A/N – I don't get as much time to write for fun as I would like. (Read: I get no time to write for fun.) But the holidays give me ten days off work to cram as much me writing in as I can – which is good timing, since I wanted to get this piece done before we get new Blindspot in February. (Of course then work resumed and editing took a backseat until five minutes ago - but it's still not February yet!)
My personal rule about canon adherence means that I don't dare speculate beyond what we saw in the mid-season finale (and I'd never write it as well as the professionals anyway), but I thought it was fun to get inside Jane's head a bit. Girl doesn't like to fly but she took a BIG leap with Weller, no? Thus, spoilers for every episode are fair game; please remember I don't own them (or anything else); and comments go below. Cheers!
I don't tell anyone about the way you hold my hand
I don't tell anyone about the things that we have planned
I won't tell anybody, won't tell anybody
They wanna push me down, they wanna see you fall down
Won't tell anybody that you turn the world around
I won't tell anyone that your voice is my favorite sound
I won't tell anybody, won't tell anybody
They wanna see us fall, they wanna see us fall down
I don't need a parachute, baby, if I've got you
Baby, if I've got you, I don't need a parachute
You're gonna catch me, you're gonna catch if I fall (down, down, down)
Parachute, Ingrid Michaelson
Jane hates to fly.
She doesn't care what anyone says, doesn't care how many jokes and jabs come her way when she turns green on takeoff. Nothing – nothing – will ever convince her that traveling five hundred miles an hour at thirty-nine thousand feet above the ground is wise. Especially if one does so inside a quaking and shaking tin can that feels as though there aren't enough fasteners in the world to hold its pieces together.
Nope. No matter what the laws of physics say, flying can't possibly be safe. It. Just. Can't.
If it was, then the opening of one tiny air pocket wouldn't be enough to plummet the plan like a stone dropped off a cliff, would it? No warning, no logic for it – just soar, rattle, shake, rattle, then nothing. The fear of imminent death – that's what nothing feels like above cloud level, how it manifests - and how come Jane is the only one bothered by it?!
Because of course, Weller doesn't mind flying. He's freaking Weller, isn't he? The adjective "steady" may as well have been coined for him. Hell, it should be tattooed on one of his arms - or better yet, blazoned across his forehead in bold letters. Why would a little turbulence ruffle his feathers? Up, down, side to side - that whole hasty trip to Michigan (the one that nearly went so wrong in so many ways) was just another day at the office in Weller World. Prisoner escorts, being shot at, finding a hidden helicopter in which to make an escape – typical Tuesday.
And as for the midair entertainment Jane provided him? That was bonus. (And really, what isn't funny about a normally poised woman desperately trying to stay upright in her seat and avoid the fetal position all the way back to New York?)
Laugh it up, Special Agent.
Okay, to be fair, he didn't exactly laugh. His default setting where Jane is concerned hovers the needle on firmly over "concerned," so he would never openly mock her – but it certainly didn't prevent him from seeing the irony in her indignity. What's more, Special Agent Kurt "The-Only-Way-I-Know-How-to-Keep-Our-Relationship-Objective-is-to-Avoid-You" Weller had the gall to grin about the situation like a schoolboy on a weekday field trip. An unshaven, impolite, giddy schoolboy.
Frequent flying bastard.
And she should have been mad at him for it. She should have been mad at him for a lot of things that day - the way things happened in the woods, the way he managed to completely shut her out of his thought process while expecting full access to hers, per usual. A normal person would have been angry, in fact. Hell, a normal person would have made him work his way back into her good graces in the form of deep groveling and delivering a fresh, steaming latte to her desk every morning for the next month.
But no. Not Jane. She wasn't angry in the least.
Now, to be fair, there were extraneous forces at work at the time and she quickly discovered that the potent combination of nausea and the good old Weller charm was truth serum to her altitude-addled system. She sat clenched in place in the seat opposite and watched him watch her - but she never got mad. Instead, she tightened her grip on the arm rest and used a moment of calm air to speak the words she'd practiced in her head since takeoff (when she wasn't going through her in-flight mantra to prevent puking, of course):
"When we were separated in the woods, I kept thinking about you. And me. And Taylor Shaw."
They were three entirely separate people as she saw it – a vitally important distinction - and she knew he understood, but there was more to it: "We're in this together."
