and takes long walks and watches the ocean. He has breakfast and dinner and falls asleep to the sound of the waves crashing onto the beach. He performs tricks for the children and goes for walks with the dog. He watches the sunset and sees Angela – in the white dress that suited her so well, her smile bright and sunny and her hand outstretched for him to take it. He walks along the beach and finds pieces of shell and sanded pieces of roots and stones and sees Charlotte – playing in the sand, running in and out of the waves and her blonde hair dances in the breeze. They are laughing, laughing so brightly. Patrick watches the waves and the incoming fisher boats and the sun over the horizon, day after day. And sometimes, he sees Lisbon.

Patrick Jane only misses someone to talk to in English. Okay, maybe he misses Teresa Lisbon, too.

[There is an ocean in every shell.]

There is a saying that people only realize they love something when they lose it.

Patrick Jane thinks the proverb might work the other way round, as well. Because when he enters the FBI office, back in the States, and sees Lisbon sitting at the table – she's so small, was she always that small? – there is nothing that comes to his usually so eloquent mind.

"Lisbon."

He only says her name. Teresa folds into his arms like something he never knew he missed. And Patrick knows nothing can go wrong from here on.