A/N: Patterson's my favorite, but I feel like her character was different from season 3 on. Maaaybe so Rich could be the standout comic relief? (and he is.) I don't know if anyone else feels the same, but this is my attempt to justify it. Set sometime just after 3x02. Crossposted on AO3.

Disclaimer: I don't own Blindspot.

Patterson was annoyed, at first, when she saw that Stuart had moved some monitors around in the lab. The new configuration wasn't practical, and it kept catching her eye annoyingly while she was trying to focus; just another reminder that this no longer belonged to her. But she'd moved all the way across the country because she hadn't wanted it anymore. And it only took a few days before she was annoyed the Stuart hadn't done more rearranging. He's dead now, and some perverse part of Patterson is still a little angry at him.

And like always, that anger just reflects back onto herself.

She feels itchy walking through these familiar spaces. (Her fingers tight at Stuart's neck, wild, that look in his eyes she can't forget.) They're haunted, unsafe. She can't get away from herself in here. And she can't stand to look, hasn't wanted to for years. It was easier in California, in places untarnished with history, with a job that didn't destroy her by degrees—but it still wasn't enough. She'd tried to escape everything she'd been through, and it had all followed her anyway. Now, in this lab she once thought of as a kind of second home, it's infinitely clear that she's no longer herself. She'd loved this job, and then it chewed her up and she'd come out of it all wrong. Patterson sees now that it's a wrong she can't come back from. It—it's destroyed her.

She'd been standing just over there, that day, after. Clutching a scrambler so she wouldn't broadcast every-fucking-thing, because it was her, again, it feels like her fault every time. And she remembers just feeling blank, just—a void. She couldn't imagine feeling anything. She couldn't imagine that she ever had. Everything was wrong wrong wrong, she was wrong, and the only thing that broke through all that emptiness was the physical hurt, the pulled tooth. It isn't like that anymore, but it had taken Dr. Sun breaking her down, over and over again, in a cycle that felt more like torture than anything. And she came out so, so raw. Too raw to keep existing like she'd been.

Patterson's been growing these sharp edges ever since, just trying to protect what's still so raw underneath. Since she came back to New York, she's only getting worse. Keeping everyone at arm's length, her comments by turns belittling and biting, her sense of humor turned acerbic; layering on her makeup like a shield, as if it could keep the soft parts of her from being seen. And none of it matters. She's still ended up here, right back at the beginning: desperately trying to find the killer of a man who died because she kept pushing him away. Two years and she's fallen right back into her old patterns. This time, she knows finding Stuart's killer won't make her feel any less empty. And she chases it anyway.

Weller and Tasha and Reade and Jane, they know her patterns too. It's not your fault, they all tell her; it's not your fault, you have to forgive yourself. But they say it every time. It's what they told her about David. You have to forgive yourself. How can she now, when she couldn't then? The original shortcoming is years gone and it just keeps getting compounded. It's that Patterson of years ago, the one who smiled freely and meant it, who loved her job fiercely, who was quick to trust and simple to crush and fell apart so easily—it's that version of herself that she needs to forgive most of all. And Patterson wishes she could, but she just—

Can't.

It's late, and she knows she should sleep. She should be in the new apartment, unpacking the last of her things, ordering in and eating in front of her gaming console. Her favorite sleep mask is still missing, probably in the box of odds and ends she hasn't opened yet, or the one that just arrived yesterday. She should go find it. She should go.

But she knows she won't.