She hoped to elaborate on the thought, explain the way she viewed the three unique entities of herself, himself, and the long-vanished Taylor. If she'd had just one moment more, she might have done so, might have discussed in-depth the way they were connected if the plane hadn't hit another air pocket right then.
Seriously?!
Jane gulped air as the floor dropped suddenly beneath her feet, her lungs and stomach going along for the ride. She gripped the tray table before her in a vice grip and felt each individual finger protest. (She can also neither confirm nor deny that several unpleasant expletives rushed through her mind in lieu of a prayer.)
But just when the paranoid, illogical fear of a real hole appearing in the floor and dropping her into the blue sky below took hold - right around the time her heart began to beat itself bloody in her chest - Kurt Weller snapped forward and covered her clammy hands with his own. Warm skin against cold, he anchored her in place, solid and strong, his palms rough and calloused against her patterned skin, his pulse as steady as ever, a metronome-like rhythm that lulled her back into a sense of security. (Always steady, that Kurt Weller; Merriam Webster really should put his picture beside the word.)
Eyes twinkling and eyebrows knit with feigned confusion, he asked: "How can you fly a chopper out of a combat zone and still be scared of a little turbulence?"
Well played, Weller. I see what you did there.
Her breathing now normal and the contact between them having quelled every fearful thought that filled her mind, the fact that he was laughing at her – though she knew his intent was to laugh with her if she would join in - made Jane able to chuckle at last. "I think it's got something to do with being in control."
He nodded in bemused understanding and, even at thirty-nine thousand feet in a hunk of metal that seemed bent on self-destruction, Jane felt the floor rise up to meet her. Her toes uncurled inside her boots, her pulse thickened, and she wasn't afraid anymore. Within Weller's protective, parachute grasp, she glided through the air softly, his hands gently holding hers until the plane taxied to a stop and the pilot cut the engines. She didn't ask him to hold on that long - but she didn't need to either; in that uncanny way he had of seeing right into her heart, he knew that she wouldn't feel truly safe until her feet were back on solid earth. And even though her memories didn't go back very far, Jane couldn't remember a time when she had been more grateful for anything than those steady hands and kind blue eyes.
The problem with relying on parachutes, however, is that they give a false sense of security, of being able to survive a situation that otherwise might prove fatal. A plane crashes in a field, but before impact, the pilot ejects and his parachute lowers him to the ground unharmed. And while Weller helped Jane with her fear of air travel on one particular day, she soon learned from Patterson that flying and falling weren't sensations solely reserved for the (un)friendly skies.
Poor Patterson. If anyone needs a parachute right now, it's her. Patterson's in midair with no safety net below and nothing to slow her descent from above; there's no mechanism in place to stop the desperate free fall she entered with David's death. She's alone and scared - a stark contrast to the moments before the fateful call, the moments burned into Jane's wide-open, waiting-to-be-filled memory:
There they were – Patterson and Jane - dancing across Jane's newly-christened apartment floor to some upbeat, catchy song from Patterson's eclectic playlist. Patterson knew all the words, Jane knew none of them, and Weller and Reade watched in amusement while they nursed their second and third beers, the pizza long since eaten. And Jane's sole thought before the phone rang was to wonder if she could ask Weller to dance with her, if it was all right or if it overstepped some boundary that existed in the real world outside the FBI. After all, they danced when they were undercover, didn't they? But that was different. That was a specific situation requiring specific behavior – although even the context couldn't adequately explain the way it played out and the way she felt while it happened.
Just say it, Jane: Double-O Weller was smoking hot.
Fine. As attractive as she occasionally found Agent "Steady Eddy" Weller (read: every minute of every day - right up until he shifted from parachute mode to Blackhawk-level helicopter, ever-hovering), Undercover Agent "Fake-Assassin-With-Overprotective-Tendencies" Weller was attractive to the tenth power.
Fourteenth power.
Twenty-fifth...
Focus, Jane.
More than that, Kurt Weller – and she knows it was Kurt Weller himself, not his undercover counterpart – looked at her in such a way that she knew he felt the same. No one else looked at her like that – hell, for all she knew, maybe no one ever had. People stare at her tattoos, sure. But admire her? She only knows now what that's like and that's because of a form-fitting black gown and Weller's inability to put on a poker face when he saw her in it.
Her. Jane. He admired her:
Jane – the woman who's grown accustomed to the stares at her patterned skin but still doesn't recognize herself in the mirror some mornings.
