A/N: Set in 2x01. I've always loved Jaimie's acting skills in the fight with Weller when you see all the fight drain out of her in one single breath. That woman is amazing!
Jane woke up covered in sweat and for just a second she didn't know where she was. She just lay on the mattress breathing heavily, trying to control her pumping heart.
Slowly but surely she took note of her surroundings. She was in a motel room. In one of the worst rooms this motel had got – she would know, she cleaned the rooms. It didn't even have a real bed, only a repellent mattress that was already starting to grow a green mold, and the bathroom wasn't much to speak of.
But it didn't matter – not to her at least. This was heaven compared to that solitary cell she had been put into whenever they gave her a break from the constant torture. Bathroom breaks had been rare to put it lightly– well, let's say, she hadn't seen an actual toilet for almost three months, so one that smelled worse than rotting flesh covered in dung was still an improvement. And she had learned to lower her expectations the hard way.
She got up slowly, cringing at how every single movement hurt everywhere in her body but she soldiered on, she couldn't allow to show any weakness, not even to herself. When she had managed to sit up straight she placed both her hand on the nauseating mattress and pushed herself into a standing position.
She stood there in front of her bed for a moment lolling her head to either side, stretching her neck that seemed to hurt more every day, before she got on with a total body warm up. Starting with arm swings, that reminded her of how her shoulder probably wouldn't ever heal completely, and going on with torso twists, hearing the joints in her back creak with every movement.
All of the exercises she did slowly, deliberately. On her first day she had tried to push herself too far too fast and had ended up straining her back and not being able to walk upright for the next two days.
Warming up her legs next she bend down to touch her toes, moving from one side to the other and back to find out all the places she felt sore in, two days ago she had finally managed to touch the floor again in this position and it had given her a feeling that could almost be described as hopefulness – maybe she could get back in shape after all. Kicking herself in the butt – carefully stretching her quads – she thought she had never felt as sore in all her life than she had the last two weeks.
Finally she felt all her joints where warm enough to start picking up the pace and she fell into a boxer shuffle first, going over to a round of high knees and jumping jacks after that. Her lungs still hurt when she put her body through her morning workout routine but she kept going, trying not to remember how they had been filled with water probably more often than with actual air the last three months.
Once she fell into her usual rhythm she felt her mind drift back to the nightmare she had just woken up from.
It had been one of her usual ones. She had watched the men of the CIA torturing her as if she wasn't watching herself but rather as an outsider looking in. But she had felt their blows physically like she did every time. The one in charge, his name was Keaton – she had heard the other two talking about him once – kept on pushing more each day. With every passing day in which they tortured her and she still kept quiet, he seemed to lose more of his cool. And if anything that gave her just a little tiny bit of satisfaction. Not that that helped her in any way.
In her dream they had just finished trying to drown her and had already hung her up again to start with the daily beating.
Her lungs were still burning, trying to cough up the water the still felt drowning them, when they strung her up again and the pain that darted through her shoulder made her choke on her own spit and close her eyes in agony. But she didn't make a sound, she wouldn't give them that satisfaction.
She could still see that face from her flashbacks when she closed her eyes and she tried to follow his orders. She let his voice fill her from the inside, bringing a sort of warmth to places that had been cold for a long time, if not forever.
Usually she was able to disassociate herself from her body and from the pain that accompanied it, she had trained her mind to manipulate the perception of pain. Pain was, after all, a dream. That was what the voice kept telling her and she believed that voice. It was the only thing in this hell hole that kept her going.
She tried sinking back into her mind. Tried blocking out the pain that jerked through her shoulder and spread through her body. Tried to ignore how her lungs were on fire and her chest and throat hurt from heaving so much. She tried to ignore it all and find that place deep within her mind that she had designed to be her sole sanctuary.
Her safe place had started off as a small cottage on the sea but after the water had come to drown her in her house too often, she had changed her hiding spot. This one was in the middle of an open field. She had built all sort of defensive works around it – a moat that could only be crossed via a bridge which's control lay in her own mind and a wall that went through the huge castle like building. She had barricaded herself in that fortress and had yet to find a weakness to it.
But right now, no matter how deep she tried sinking into her mind, she could never reach her safe place. She could make it out through some sort of veil but when she tried to reach for the veil, trying to pull it back, it would slip through her fingers and her castle would disappear from her again.
