A/N: A shortfiction set around 1x02 (I think). Thanks for the inspiration, Halsey—and Johnny Cash, of course. Enjoy!
I keep a close watch on this heart of mine
I keep my eyes wide open all the time
I keep the ends out for the tie that binds
Because you're mine, I walk the line
The dreams come more often now, almost every night. Sometimes, if she wakes in the middle of one, they come twice a night. Very rarely, they come not at all. She wishes she could say she tries to push them away, tries not to linger on them, but to say such a thing would be a lie. All she does, it seems, is think about those dreams. She waits for them to come, and she struggles to hold onto them after they are gone.
Not much stays with her. She remembers certain things: the feel of hands on her skin, the heat their touch had sparked in her, the want that stayed with her even after she woke, and the dreams had faded away. And the tattoo. She remembers that most of all.
She told Borden about it, after the first dream came. He hadn't asked for any other details, which was good, as she hadn't quite been ready to give them—even admitting to the sexual overtones of the dreams had been enough to put color in her cheeks and make her stutter through explanations—but he had lingered over the tattoo, trying to parse some symbolism, some answer, from it.
He had been gentle with her, allowing her to wander towards one conclusion or another, but she could feel that hunger there in him, too, the same one she felt: to understand. To know, once and for all, what this all meant: the dreams, the tattoos, the lost memory—everything.
Borden thought the tattoo on the dream-man's arm meant Kurt, and Jane didn't do much to dissuade him from that assumption. It was the only thing that made sense, really, and if she was honest with herself, she wanted it to be Kurt. She waited, every day after that first dream, for something to change between them. She waited to feel that pull, that heat, that craving she had felt in her dreams. And while there was something there—there was always something there, between her and Kurt—it was nowhere near as intense and intimate as whatever was happening in her brain at night once her waking mind shut off.
She told Borden about the first dream, but in the weeks since then, she hasn't mentioned any of the others. He asked once, if she continued having them, and she lied right to his face. She still isn't sure if he bought it—she doubts it; nothing seems to get past him—but she doesn't care. She wants to have the dreams for herself. After all the poking and prodding, after being made to stand by while countless agents looked at blow-ups of her naked body all day… To have an entire life in her sleeping world that is hers alone is too wonderful to pass up. Privately, she thinks of her nightly visions like a gift: from her former self, to her current self. A consolation prize for all that she's lost.
She wonders how far removed from reality she is to think, in the middle of the night before she goes to sleep, that it is something like a fair trade.