Jane – the woman who prefers utilitarian clothing in muted earth tones so as not to draw unwanted attention to herself.
Jane – a weapons expert with no clue how eyeliner should be correctly applied.
That Jane. Kurt Weller stared at that Jane (and probably broke every rule in the FBI field manual in the process).
And because he looked at that Jane, everything that happened between them wasn't merely an act for the sake of their mission. She knows it. She's more than familiar with the sensation of his eyes on her in their everyday interactions – checking on, checking in, checking over in full hovering Blackhawk mode - but while they worked undercover, his gaze was heavier, more purposeful; his hand on the small of her back more direct and reassuring; his sheer presence more firmly affixed to hers than ever before. They were two halves of a whole for those few hours.
You didn't hate it either.
Through her whole ordeal – waking up in a bag in Times Square, discovering that her body is some sort of strange doomsday-map-meets-Sudoku-puzzle, realizing that she has no history with which to inform her present and future – the one constant in her life has been Weller. And for a few hours, she didn't have to share his attention with anyone, didn't have to pretend that holding his hand or leaning against his shoulder was the only damn thing that made her feel as though she could keep putting one foot in front of the other.
It was empowering.
In fact, she came out of the experience thinking that maybe – just maybe – she had gained a momentary measure of control over her life. Maybe she didn't have to feel like she was flying all the time without a parachute for backup. Maybe she could find some semblance of a normal life – the first introduction to which was a night of dancing across her new apartment, an apartment filled with friends, the scent of pizza, and the sound of laughter and music. A normal person's apartment (FBI detail outside notwithstanding). She danced and giggled and wondered if this was what other people felt like, if perhaps she'd found a way to fit into a world she didn't always recognize. She flew one time in full control, unconcerned about turbulence, unfettered by Special Agent "Sometimes-Helicopter-Sometimes-Parachute" Weller (aka Special Agent "Pass Me Another Beer" Weller) and she reveled in it - right up until Patterson's phone rang and her friend crashed to earth in flames.
Weller drove them to the hospital, his silhouette silent and seething while the muscle in his jaw worked overtime in frustration. Reade navigated in single syllables from the passenger seat even though Weller knew the way, all while Jane sat in the back and held Patterson's hands in her own, murmuring every clichéd platitude that came to mind. (There weren't many she could think of - one more thing to chalk up to her full memory wipe.)
Nothing Weller or Reade did and nothing Jane said changed the outcome, of course; David died and the floor fell from Patterson's world. Weller was mad, Reade stricken and silent, and Mayfair helpless to do anything beyond wrapping her arms around the blonde tech who had danced with such abandon an hour before. And all the while, Jane watched the situation unfold and felt like she was back on that shaking flight to Michigan with no parachute to catch her.
She remembered why she hates to fly that night. Worse yet, when Weller drove her home, he held her hand the whole way and she still felt like she'd pulled the ripcord and her parachute failed.
It was entirely disconcerting – just like it's disconcerting and painful to watch Patterson struggle in the days that follow, to watch her do what she knows how to do – her job – and avoid what she doesn't want to learn – the grieving process. And through her observations, Jane concludes that flying is no longer her greatest fear. It was her greatest fear for a brief moment in time, but no more.
Now in her nightmares, she sees the face of Kurt Weller stilled forever, the steady hands limp and cold, the ready smile banished to mere memory. In those same nightmares, she relives the day they rescued Officer Schultz's wife, the day Kurt shoved Jane and Mrs. Schultz out the door and received the full impact of a flung flash bang grenade alone. Jane experienced the explosion from the Schultz's lawn and stood stricken; she felt the impact deep inside as fear settled into the place where her stomach had once been. There came rapid gunfire from inside, followed by immediate silence – an eerie one that stretched so far it seemed permanent - and she felt herself hurtle through midair untethered while she wondered if she was about to crash to earth and explode.
You can go full Blackhawk permanently if you catch me one more time, Weller. Seriously. All hovering, all the time. Come on, Weller!
And when the silence finally broke, to find Kurt without a scratch on him, to watch the blue eyes twinkle with evil mischief as he feigned deafness for a few heart-wrenching seconds just to watch her react, was to feel the security of her parachute returned, to feel herself glide back to earth once more.
But what if he had been lost? What if he is lost to her one day?
