Fandom: Blindspot

Title: Wanted (1/1)

Rating: PG/PG-13

Characters: Jane Doe, Kurt Weller

Summary: She could become who he wanted her to be. Or at the very least, she could try.

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"Kurt…I see the way that you look at me. And I don't know how to be this person that you lost."

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She knew the minute Patterson told her she was Taylor Shaw that she wasn't really Taylor Shaw. Sure, there had been a moment, right at the beginning, when the words had hit her ears, and she had been shocked so intensely and so abruptly that it was like she had been forced into belief. That was the moment when that feeling had overtaken her—perhaps it was fear, or exhilaration, or joy; call it whatever you want—and she'd reached for Weller. She'd needed a handhold to grasp onto as her head swam, and her world shifted, and he'd been there. And he'd reached out for her, too. Gripped her arm so tight that all she could feel was him touching her.

And that was when she knew it was a lie.

No, not a lie, Jane thinks to herself later, frowning in front of the mirror as she inspects her tattoos, like she does every night. That's a cruel estimation, and Patterson, always kind, would never be so cruel as to intentionally lie to her. It was just a bit of misinformation. And Kurt had clung to that false bit of truth like it was nothing short of the holy word of God passed down directly from the heavens.

When she closes her eyes now, she can still see the look on his face when Patterson had read the results of the DNA test: the shock and the disbelief and the complete, all-consuming relief that comes with having one's decimated hopes finally, finally validated. And so of course Jane couldn't say anything to him afterward. He was just so happy, and she couldn't take that away from him. She's only known him for a couple of weeks, but already she's learned that he is not a happy person. It was a big step for him just to smile. To laugh. To look at her and feel joy at finding someone she did not believe she had ever been, nor could ever be.

And so, in the end, he was the reason that she just never said anything about how the Taylor Shaw announcement made her feel. Not to him, not to Patterson, not to Assistant Director Mayfair, not to anyone at the FBI. All she had was a bad gut feeling about the whole Taylor business, anyway, and what did that mean? That wasn't proof. That wasn't evidence. And the longer she kept telling herself that, the more she started wondering what it would mean to sit idly by and let this missing-girl backstory supplant her life.

These past couple of days, ever since Patterson had told them the results of the test of Taylor's DNA against hers, Jane's, Weller had started calling her Taylor on a regular basis. At first, it would just slip out by accident—he was so excited—but these past few days, it's been constant. He makes a show of correcting himself with a quick, Sorry, Jane, whenever she fails to control an offended glance his way, but whenever she does nothing, he doesn't make a move to backtrack. He doesn't want to.

To him, she already is Taylor, no matter what anyone else has to say. And Jane supposes she can't blame him; DNA is, after all, DNA. It isn't like whoever wiped her memory and tatted her up and left her in a bag for the FBI to find was able to suck out her DNA and replace it with someone else's. DNA is unique and indisputable. She is Taylor Shaw, whether she likes it or not.

And that's why she's standing in front of the mirror still, even though it's well after midnight and she'll likely have to wake up at six-thirty tomorrow morning to get to the Hoover Building on time—because she is looking for proof that she is Taylor Shaw. It must be here somewhere, she thinks, tugging her skin this way and that to read every little bit of writing inscribed onto her body. If whoever abducted her spent hours inking Kurt's name onto her back, not to mention scattering all those insane little clues all over her body, wouldn't it stand to reason that there would be some sign of Taylor somewhere? DNA seems like too easy an answer. There must be another hint somewhere, etched into her skin. Maybe her date of birth, or her childhood address, or a reproduction of a grade school drawing, something...

She should ask Weller, she knows. He'd be able to spot a clue pointing to Taylor much better than anyone else ever could, especially her. But she wants to find this on her own. She needs to accept herself as Taylor before she can even think about going to him for anything so personal.

Even thinking of talking to him about this makes her a little queasy. He is just so sure that she is who Patterson's results say she is, that she is who he so badly wants her to be, and she can't see any other explanation. She's dying to find one, but the longer this goes on, the more and more she's coming to realize that, in all likelihood, he and Patterson's science are right. She is Taylor Shaw. She just can't remember. And without finding any proof of the truth herself, she can't accept it.

She peels off her underwear and steps closer to the mirror to inspect the space between her thighs, before turning to the side to search beneath the curve of her bottom, peering all the while at her reflection in the glass. It figures that some sort of definite identity marker should be in such private place, right? If it were indeed on her somewhere, it would be on a place where no one but she could see. It would be the place from which life starts, from where it all comes from, right? Right?

She's grasping at straws, she knows. Soon, she'll be going crazy with the need to know, just like Weller has been for the last twenty-five years.

