14AN: Here we go, after a long time resisting, here's my first multi-chapter fic! It picks up midway through Blue Bird and will take a slightly winding path off the main story, but I hope to have it wrapped up and finished before Season 7 starts. The title comes from a lyric from the musical Once (p.s. if you're looking a song to listen to while reading, When Your Mind's Made Up from the same soundtrack is both relevant to the story, beautiful and heartbreaking too!) I'd really appreciate reviews and would be really interested to hear what you think! For those of you following Silver Decade, you can expect the next chapter next week.
"I'm sorry, okay? I'm sorry."
"If you're really sorry, why don't you just leave me alone? Go away. Leave me alone."
So he does. He goes, goes back to his room and paces. It takes more will power than he'd thought he'd had to stop himself charging out the door when he hears Lisbon leave her room down the hall, to beg her, to plead with her, but she's asked him to leave her alone; she has decided that he no longer has that right. She doesn't want him near anymore, and for once he's going to obey her wishes. He's going to try. It might just be the hardest thing he's had to do in the longest of whiles.
He hears the chime of the elevator as it arrives empty to their floor. He hears its chime as it leaves their floor full of her and their future. Lisbon is gone now, and he is alone. His room is quiet, the isolation is overwhelming and its impact is shocking. The door handle is cool to the touch as he opens it. He looks up and down the empty clearing and fear grows with every step towards the window at the corridor's end.
He waits, baited breath, at the window which overlooks the front of the hotel. He stills, motionless, time stretching, and after a few long moments, there she is, walking away from the hotel, and him, suitcase dragging unwilling behind.
Her back is turned to him as she walks toward her waiting cab, but he can imagine her expression, her hurt. He did that. She walks away from him her back to him. He can't tell from the distance, but he imagines he sees her shoulders raise and fall as though she breathes out a sigh held back for a dozen years. Maybe she is. The thought makes him press his lips together tightly as he watches on. She stops then, raises a hand to her face, he sees. Then she pulls what must be her phone from her bag and dials a number. His heart clenches as he imagines whose number it might be. It's not his. His phone is in his pocket and it does not ring. She keeps walking then, up to the taxi. His throat is pulsing as he watches her. He can no longer see her properly, she has become but a silhouette behind the rear window of the taxi which is starting to pull off, but still he watches, and still he knows, he sees: she doesn't look back.
Don't look back, don't look back, she tells herself. She doesn't, and so she doesn't see Jane looking on, trying desperately to let her go.
She looks down and is almost surprised by the phone still in her hand. She raises it carefully to her ear.
"Still with me, Teresa?" Marcus is saying. She almost forgets to answer.
"Still with you." She needs to get off this phonecall before her voice gives her away. "But I have to go. Talk later."
"Okay," he's saying and she can hear his smile. "Love you."
She hangs up. If he asks, she will say it was a bad connection. 'A bad connection', she will tell him. A bad connection, they happen all the time. She hopes it isn't what's happening between them now.
"Airport then?" The cab driver asks pleasantly. "Off to any place nice?" He asks, cheerful, harmless.
"Oh, no," she says and then recovers herself. "I mean, yes. Washington. I'm going to Washington."
"Oh, I'm sure it'll be very nice," the taxi driver says. And she knows he's right – it is someplace nice; beautiful, even, she knows. She knows it is, so why she can't believe that it will be so?
The uneasiness grows as she sits back in the cab and watches the Texan landscape speed past for the last time. The uneasiness stays with her through the queues of check-in, through security and to the departure gate. She is tense and on edge and she finds herself looking around, looking behind her; she isn't sure what for.
Before long she is sitting on the plane, wholly unaware that across the airport Jane is running, hurtling himself towards where she sits as fast as his legs can carry him.
He had intended on letting her go. He was used to her being disappointed in him, angry at him, upset with him, but never like this. Never like this.
She's gone and he doesn't feel any better. He hadn't really thought he would, really, but at least she's out of his reach, out of harm's way. He doesn't feel like explaining what's happened to Abbott or Cho but he needs some fresh air. This room is choking him.
He goes downstairs and exits the hotel through a side door. He needs to clear his head. What he really needs is to clear the air with Lisbon, apologise, let her know that despite his obnoxious actions, out of line as always, that he still wants the best for her. He wants what she wants for herself, even if he really, really doesn't, so he wishes she could know that he'll support her still, despite their last. But that won't happen now, so he settles for trying to clear his head. It doesn't really work.
He realises ten minutes in, in a secluded and lonely corner of the hotel's garden, a view of the sea in sight, that this walk isn't what he needs. Lisbon is what he needs, and no amount of wishing it wasn't so won't change that. He'll let her know he tried so hard, so very hard to stay away, to let her go, to let her be happy without tormenting her first. She already knows his selfish cruelty, already knows him better than anyone else, and he hates to do this to her once more, but he has to. Before he is sure of what he's doing at all, he's bounding across the garden, through the front door, desperate for a set of keys and one last confrontation with her.
It's there he finds Abbott and Cho and four suspects in a long forgotten murder. The delay is excruciatingly exhausting and painful, but as he fuels toward the airport many moments later, he appeases himself with the thought that at least he can report the good news of the killer's capture to Lisbon. If she'll still care at all, that is.
He doesn't know the exact time of Lisbon's flight and his heart sinks every further minute it takes to reach the airport. He abandons his car in the nearest car park he can and runs with every ounce of energy he has left after the disappointment and strain of the heartache of this day. He brandishes his FBI I.D. to anyone who will look at it as he chases through the crowds like a madman.
