Arrant Nonsense

This is not my first foray into this fandom, but it is my first not-commentfic. And since I'm all about breaking characters lately, this practically wrote itself once I had the hook for it.

Title: He Who Hesitates
Author: babies stole my dingo (agilebrit)
Fandom: The Mentalist
Rating: PG-13 (default) for blood and some language
Length: Short story (about 1700 words)
Disclaimer: Bruno Heller is the genius behind these characters; I am but a lowly follower. I make no money from any of this, so please don't sue me.
Feedback: Concrit adored! If you see something that can be improved upon, please let me know, even if it's only a typo.
Written for: pensive1, who wanted me to make Jane cry.
Notes: There's a boatload of angst here, and no happy ending for anyone. Least of all Jane. Genfic.

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( Red John tumbles down the slope of the canyon and lies in a still heap for a few moments. I follow, slipping, sliding, nearly losing my footing and flying headlong, but catching myself in time. )

Giving hope, and then snatching it away with both hands. No, Janni, Ben is not dealing well with this. At all. He's having a hard time forgiving himself for what he sees as a moral failing on his part, no matter that you don't care what he did with that vampire bitch. Even if you think it was rape, he doesn't. His mind very possibly broke in the lab (what with the needles and the wolfsbane and the being tied down). The 3/4ths of a bottle of Glenlivet he just consumed is, probably, Not Helping.

So, yeah, as you all should know by now, I'm all over the Broken Characters like whoa. And now I'm turning my attention to Patrick Jane, of "The Mentalist." Because I realized yesterday that there's no other show I'm watching right now where I'm sitting here waiting for a character to snap right in half. All the other shows I watch have pretty mentally stable characters. This is the only one I can think of right now that hits my "broken dude" kink right where it lives. Even "Dollhouse" doesn't do that (other than in "Epitaph One," and I'm not sure that counts because it's just the one ep).

The thing is, Jane isn't good with weapons, like, at all. Or violence. He's the one cowering in a corner when violence of any kind starts ensuing. He's planning on killing Red John when he finds him, but whether he can actually Do The Deed is up for question. And if he couldn't, I don't know if that would break him more, or less...

In Query Letter of Doom news, I've already got a rejection back from one place, but it didn't appear to be a form rejection and it was somewhat encouraging, so I'll take it. I'm still wibbling, though.

It's bad. I plugged it into this one, and it saw the drive all right, but asked me if I wanted to format it. I do not have the tech-fu to be able to bypass this, nor do I have a program that will do it for me. It looks like I'm going to take a financial hit on this no matter what. And I need my data; I got another rejection today, and the last version I have of my spreadsheet doesn't even have that market listed as something I was going to send that story to. I can rebuild that, because I save all those emails out of some perverse masochism, but... yeah.

Also, not having the actual ending of the novelthing in front of me is driving me batty. I'm managing to scribble a scene in OpenOffice for another middle part (oh, the angst, poor Ben, he's going to kill me in my sleep), but I want the whole thing. Fortunately, if the end is lost, I gave a printout of it to my Writing Buddy before he left for the wilds of California for a library conference and then World Fantasy, so as long as he hangs on to that, I'm okay, I can retype it, but gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

However, there's good with the bad. I do have this computer (although typing on it is making me nuts), so I can talk to you all. And I can read new fic, and participate in discussions about The Mentalist.

And I can rec fic as well. If you are any kind of Iron Man fan at all, you need to go read "Parthian Shot," right now, by the lovely and effulgent vr_trakowski. It's possible I've recced her before, because she's brilliant. But this one is especially special. And diabolical.

A thousand words on the day and 47,500 words total. My weekly word count is going to be...interesting. Yes, that's a good word. I've managed to get over my 250 every day. Today was iffy and driving me crazy, until I figured out that I probably needed another botched seduction in there somewhere to bring home Ben's capitulation a little more forcefully. If she keeps throwing herself at his head and he keeps saying "no," then when he finally gives in to her prodding it's that much more poignant.

And then when he initiates it? Yeah.

I'm a horrible person. I think I've said this before.

Message for the lovely and effulgent pensive1: We finally finished watching S1 of "The Mentalist." I have died and am DEAD. DEAD, I say. HE'S SO BROKEN OMG. *snuggles Patrick like WHOA*

And I need to re-watch that ep we were talking about, where he couldn't use his mouth to get out of trouble. Which one was it?