Their work is dangerous, the people they encounter equally so, and Patterson's beloved David wasn't even part of their FBI unit. He was a technophile, a word puzzle nerd – he didn't willingly seek out situations with armed assassins or deadly neurotoxins or dirty cops with flash bang grenades and nothing to lose. Still, he's dead and there are no guarantees that Weller won't be next – and without Weller, there's just Jane – well, Jane and Taylor Shaw, two thirds of their odd trio.
Jane can't think of a way to be more alone in the world than to live with the ghost of a girl she can't remember.
She can't shake the feeling of flying as easily as she can rid herself of her FBI security detail, however. (More's the pity – they're pathetically predictable, right down to their evening coffee break.) She leaves the safe house and goes in search of her parachute before she comes up with any sane reasons not to. Jittery, she trembles on a bench outside Weller's building - though whether from fear or from anticipation of what she's about to do, she can't decide. (He isn't home yet – careful, unauthorized surveillance of off-duty Weller in his natural habitat has taught her that tonight is grocery night and he never breaks from routine if he can help it. Steady and predictable is Kurt Weller – how is this man still single, ladies?)
Jane sits and waits and contemplates what it must be like to skydive – to strap a piece of canvas to one's back and leap willingly out of an airplane only to be subjected to the elements of wind and weather and the principles of physics and gravity once out the door. There's certainly nothing that could convince her to do it, for if she thinks flying inside an airplane is awful, how would flying outside of it - with less chance of survival and a greater chance of instantaneous death - be better? Still, this expectant moment while she waits for Weller to appear feels much like she imagines it must for a skydiver right before the door opens over the drop zone. So much can go wrong in the next few seconds – yet conversely, so much can go right. The possibility hangs in the air like a skydiver herself as she waits to pull the cord and save her own life.
Jane hates to fly, hates to hang in midair, but she's about to leap anyway. Kurt Weller is her parachute, which means he'll catch her, right?
Right?
He's concerned to see her at first and visibly ready to switch to full-on hero mode, then he's confused and upset about the detail that unknowingly sits at the safe house guarding her possessions and not her (easier to ask forgiveness than permission, Weller). She doesn't hear the lecture, though – partly because she's too focused on her plan, but mostly because it's standard-issue Weller and she's heard it before (and twice on Thursdays).
She cuts him off hastily, wills him not to sway her from her task, then steps boldly into nothingness Wyle E. Coyote-style, with nothing below to hold her weight. It's a leap of faith, this calculated moment of… what?
Insanity?
Desperation?
Passion?
The moment her lips find his, it's all of the above. The kiss is tentative at first – she aims and shoots from the hip (lip, Jane, lip) – and it feels as though she waits forever for him to respond.
If this goes wrong, crashing to earth will leave one hell of a mark, Jane.
Luckily, it only takes one full breath for him to catch her, one full breath for his lips to find hers in far less tentative fashion, though it's apparent that Special Agent Kurt "Everything-Comes-at-a-Price" Weller is still suspicious of this unexpected moment – suspicious and confused – and he pulls back to examine her face, silently wondering why she leapt into midair tonight and needed to be caught.
The blue eyes are ever her truth serum and she tells him: "I wanted a moment that was just us."
Just me. Just you. No one else – not even the ghost of Taylor Shaw. I hate to fly, Kurt. Please don't let me fall.
There's a long pause – almost too long, Jane thinks while she watches his face for signs that he understands and prays that she hasn't made a huge mistake just now. (It's a real prayer too, not the expletive-fueled rant of the turbulent Michigan flight.) But when a slow smile warms his face, she knows she can leap again, that her parachute waits to carry her safely back down.
There's no hesitation the second time she puts her lips on his. This time, she folds herself into his body and takes full possession of his mouth, thrilling to her toes when he kisses her back with practiced ease. It feels as though they've done this a million times and also brand new and the last thought she has before Sawyer interrupts and crashes both unceremoniously back to earth is that she feels for the first time since she woke up in her new life that she's in the right place at the right time. She's sure of herself in a situation that doesn't find her under heavy fire or grappling in hand-to-hand combat and dares to think that maybe - just maybe - she's flying with a bit of control and maybe – just maybe – it isn't so scary after all.
Jane hates flying a little less when she leaves Kurt and walks into the night. In fact, she feels as though she's still airborne, walking on feet that never touch the ground.
FIN