Somewhere in the back of his mind he wonders what next. Is he really going to do this? Has it come to this, after all? His relationship with Lisbon, her relationship with him: it has been twelve long years of being so intensely private; hiding feelings from Red John, from others, from themselves. To do this in public, to grab her by the shoulders in a crowd of unfamiliar faces and tell her – no, it needs to be just them. Just them. It has to be just them. It has to be, but it can't. She's sitting on a plane and he has no choice.
She's sitting on a plane and he has no choice, but it will not come to this. He has no choice but she does, and she's been sitting worrying and the uneasiness has been growing and everyone around her on this plane seems happy but she doesn't want to be here. She doesn't want to be here. It seems so clear all of a sudden. She doesn't want to be in Washington.
And without really realising she's doing it, very calmly, slowly and without getting excited, she reaches under the seat in front of her and lifts her coat. She wraps it around her and puts it on. 'Excuse me', she says to the lady to her right and she goes to the overhead cabin and lifts down her hand luggage. The man who had been sitting to her left raises his face to her as she stands on the aisle and seems to ask silently if she's alright and she nods. She's getting off this plane and for the first time in a long while she is. He nods at her again, satisfied, and she makes her way down the aisle.
"Alright, miss?" the air hostess asks.
"Yes, thank you," she says quietly, firmly, her voice surprisingly strong. "I won't be taking this flight today, sorry." Her voice is so calm it almost unnerves he but she's on autopilot now.
"You're sure?" The air hostess asks her and looking up at her, she smiles. "I am."
The air hostess smiles too.
Airport staff guides her back down the gangway back and arrangements are made with her luggage. She can't believe what she's just done.
It feels surprisingly lonely walking back to the airport the wrong way down the gangway. She feels briefly the eyes of airport staff on her, perhaps wondering about her story, but they're busy with their own lives, after all, and they don't pay much heed.
She sits on a seat at the now empty gate, and wonders vaguely what to do now.
She's been rushing rushing rushing up to this calm.
She takes her phone and without planning it, calls her last dialled number.
"Teresa. Not in the air yet? I hope there's no delay."
"No," she says. "No delay."
"Are you alright?"
"Yes, I'm alright."
"Then wh-"
"-Marcus."
She hangs up. They still have much to talk about.
She sits in silence a long time, unwilling to leave this bubble of airport. She is alone, perhaps a little lonely, but in control for the first time in a long while, and a little happier than she's been recently, which only succeeds in making her feel guilty too.
She rubs her face in her hands. What a mess she's left, on both sides. The thought of facing up to the reality of everything outside these walls is thoroughly draining. Here she can remain. Remaining seems to be all she is good at these days; here she sits in a room hundreds of strangers have moved on from with no difficulty: a hundred strangers and her future with a prospective husband and many days filled with happiness and children and laughter and love, and the rest of that life she might have had.
What a way to leave things with Marcus. What a way to leave things with Jane.
Not that she'll be leaving him now, after all.
She lets her head drop to the side and she catches it with her left hand in her fingertips. She finds herself wondering vaguely about Jane and finds herself strangely amused and saddened that this is the instance in which he's finally decided to listen to her, to respect her wishes and take her at her word. He's left her alone. He's doing what she asked straight up for first time in his life. She realises now she'd been half expecting him to dash up to her at the last moment and say – something.
She'd spent years trying to let go of him – while he'd spent six months in Nevada, after he'd hurt her, after he'd left California, after Red John. She'd spent years trying to let him go without managing it, and it turns out that all he'd needed to let her go was a few stern words and a few fallen tears. But he's done what she asked and she has to give him that. He's done what she asked.
He's tried to do what she's asked but he has let her down once more, and he's running, still running.
He's running to her gate despite the fact it has been closed this long while. A glance at the departures board tells him her plane should be taking off this minute, and that surely means she's locked on a plane that won't turn back, but he keeps running, chest burning, running. Maybe he can convince them; he's F.B.I. for Christ's sake, surely he should have some influence. Maybe for once he can put his godforsaken lies to good use, get past the gate, make it happen, get to her. He's close now, stumbling still, inching closer to her gate with every step, closer to that empty space. He must be too late, he must be and still he runs, ever closer. He might see her plane take off. He doesn't know, but he has to try, so he rounds the corner, and there she is.
There she is.
He falters to a stop.
She is sitting at the gate, alone, head held steady in her hand.
In this confused instant he realises she hasn't gone to Washington. He can't believe this but the way his heart is rising, still thumping, tells him she's decided to stay but it's too good, she can't have, it cannot be true. He is overcome with feeling and wants more than anything to approach her, hold her close and tell her, tell her- something.
In those last desperate moments he'd imagined running up to her, possibly making it onto the plane in front of a hundred strangers he'd now never know, and declaring his feelings for her, saying -something.
He hadn't expected to find her sitting alone in a deserted departure gate. The isolation makes this more real. Confidence in front of crowds he could have, but to sit down beside her now alone and take her hand and tell her all he's ever felt for her-
He tries to think clearly. She is not on her way to Washington, and that is very much a positive development. It means at best that she won't be leaving, or the very least that she's not leaving yet. They still have time. He still has time.
He remembers then that she's still angry at him and she'd ask him to leave her alone and it occurs to him that if she looks up she will see him, so hating himself, he gathers himself and sidesteps to the right, losing sight of her. He rubs his face with his hands and not quite believing that this is happening, he turns and walks back the way he has come, leaving her alone. He's been rushing rushing rushing up to this calm. Calm.
A glimpse of movement raises Lisbon's head and somehow the brief glance she gets puts her in mind of Jane. She could not imagine that he was but a stone's throw away from her, more calm and serene than she'd seen him in a long while.
Jane. He would break her.
Jane, and she who should be thinking on Marcus at a time like this.
She supposed it was right after all that she think on the two today. Two loves lost in one day.
She would have to wait and see what tomorrow would bring.
