A lengthy author note you don't have to read but could anyway: In all the time I've been watching the Mentalist - three years - and reading fanfiction about it - two years -, I've not been confident enough to write about it. I think the Lisbon/Jane dynamic is one of the best, and writing about it scares me a bit and Jane is a very tricky character to write. He has so many layers, so many things about him that I never was quite sure what to write. But, after last night's amazing finale, I suddenly felt like I understood and I wanted to give it a try.

Now, this contains a hefty lot of spoilers for season 3 finale, so consider yourself warned! Basically a tag to the episode, hopefully without deviating too much from what will really happen in season 4.

Disclaimer: The Mentalist is the creation of Bruno Heller and I don't own anything besides my inspiration.

"I'll call you back."

Lisbon stared at the phone. She had just spoken to Red John, had personally heard his voice and Jane will call her back?

He was in shock, must have been. It was amazing she wasn't but maybe she was and didn't realize it. O'Laughlin was dead, O'Laughlin was Red John's inside man, Van Pelt's fiancé Craig was a mole, working for Red John.

"Boss? The paramedics are on their way."

Van Pelt, holding herself together, tears shimmering in her eyes, appeared in her line of sight. She willed herself to be strong, she wouldn't break down now, not now when her fiancé was dead, when she had shot him dead, when Lisbon was wounded.

She noticed the confusion on her face, looking at Craig's phone, not saying anything, not reacting to anything.

"Lisbon? Teresa?"

Her head snapped up with the mention of her first name. She swallowed and tried to clear her throat, to force the words out of her. "I spoke to Red John. I told him O'Laughlin...he's dead. And he said never mind."

Grace could feel her feelings separate from the fact that the man she had loved for so long, had been a murderer. A simple killer. It was an odd feeling, like she was an outsider and this could all be a dream.

"And Jane hung up on me."

"What?"

"I told him I spoke to Red John and he hung up on me."

Lisbon could feel dread starting to accumulate somewhere inside, pushed forward by some unknown thought, something she didn't realize was making her feel like this. Something. Jane's image flashed in her head, with that haunted look in his eyes, she remembered how he had sworn to kill Red John, to never stop for anything and the array of thoughts running through her head made her feel light-headed. Or maybe it was the gunshot wound, throbbing painfully now and she clutched her shoulder, trying to stay focused.

They could hear sirens in the distance, coming closer and closer and Grace suddenly realized what she'd heard when Craig had run back to retrieve his phone. The sound of a gun with a silencer being fired. The two officers. The knowledge weighed her down, and she all but fell to the floor, leaning against the couch next to Lisbon.

There was nothing to say. What do you say when someone's fiancé has tried to kill you and that someone has killed their fiancé? So they sat in silence.

Lisbon still couldn't define the uneasy feeling in her, knowing that somehow, someway, something was wrong. He shouldn't have hung up.

Her phone rang again and she picked it up, not really realizing she was doing it.

"Lisbon."

"It's Jane."

Cho's voice rang out, a sense of trepidation in his voice and she knew, she knew, she knew. The dread blossomed and spread and something cold was constricting her heart.

Strawberries and cream. He couldn't get the thought out of his head, it kept repeating, like a broken record, like a record he'd put away on a shelf and had been forced to listen to again and it made his head dizzy. So he did the only thing he knew by heart, his last remaining automatic response. Tea.

When mall security drew closer, he didn't put up a fight. His fight was over, he had ended it, he had closure. Or something like it.

Red John was dead. Strawberries and cream. Two thoughts in his head and a whole lot of nothingness, a void, something he finally unleashed and knew would never hide away from again. Nothing around him mattered, everything was a blur, a waste of his cognitive resource and he didn't bother concentrating, he couldn't feel anything anyway.

Until a stinging pain radiated from his cheek and his focus cleared for the first time in minutes? hours? days? and he was greeted by the sight of sharp cold green eyes.

His instinct to read body language kicked in and he saw it all in a flash before him. She was barely in control, keeping her jaw tight, her lips sealed, her hands by her side but she'd hit him and it was to be expected. Her eyes, always telling him things about her, were shimmering but there were no tears, only anger. Her right arm was wrapped in a bandage and she cradled it gently and he knew that was where she had been shot.

"Get out." There was a threatening quality to her voice, a menacing tone and he realized he was in the CBI building and his hands were cuffed behind his back. The two officers keeping an eye on him, left, apparently realizing if they were to witness anything, she would not hesitate to use that built up anger towards them as well.

It was just the two of them and he waited. Waited for her to accuse him, to tell him he was going to jail and ask why he threw his life away and why did he have to kill Red John and say his family wouldn't have wanted this, so he had prepared answers, ready to just say the simple truth.

But she was quiet, not even looking at him anymore, hands clenched into fists and trying to control her breathing.

"Go on, you can say it." He broke the silence first, daring her to release everything and just get it over with.

She looked at him again and now he could see more clearly that it was not anger in her eyes. It was pain, sheer pain, sheer agony. He told himself it was from the wound which must have been hurting her but he knew, he knew, he knew, that it was so much more than that. With a start, he knew he had always known.

She still hadn't said anything and the quiet was beginning to clear away all of the blissful fog surrounding him and he became acutely aware of the fact that she had also known.

"You killed Red John."

It was not an accusation, it was a statement and somehow that unraveled him. Her nonchalance, her lack of statements was sneaking up to him, turning everything against him.

"And yet you are not mad." Two could play this game.

"Am I supposed to be? After all, you told me what you would do a long time ago, so I should just accept it, right?"

She was not supposed to accept it, he thought. He had been prepared for all she had to say but somehow this was unexpected. She was not supposed to give up.

"You are not going to tell me it was wrong and how I've disappointed you?"

She gently shook her head.

"It wouldn't matter to you."

"So you're just going to accept that I've killed Red John, that I've had my vengeance, that I murdered someone in broad daylight." The venom was sneaking back into his voice, as if trying to rattle her.

She flinched a little when he said murder and her breathing accelerated but she was still in control, still so damned rational and cool-headed and for some reason he wanted her to be angry.

"I could be angry and maybe I am. Maybe I'm disappointed in you and maybe I was hoping you had changed your mind. But when you hung up that phone, I knew. And there's nothing I can do for you now."

The pain in that, the sheer, unfiltered, unhidden pain in her voice, in her eyes, the fact that she had given up on him was his undoing. He had wanted her to hope and this, what she was doing now, was so much more than her anger could've achieved.

"Strawberries and cream."

"What?"

"He told me my wife smelled clean, like soap and lavender and my daughter smelled like strawberries and cream."

It was a fact, a simple, tiny, memory he had divulged but somehow, it made a difference. She looked at him and now she was crying silently, not saying anything.

He had always known, at some unconscious level, that it would hurt her when he went through with his plan, knew because it had never been a matter of if. Her feelings ran deeper than she let on even though she had also known when would win over if. And she was crying now because two contradictory feelings were coursing through her body. She had given up to protect herself from this exact pain but he still hurt her, he broke her and when he was the only one who could fix this, fix her, he couldn't anymore.

No dawn, no day, I'm always in this twilight

In the shadow of your heart.

A/N: I'm not entirely sure about this fic but I thought it was worth a shot. So you could leave me a review and say what you think or you can also quietly lurk around the site. Oh, and the two last lines are from Cosmic love by Florence + the Machine.