AN: Hello all, hope you all had a lovely Christmas, and Happy New Year! I actually haven't felt the need to write any tags for S7 so far, but I couldn't resist the parallel in 7x04. I feel sometimes my fics can be a little too introspective for some, so I've tried to balance this with more action. I do hope you enjoy and please do review if you can! X

"A good guy, basically, just could never figure out what he wanted to do. There was a new scheme every month. Eventually I had to get out of the marriage; there was only so many fresh starts you could take."

"Sorry," Jane says as he hears her sneeze, and she smiles at his nerve as she leaves, despite the unwelcome and uncertain doubt she has just begun to feel. But that worry is not for now, and so she goes.

[She closes the airstream's door softly behind her and pauses, trying to comprehend what has just gone before.]

So he's not happy. Perhaps not unhappy, perhaps just restless. She feels the sting like a slap in the face.

She was so sure this would be enough. That after all these years, to finally be together, to be happy; she thought that would be enough. Not that he's unhappy with her, she's sure. He'd just rather be happy with her someplace else, it would seem.

She understands it, she thinks. As long as they're here with the F.B.I., they're here because of Red John, no matter how they try to pretend it's not the truth, and as long as they're still talking about Red John, they're still forged to his past. He always will be forged to that past, Red John or no, F.B.I. or no, and she wonders if he realises that. He can't give that up completely, his past life, his past family. She wouldn't ask him to, and she wouldn't want him to.

[Lisbon looks around her. This place is quiet, and Jane's blinds are drawn from the inside. She swallows, tries to clear her head, before walking slowly to her car.]

Lisbon knows Jane will never be fully parted from his past, but she understands what he's trying to give her. He's trying to make the most of this. He's trying to give them a fresh start.

[Lisbon softens at the thought, and reaches out to her car door handle. Its cold is shocking and as she touches it a voice rises unbidden in her memory, the widow from earlier today: "There's only so many fresh starts you can take.]

There's only so many fresh starts you can take, she said, and they've already had their fair share.

Right at the beginning, in her first days with him, so many years ago now, she'd had a notion; all the while admonishing herself for it, even back then knowing it was naive and romanticised – if only she could see herself now, she thinks with a rueful smile, all that happened between them, both bad and good, since - but the notion had appeared in her head but a few days into her acquaintance with Jane that she was unable to shake. Jane was a lost soul, that much plain to see. But she, she could be his fresh start. She liked saving people, doing her utmost for them, had been doing it, attempting it at least, for years, had done so even years before with her very own brothers. But she hadn't had much chance to save people here. Most of the people she encountered were already gone far beyond saving, both killers and killed. But by letting him join her team, her tight little unit at the C.B.I., she thinks she might be able to give this strange man a purpose and save him, or at least let him save himself. The notion lasts a while before she comes to the realisation that this Jane might just be beyond her help. He doesn't seem to want her to save him from anyone: not even from Red John, not even from himself. She tries to distance herself from him then but by the time she realises this it turns out that she herself is beyond saving from him.

[Lisbon opens the car door and gets in.]

They get a couple of fresh starts with new bosses and new teams, but nothing that takes them away from the only reason Jane insists he's there at all, Red John.

And then Red John is gone and they all move on; this fresh start an enforced one.

The C.B.I. is scattered, never to be the same again and Lisbon finds herself, unknown and anonymous and lonely in a whole new way, and finds that a fresh start has never felt so stale, so tired.

In time she convinces herself that this is a clean break and if it has to come to this, which it does, probably for the best that it be like this.

[Lisbon fastens her seatbelt.]

She's just decided to give this fresh start the best go she can when a small pink cowry shell arrives on her doorstep one bleary morning and she falters. A few mornings later his letter arrives and he is safe and satisfied if not quite happy, and he says he's trying his best to start over and this is not ideal by any stretch of the imagination, but maybe this is as good as they will get, so she braces herself for this fresh start she never really wanted or asked for, but somehow and somewhat guiltily received with a guilty relief, and pledges to give it her all, all the while knowing it will be her very stubbornness, the saving complex that will remain and prove most difficult.

And Teresa Lisbon remains stubborn, no matter where she be, but she does grow to enjoy the her life here in Washington, but even that doesn't stop her by the end of two years making one more fresh start, back to Cho, back to Abbott, and back to Jane, God help them all.

[She turns the key.]

She knows this new life in Austin is a fresh start for her too, but this is really all about Jane and she is she just along for the ride – but it's always been like that where he's concerned.

Their start in Washington is still just a start when she considers that life has been a series of fresh starts since she met Jane and one more now, in the shape of a move away from him, in every sense of the words, would be one more; one last, fresh start. It turns out to be not a start with Marcus, but an end, and it is then and only then do she and Jane find the one fresh start they've been waiting on, the only one they've really actually needed all these years.

[The ignition hums to life.]

And that is that, and they are happy. Until today, when Jane begins to speak a craving for change. But she does not want change, there has been enough change, and she is ready to settle. Fresh starts are all well and good, and as long as she's being honest, she and Jane have probably needed every single one they've been given. But you can't keep starting over forever. The challenge used to be the start; now, it's the going on, the spreading roots, the building on the foundation of that one last fresh start.

[Clutch down, in gear.]

You can only take so many fresh starts. How many would he want? How many could she take? How many could they take?

She wishes she could make him see. She supposes she should be glad he's thinking of the future at least, including her in his plans. It shows something, a commitment. But she's ready to move off from here, move on and away from this start, with him beside her. They could keep running for the rest of their lives, it would be fine, they would laugh. But she wants to stop running. They've finally caught up with each other, after all these years, after everything, and she's ready for them to move on, not with a fresh start, but with a middle, and someday, many years from now, an ending. She's ready.

[Biting point.]

And there he is.

She sees him, in her rear view mirror, approaching her car. She is ready, at the biting point, at the end of her tether, ready to move on. But she will wait for him. She has always been waiting on him. She supposes she's still trying her best to save him, ever since that first day in the C.B.I.. Without another thought, she kills the engine: out of gear, kills the ignition, loosens her seatbelt. He opens the door.

"I'm sorry," he says, one hand on the inside of the car door, the other reaching for where her hands rest in her lap. She sees the love in his eyes and remembers how far they have come already. How far they have left to go, together.

"It's fine," she says, squeezing his hand in hers. "Anyone can pass on the cold. It's not your fault."

Confusion flits past his face in an instant and he shakes his head at her, laughing, moving closer to her, lifting his free hand from the door and cupping her face in it where she sits in the car.

"You-" he pauses, the words falling away from his lips. "Amazing." He shakes his head. "I love you," he says, and kisses her, his second hand moving to hold her head.

She places her hands on his where they rest at her head. "And I, you."

He nods.

"And you, Lisbon, you're enough. Just you. Just you, and me. That's enough."

She can feel her eyes welling up with tears and she nods, forcefully, so he will know she understands.

He does.

"We'll get there, Lisbon, I promise you that. We will."

"I know," she whispers. "I know. Look how far we've come, Jane. We're already on our way."