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cywscrossFandom: The Mentalist
Prompt: 006. Rules
Character/Pairing: Patrick Jane, Teresa Lisbon, Kimball Cho, Wayne Rigsby, Grace Van Pelt
Rating: G
Word Count: 619
Summary: When it comes down to it, there's really only one rule their team holds to.
Tags: Introspection, Team Dynamics
For them, one thing holds true above all else - The Team First, Always. Their cardinal rule. The unspoken promise they each made at one point or another, a promise that - when it comes down to it - means more to them than anything else, more than laws and legalities and even lives.
(More than orders and honour and careers and even Red John.)
It's why Jane doesn't hesitate to shoot - and kill - his only Red John lead to save Lisbon, even if the loss chokes him for an overwhelming second as his wife and daughter sear across the backs of his eyelids.
It's why they go after Haffner's team when Haffner dares to threaten Cho and badmouth Rigsby and dismiss Van Pelt and put a leash on Jane, when he dares to try to break their team.
It's why Lisbon chooses Jane over Bosco, however much she denies it.
It's why Cho doesn't hesitate to lie to LaRoche to cover for Rigsby, even if he's angrier than he's ever been with Rigsby about it, and it takes weeks for the two of them to be okay again.
It's why Van Pelt doesn't hesitate to shoot - and kill - her fiancé after he attacks Lisbon, even if it haunts her for a long time afterwards.
It's why Jane weaves together the perfect opportunity for Rigsby to take his vengeance for his father.
It's why none of them cares when it seems like Bertram is Red John, even though they know full well what Jane plans to do to him.
It's why, in the end, none of them hesitates to turn on the FBI just to give Jane the chance to escape and finally, finally, kill Red John.
Over the years, their Team shrinks a little and grows a little, but their promise remains true.
It's why Jane spends three months in a holding cell and wields blackmail like a hammer until the FBI capitulates and offers Lisbon an out from her joke of a job in that backwater town, why Rigsby knows Jane won't refuse him when he says "anything it takes" for Grace, why none of them falters from going after Peterson for Abbott.
(Cho forgets, in the immediate wake of Vega's death. He forgets their Rule, and Jane is the last person to prevent someone from reaping bloody vengeance, especially on behalf of one of their own, but not like this, not when it puts Cho himself and Abbott and even Lisbon in danger, when it threatens their lives.
Death is final. There's no coming back from that. Jane knows that intimately.
But Cho won't stop, he forgets (forgets their Rule, forgets that Jane has already all but gift-wrapped a personal enemy for him once), so even if it means Jane has to physically put himself in the path of Cho's furious rampage, he'll do it without hesitation.
Death is final, and Jane refuses to lose anymore. He walks into harm's way, into death's crosshairs, into the killer's clutches-
-and Cho stops.)
(Cho is furious, at Jane, at Sellers, at himself most of all, but he can't - he won't - take the house by force when it's Jane and not just some civilian who could get hurt, and it tears at him but he waits.
In the end, it's Brunell whom Jane manipulates Sellers into killing, leaving Sellers all but gift-wrapped for Cho, wide open and unguarded for the seven bullets Cho plants in him.)
They don't talk about it of course. None of them ever do, not about this, not about their Rule. But they know, and they remember, and more than laws and lives and everything in-between, this is what they live by.
