I do not own Blindspot or its characters.

Their friendship began with a commonplace, if unexpected, request.

Reade had approached her one Friday evening, not long after her return to the team, to pass along an invitation from Sarah to meet her for dinner the next night, and Jane had been unable to refuse. The request had been cloaked as an invitation, but she had no trouble reading it for what it really was: a summons.

Sarah Weller apparently wanted to vet the woman her brother was once again risking his life to protect. Either that, or give her a piece of her mind for cold-bloodedly impersonating the childhood friend whose disappearance had taken up such a huge part of Kurt's life. Jane preferred to look on the bright side.

She met Sarah at a casual Italian restaurant halfway between the Wellers apartment and her place. It was one of those hole-in-the-wall places nobody but a dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker would know, an establishment run by a family who had immigrated here over forty years ago and yet sounded as if they had just stepped off the boat.

Neither of them spoke much at first, both of them unsure how to navigate beyond surface pleasantries and say what was on their minds—and hearts—without offending the other. Finally, Jane laid her cards on the table. "Look, I understand that you probably don't like me very much, and you're probably wishing me in Hades rather than back in your brother's life."

Sarah opened her mouth to speak, but Jane cut her off. "No, it's okay. I deserve that, and more, for what I did." She didn't much care for the woman she'd been either. "And if the work we were doing weren't so important, I would gladly offer to leave and never look back, but I can't. All I can do is promise you that I'll do my best each and every day to make sure he comes home to you and Sawyer."

Sarah shook her head ruefully. "Talk about taking the wind out of my sails. I came here to tell you exactly that," she admitted. "To keep your interactions professional and to a minimum, and not to mess with Kurt's heart again. But now I just feel foolish."

"You shouldn't," Jane told her. "You're being a good sister, looking out for him that way." Maybe if she'd had someone who cared for her so unselfishly, she wouldn't have turned out the way she had. The first time, that is. She was determined to do better with this second chance she'd been granted. But . . . "And you don't have to worry . . . about there ever being anything between us, I mean." Kurt would never again look at her as he had, she was sure of that. "He's not interested in me like that any longer. And I know he deserves much better than me. I hope he finds it, too. He deserves it."

Sarah was silent a long moment, ashamed. She was suddenly much less sure that Jane wasn't exactly what her brother needed and deserved. Clearly, she still had strong feelings for him, feelings she was willing to lay aside in favor of his own best interests. Anyone that selfless shouldn't be so easily dismissed. "I wouldn't be so sure of that," she said, almost to herself, but before Jane could ask her to repeat it, she smiled and held out a hand. "I think I may just decide to like you after all, Jane Doe. Truce?"

"Truce," Jane agreed after a moment of stunned silence, automatically grasping Sarah's hand. Had she just made a friend?

Before she could ponder that any further, a volley of spirited Italian drew both of their attention back toward the kitchen. "What do you suppose they're saying?"

Jane listened a moment. "The owner is arguing with his son about the menu. The son would like to add some new dishes and make some changes to the old ones, but his father doesn't see the point in changing what's worked all these years."

Sarah looked at her in dawning wonder. "You speak Italian?"

Jane shrugged. "Apparently." Though she hadn't known that until just now. Even though many of her memories had come back, there were still gaps in her recall, new skills she occasionally found herself using without even thinking about it.

"Wow. That's . . ." Sarah smiled wistfully. "You're really lucky, Jane. I took a couple years of Spanish in high school, but I never really applied myself and I've forgotten most of it. I've always regretted that." She would love to be able to tour a foreign country someday and actually speak the language.

"I could, um . . ." Jane hesitated before making the offer, not sure how Kurt would feel about it, but then deciding that the decision should be Sarah's. "I could teach you. If you'd like." She wasn't sure how great a teacher she'd be, but she was willing to try. And it would give her someone to hang out with occasionally outside of work.

"Really?" Sarah's eyes lit up. "I'd love that, Jane. If you're sure you have the time."

"I'll make time," Jane said firmly.

And she did. They weren't able to abide by a fixed schedule, thanks to the unpredictable demands of Jane's job with the FBI, but fortunately the steadiness of Sarah's job as a physical therapist made meeting Jane on the fly much easier. The hardest part was finding a sitter for Sawyer, since by unspoken agreement the two of them decided to keep this from Kurt, and Reade was often pressed into service, becoming an unwilling accomplice.

"When all this blows up in your faces, don't say I didn't warn you," he cautioned them.

That warning came to fruition six months later. Sarah dropped by the NYO to talk to Kurt and greeted Jane in Italian out of habit. She realized her mistake as soon as the words were out of her mouth, but it was too late to take them back. The bullpen went so silent you could hear a pin drop, and her heart sank.

"What language was that?" Kurt demanded.