She wanted to cry but she had gotten so used to not uttering a single sound that she couldn't.
She couldn't fight anymore.
She couldn't come back to the presence.
She couldn't reach the place in her mind that was solely her own.
She was stuck somewhere in the middle and it kept pulling her in opposite directions, shredding her in two pieces. She only tried sinking deeper which only tore her apart more and at one point she couldn't take it anymore. She opened her mouth and let out a deafening scream.
Jane was burning from the inside, her lungs threatening to collapse any second, but she managed to finish her last set of burpees before simply falling to the floor breathing heavily. While she tried to control her breathing pattern, she had to think of the progress she had made in the last week. She hadn't thrown up after her workout in almost 5 days and that gave her some feeling of strength.
Getting up, still red in the face but feeling slightly better than after she had woken up, she repeated her stretching routine from before her workout. Adding a few other ones to stretch her legs more now and after another ten minutes she was all done.
Looking at the clock over the door - the only thing that seemed to actually be working in this room – she almost moaned at the time. It was only 4.30 in the morning and she already couldn't sleep anymore. But she was in no position to grieve the life she could've led so she got out the few sketches she kept under her mattress, focusing on the tattoos she had copied on paper.
When she had first escaped from the CIA she hadn't known where to go, if she even wanted to go anywhere, and part of her had simply wanted to give up in those woods she had found herself in. But the part of her mind that was still strong and that had gotten her out in the first place, wouldn't let her give up and so she hadn't had a choice but to get somewhere safe first, where she could feed herself and sleep for the first time in three months.
After she had woken up from her first nightmare in – let's call it – freedom she had been way too restless to keep still. She had found this job as a maid, so she could actually pay for the food she needed, but that could only keep her distracted for so long. Soon her mind had narrowed her thoughts down to one prominent one: Revenge.
She wanted to make them pay, even if she didn't know who they were. She would find out. She would follow the tattoos on her own and try her best to clean up this mess she had apparently created.
She knew the team hated her – they had handed her over to the CIA after all – but she hoped that somehow getting revenge on her former organization would grant her some sort of redemption from the universe. She wanted to make amends and even if it wouldn't ever be enough – that little spark of hope was all that kept her going on most days. So she continued staring at the tattoos, which were now marred by ugly scars, trying to find some sense in them. They must have made a mistake somewhere. And she would find that mistake, if it was the last thing she did.
There was also that face that she still remembered, the one that had helped her withstanding the torture. The warm eyes, the beard and the on the right side of his face. She knew that man but she didn't know him anymore. He seemed to be someone important, his voice soothing. If she could just place him! She had tried looking for him, but in a country as huge as the United States … she didn't even know if he was in America. He could be anywhere!
It was already 6 am when she looked at the clock again and with a sigh she hid her sketches under the mattress again. Her shift would begin in about half an hour but she would go outside to get a coffee before that.
She could feel his presence before she heard him. For a moment she stood completely still, grabbing the pistol she had managed to obtain and smuggle into work every day and waiting for him to come down the rest of the hallway. He must have seen the laundry cart that stood in front of one of the rooms she cleaned simultaneously. She waited, listening for more footsteps but there were none. Did he really think she would be this easy to take?
She almost scoffed. Of course he would think that. He knew where she'd been the last few months. Of course he'd think she was weak. But he underestimated here.
Creeping up into the hallway, with the gun in her hand she watched him move through the open door and almost forgot how to breathe. It was really him. But she managed to get a grip and continued sneaking up on him until she had him at gunpoint, removing the radio he had tucked into the waistband of his jeans in one swift motion.
"Don't move" she said, the gun pointed directly to his neck, feeling him tense but not feeling the slightest bit of joy. She let her face give nothing away.
She saw him raise both his hands but continued training her gun on him with both her hands.
"I just wanna talk" she heard him say and she almost scoffed again at that.
"Yeah, with a gun in your hand."
"Jane." She hated him. In that moment she hated how he said her name as if he had any right to take it into his mouth after what he did to her.
"If you wanna talk. Lose the weapon" she commanded, raising her voice. She would not let him sweet talk his way out of this.
