Four cases where she hunts Red John, and the one where she catches him

One.

It's a dead man in a junkyard, very original. The body was stashed in a refrigerator, miraculously only two days old. It had been found completely by chance, by some kids playing in the yard.

The kids saw the gently smiling face drawn in blood, and got interested enough to open the door.

Teresa Lisbon thinks the circle is a bit wobbly, the drips too numerous. It's not perfect.

They don't catch the killer, of course they don't. Even with Patrick Jane, the man who could solve a murder in five minutes when he gave half a damn, couldn't catch Red John. Red John caught Jane.

And everyone else, too.

Teresa's new team is still kind of skittish around her. They know - they've heard the office stories about her. About how Rigsby, Cho, Grace, they all dropped like flies. About how she waited for months with a gun on her bedside table, but Red John never came for her.

She wishes he had.

The new team watches her closely, looking for a breakdown. They're disappointed; Lisbon takes two deep breaths, and determines to do everything she can, by the book, perfect.

Some say Red John broke her. She used to care, she used to go above and beyond. Now she fills out paperwork, spends hours and hours in the shooting range.

And when she goes home, sometimes not until two in the morning and sometimes not at all, she sets the gun on her bedside table and she doesn't look at the gently smiling face painted in blood above her headboard. She doesn't look, and she doesn't cry.

She doesn't sleep, either.

Two.

It's a Red John case, Lisbon knows, because she can smell it the second she walks in. There's no red face on the walls, but she knows.

Her team doesn't really understand it, but they're willing to trust her instinct. And when she goes a little crazy on their suspect, they turn blind eyes and don't say a thing, because after what she's been through...

Well, they say, it's a wonder she's still working at all. She shouldn't be. But she passed every psych eval with colors flying so high it was scary. No one was that well-adjusted. She gave all thee right answers and they gave her a gun, a badge, and a way to carry out her mission.

Catch and kill her killer.

Because Teresa Lisbon died with her team and with Patrick Jane, that's what the smiling face above her bed means. She died two years ago and her ghost is walking around the CBI, pretending to be alive, pretending.

Three.

There's three bodies this time, all in their own bedrooms, all with the red faces. Lisbon hates those faces. In one room she picks up something heavy, doesn't even know what, and throws in crashing into the wall. It dents, falls onto the bed where luckily the body's already been moved.

She's breathing heavy, notices that these smiling faces are better than the one before, but that the corner of one eye drops too far, the mouth is too curled, the circle doesn't close quite right.

This time the evidence trail leads a little farther, before they walk into a dead end lead and all the doors start closing around them, until the case has nothing, and Lisbon can't even think she's so desperate.

She goes home, downs half a bottle of something alcholic, and breaks her left hand punching the red face above her bed. The emergency room doesn't ask for an explanation beyond 'hit a wall' but the next morning Lisbon can feel her team staring at the cast. She can hear them thinking.

Four.

Closer than ever. Lisbon thinks Red John is playing with them, like Jane used to. Leading them around by their noses, always a little too far behind - and then with a snap, at his command all their leads dry up. He's too good. Jane was the only man who could ever best him and Jane is -

Jane is -

He's gone, Lisbon. And he's not coming back.

"Five," Red John says. "It took you five days to find me. I'm not impressed, Teresa. I almost thought you wouldn't make it."

Lisbon just shot two men outside this door, and both were armed but neither went for their weapons. Her breath is erratic, her eyes wild. She's a little bit mad, and has been for a while now.

"You killed them," her voice sounds choked, like she's holding back tears or fury. "You monster, I'm going to kill you. Rigsby, Cho, Grace..."

"Aw," his voice, even coldly mocking, is so familiar. She can remember when it made her smile. "Did I hurt you, Teresa? Well, you should've known better than to hunt me."

His voice comes from one direction, and the next second from another. She's whirling in place, trying to cover everything. "Why?" she begs him. "Why would you do this? What - what happened?" She's almost crying with the hurt of it.

"Don't worry, it was never about you. It was always about the show. About doing things no one else can, just to prove it. You know how it is. It's about revenge. It always is."

"Revenge?" she asks, to keep him talking.

"Vengeance, and the thirst for it. Wanting something so bad, for so long, that the wanting takes over you. It leaves nothing unconsumed. And when the vengeance is wrought, that rage is still there. It's a yawning black pit and you have to keep feeding it, and feeding it, because otherwise it will eat you alive. That's how you make a monster, Teresa.

"That's how I became the thing I hunted."

Red John steps out of the shadows, and Lisbon promised herself that the moment she saw his face she was going to shoot, but she doesn't. She hesitates.

Because he looks exactly the same. Curly golden hair, gentle, laughing eyes, the nice clothes and slightly rumpled everything. Patrick Jane hasn't changed a bit.

"Jane," she says it like a plea.

"Teresa, I'm warning you," Jane says. "Stop hunting me. Red John has never looked forward to having his legacy carried out, but I do not want it to be you. Please. Just let this one thing go. Just let this go."

Somehow, the worst thing is that he still seems to care. "I can't do that, Jane, you know I can't."

Jane smiles gently, like the red faces he draws now. "Then I'm very sorry, Teresa, but your fate will be kinder than my own."

As she's dying, it occurs to her that the face above her bed is painted perfectly, and she smiles a little bit.

So, just saw the season finale. IT WAS EPIC. And this is my prediction for next season. No, jk, but this has been swimming around my head for a while (my brain is a fishbowl, btw) and I had to put it out there. I love turning characters into killers, it's just so much fun. Actually, I think that's the basis for like 4/5 of all my stories. Sad.