"Italian," Jane spoke up, hoping to avert trouble between the siblings. It had been her decision to offer to teach the language, after all. Not that there was anything wrong with that, per se, but they shouldn't have kept it from Kurt. The two of them had just regained their professional trust in one another, and had even begun to be friendly again occasionally, and now they would probably be back to square one. "I've been teaching her."

"You've. Been. Teaching. Her," Kurt repeated in an ominously measured voice. "How long has this been going on?" Sarah had sounded fairly fluent, so it couldn't be a recent development.

"About six months," Sarah told him, not willing to let Jane take all the heat for this. "I asked Reade to have Jane meet me one night for dinner, and things kind of grew from there."

"Reade?" Kurt turned to his newly-promoted supervisory special agent. "You knew about this too?"

Jane closed her eyes at the betrayal in his voice.

"Yes," Reade said simply, not willing to defend himself at the expense of the ladies, even though he had warned them.

"In his defense, he did tell us we needed to mention it to you," Sarah spoke up in support of her boyfriend. "But I really wanted to learn the language, and you were so angry at Jane at the time, I thought you might forbid me to do it." And she'd been afraid it would make things worse between him and Jane, the person he depended on to have his back in the field.

"No, Sarah," Kurt said quietly. "I wouldn't have liked it, not at first, and I might have suggested a different teacher, but I wouldn't have forbidden you to do it. I've always supported you in anything you wanted to do. I just wish you had respected me enough to be honest with me in return." He looked from her to Reade and then Jane. "I wish all of you had. How am I ever supposed to trust you when every time I turn around, I'm confronted with more secrets and lies?"

"I'm sorry," Jane apologized, her eyes bright with unshed tears.

"So am I," Sarah told her brother. "You're right that I shouldn't have kept this from you, and I apologize. But if you're going to try to use this as an excuse to mistrust Jane again, you'd better think twice, Kurt Weller. I don't know all the particulars of what went down last spring, but I've spent enough time with Jane since then to know this: she's a good person, and whatever she did, she didn't do with the intention of hurting you. I also know whatever happened to her after you arrested her wasn't any picnic, so I'd say she's already paid dearly for her mistakes." Jane had been tightlipped about the three months or so she'd been gone from Kurt's life, but Sarah could only describe the look in her eyes whenever she'd broached the subject as haunted.

Her eyes flashed as she studied Kurt. "I made up my mind about Jane's character based on the merits of who she was with me each and every time we met. I spent enough time with her to be comfortable it wasn't merely a façade she was using to play me. You need to do the same. Because it's not fair to either one of you to keep watching her like a hawk waiting for her to do something you can use as proof that she's untrustworthy."

Kurt felt every one of Sarah's words like a blow to the gut. Trust his sister to turn his indignation on its head, to call him out on something he hadn't even realized he'd been doing, and be right on the money. She could always read him better than anyone else. Except maybe Jane. It was a sobering realization, and one he wasn't well-equipped to handle at the moment. He gave a curt nod and strode off to lick his wounds in private.

Things slowly improved after that. Sarah and Jane no longer made any secret of their friendship, and the team seemed to take Sarah's words to heart, warming to Jane once more as well. Sarah and Sawyer had moved back in with him after their father's passing, and soon it became routine for Kurt to come home from work several nights a week and find Jane already at his apartment, working with Sarah on her language skills or playing a game with Sawyer.

He started making it a point to leave work earlier on those nights and soon began offering her a ride to his place. Gradually, he began driving her home every night, occasionally stopping at a bar for drinks to unwind with the team. Soon, that expanded to catching a bite to eat together after work, and before long, they were practically inseparable once more. Neither of them commented on it, however, unwilling to cross that final line keeping them from admitting their feelings for one another.

There was no telling how long it would have taken them to admit they had moved irrevocably beyond friendship without even going on one official date if Sarah hadn't intervened. Jane and Kurt had walked into the apartment on one of the evenings Sarah was supposed to be there and found it empty, but not quite as usual.

A candlelit dinner was waiting for them on the table, from the Italian restaurant that had been the impetus for Jane's friendship with Sarah and that she liked so well, and soft romantic music was playing in the background. Sarah had even left a note for them.

Dear Kurt and Jane,

I don't know any two people more made for each other or more in love. Stop being such cowards and do something about it!

Love, Sarah

They'd read it at the same moment, and Jane had laughed nervously as she glanced up to meet Kurt's gaze. Her laughter had quickly died, however, at the fire in his, and it was a long time before they got around to enjoying that dinner.

And several years later, when she walked down the aisle to marry Kurt, her new sister was standing beside her as her maid of honor.

She never lost the chance to tell anyone who would listen that it was entirely her doing that those two stubborn idiots finally got together.