He only hesitated for a second before he threw to weapon as far as the hallway allowed and dropped his hands. She still couldn't see his face but she saw his shoulders and they were still tense, ready for battle. She kept the gun on him and slowly she saw him raise his arms again.
"How many agents and where are they positioned?" she asked, despising herself for how weak her voice came out.
She watched him take off the baseball cap he had been wearing, as if that had done any good disguising him from her. She would always know him even if he could forget about her.
"You need to come in" he said but she barely took notice of it.
"How many and where?" she repeated her question through gritted teeth.
For the first time he tried moving his head now and she willed him to stop. She couldn't look at his face, she wasn't strong enough to face him directly but his next words almost destroyed her. "I don't want anyone to get hurt." In perfect Kurt Weller manner. Always the knight in shining armor. Now she really did scoff.
"You don't want anyone to get hurt?" she repeated, her face grimaced in something between a hollow laugh and someone wanting to cry "Do you have any idea where I've been these past three months?" with each word her voice got louder and she held her finger tight around the trigger of her gun, finding the only stability there. He didn't reply so she simply kept going. "What that did to me? Day in and day out?"
"The CIA took you. That was never what I wanted" he shot back in the gruff voice she used to find so soothing that now only made the bile rise in her throat.
"Oh no?" she asked.
He turned towards her almost halfway but stopped when he saw the gun still trained on him "I wanted justice and in the laws of this country-"
"I don't exist in the laws of this country, Kurt" she practically screamed at him now, spitting out his name "I don't have a passport. I don't have a birth certificate. I have no rights."
"Please" he whispered. "Put the gun down."
"I am not. Going back." she said, her voice wavering, as were her arms.
"You're gonna have to shoot me" she heard him say through the noise that seemed to have taken over her ears. And he took a step back. And another one. And another one.
There was something inside her that screamed at her to take that shot, the he would try to fight her and that he was in the advantage, he hadn't been tortured for three months. But she couldn't. For the love of herself, she couldn't pull the trigger and he came closer still.
She started breathing heavily when suddenly he jumped around and threw himself at her, throwing her head first against the next wall. She lost her gun but she didn't go down. She whirled back around, getting in two punches at him before he even thought to fight back. But then he did and he got closer. In a last attempt she kicked him in the groin and watched in satisfaction as he stumbled backwards, hitting the laundry cart.
She stood low when he came back onto her and this time she grabbed his right arm, giving it a hurtful twist, watching as his face distorted in pain. But he used her arm and the momentum to throw her against the next wall and grab her from behind, leaving her completely helpless, trying to choke her with his arms. Her muscle memory and will for life took over at that point.
Jane managed to push her back against him to get more room in front of her so she could walk up the wall and crash him into the next one. She threw him over her head and tried to kick him down but he got up faster than she had anticipated – she still wasn't back a full 100% - and he threw her to the floor with one strong blow to her chest.
He said her name when he grabbed her by the collar of her t-shirt, pushing her against the wall, her feet dangling up in the air and she hated how it sounded so familiar when right now he was trying to kill her – or worse. The person in her flashbacks had been wrong. Her mind was as weak as her body. Just a different kind of weak.
He pushed her back into the wall twice when she couldn't even move. She tried choking but he squeezed her throat and her lungs couldn't get any oxygen. All the while he yelled at her to stop. In a last desperate attempt she tried punching him but she was already too weak and she could only feel him picking her up from the floor as if she weighed nothing to throw her into the laundry cart.
All the gentleness she had seen him display once was gone. She felt like she was being attacked by a bear and with every passing minute she felt more and more hopeless about her situation.
But she still had one ace up her sleeve. So she pulled the small pistol from the remains of her laundry cart and laying on her back on the floor, breathing heavily, she pointed it towards him. For the first time for three months she looked into his blue eyes, staring back at her fearfully. That was when she heard it.
"Freeze!"
That was Tasha's voice to her right she realized, her gun still pointed at Weller and a second later Reade came running from the other side. Both of them had their guns raised.
"Jane, drop it!" he yelled at her, coming closer.
And that was all it took for her to close her eyes, drop her gun and give up.
There would be no redemption for her, she realized in that moment. Redemption was reserved for good people who made a mistake. Not for genuinely bad people like her. She felt two guns trained on her and she knew they would pull the trigger. Unlike her, they had no feelings left for her.