She squeezes her eyes shut; she doesn't want to think about that anymore. She doesn't want to think about him, or what he's been through, or that look on his face when Patterson read the results, or the look on his face that shows up every time he sees her—

He needs her to be Taylor so badly, it's almost a mania. She can see it whenever he so much as glances at her. He's relieved to the point of obsession; he won't stop talking to her about Taylor, asking her about Taylor, and she can see it in his eyes, he's looking at her and all he's thinking is, Taylor. Always Taylor.

One of these days, she thinks as she pulls her underwear back on with defeat and straightens up, she's going to snap at him. She's just going to break, and she doesn't want to imagine what she'll do to him. Her body has already proven its mettle in a myriad of ways: sharpshooting, diving, hand-to-hand combat, distance running… All things she discovered she was capable of after the fact. She doesn't want to be left standing over Kurt's unconscious body (or, God forbid, his dead body), only to be met with the discovery of yet another potentially fatal skill.

So she's thinking it'd best if she simply learns to go along with the Taylor parade for now. She can tell from the way Weller's been watching her that it must not be too hard to play along; after all, he's kept his eye on her constantly for the past few days, and he hasn't yet suspected that she could ever be anyone else but Taylor Shaw. It would take a little doing to make herself really believable, of course, but Jane's certain she can become what he expects her to be, what he wants her to be.

It helps her to know that she'll likely be very happy once she's reached this new evolution of herself and accepted Taylor Shaw as her self and savior. Weller would take care of that aspect of things, she knows. Kurt would go out of his way, would go above and beyond, to make sure that she is happy every single day for the rest of her life.

The thought should comfort her, she knows. Or at the very least, it shouldn't scare her.

But it does. Even now, as she stands alone in her safe house-turned-bachelorette pad, she can feel her stomach start to churn and bile begin to rise in her throat. She can feel the panic coming on, and it makes her want to run. It makes her want to scream and fight and it makes her want to shatter every little secondhand belonging this poor excuse of a home offers her.

Because, after everything, she can't just flip a switch and become yet another person she doesn't know. She can't give herself up yet again to be erased and then repurposed into someone she neither recognizes nor trusts.

She doesn't want to lose herself again. That's her greatest fear in this strange new life: losing what little she has. Losing her place with Weller and his team. Losing the doctors and the psychiatrists who are fighting to understand who she is, and where she came from. Losing the few memories and bits of knowledge that she's gained.

But she also wants to find herself. She wants to find whoever she was back before her memory was wiped and her body was turned into a vigilante's treasure hunt. And maybe she wasn't Taylor Shaw before all this. Maybe she was nobody before all this.

She stares at herself in the mirror once more, and lets the sudden urge she had to shatter its perfect surface seep away, unfulfilled, into the night. Her eyes roam over her body, the majority of which she's left uncovered. There must be hundreds of lines of text tattooed across her body, thousands of images inked into her skin. Innumerable details.

And yet, as always, her eyes are drawn to only one of them. The largest, most obvious clue. Spelled out word for word, for all to see, right in the middle of her back: KURT WELLER, FBI.

The more she stares at that tattoo—the largest and most legible one—the more she comes to the conclusion that it must mean something more than just a directive to go to Kurt. It must mean that she is Taylor, right? Because why else use his name? There must be hundreds, if not thousands of FBI agents in this country, why brand her with his name if she isn't his Taylor?

More to the point, why keep fighting what is so obvious, what has been confirmed again and again? Patterson admitted she ran the DNA test three times before she came to them with the results. Jane asked her to run it twice more. Kurt and Mayfair probably wanted to see results in real time, as well. She is Taylor; she must be. Why not accept it?

At least if I become Taylor, Jane thinks, tracing her fingers over what bits of Kurt's name she can reach, that will give me something. Something to be. Something to live up to.

It would ground her: to a place, a life, a past. It would give her an identity. A meaning.

She would rather be Taylor Shaw, a real person with a real family, than the anonymous Jane Doe, trapped alone in this empty criminal's refuge. Jane Doe is not a name for functioning, self-aware human beings, she thinks. It is a name for women who have no family or friends, or who have been beaten or injured so severely that they're unrecognizable; it is not a name for actual women who have actual lives. But if she became Taylor, she wouldn't have to be that missing, unclaimed woman anymore. She wouldn't have to live in this half-furnished house. If she were Taylor, she would have a family. She would have a group of people who could protect and house and comfort her. She would have friends. She would be loved.

And then, maybe, then it would be easier to live the lie.

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Author's Note: Reviews/comments would be most welcome! This is my first foray into the Blindspot fandom, and I'd love to get some reactions. Thank you for reading!

[P.S.—For the record, I love the name Jane Doe, and I hope she continues to go by that name. But I understand how disturbing and impersonal such a "name" might be.]