A/N: Based off a tumblr prompt sent to me: Jeller + "Don't die on me now. Please, goddamnit, don't you die!" Set in early season 1.

She's bleeding.

She's bleeding fast, continuously, from more places than he has hands to staunch, and though he doesn't know much—about how it happened, about how long she's been like this—he knows enough to realize that she won't last much longer. He can put pressure on the wounds. He can put tourniquets around her limbs. He can do his best.

But already he knows his best won't be enough.

It hasn't been enough for anyone—not for Taylor or for his mother or for Allie; not for any one of the many other people he has let down or disappointed or betrayed in the thirty-plus years he's been alive. His best has ended relationships and torn up families and killed people. He, and no one else, has been the reason that people have died.

And now he's going to be the reason that she dies.

He swallows as he looks down at her lying on the ground, his throat catching on itself and nearly choking him, because he can hardly look at her, even though they probably only have minutes left, at most. All he can see when he looks at her is red, because it's all over her. Much like the tattoos that adorn every inch of her skin, now she is covered in blood, and for once it's not the blood of others, it's only her own. He stares down at her doused frame and tries to guess, tries to estimate… How many pints has she lost? How many does she have left? How many can she part with before she leaves him for good?

She isn't even shaking anymore. She isn't panting or screaming or crying, and that just makes it all the worse. Because he knows what complacency and calmness and quiet mean at a time like this. He knows it might mean they only have seconds now, and not minutes.

"I didn't have your back," he chokes the words out, letting them rush from him just as the blood is rushing from her. They're in a race now, and though no one will win, no matter what, he hopes they can at least tie. He hopes he can get it all out, confess all his sins, before she goes. He never got a chance last time. "Jane, I should've—I'm sorry—I should've been there."

She shifts a little beneath him, making a noise that might be a scoff or a cry of pain; she's so quiet that he can't tell anymore.

"Not… your fault," she whispers when she can, and he tries not to look at her, tries not to see the blood that is staining her teeth when she opens her mouth to speak. He knows what it means when people start to bleed from the mouth without having sustained an injury there. "You had… You had your job to do, Weller."

"My job's to protect you," he says, his voice tight now, on the verge of breaking, just like his eyes are on the verge of overflowing, and his heart is, once again, on the verge of breaking. "I'm supposed to protect you."

She smiles, and it is slow, almost lazy, even though he's sure it's taking all her effort to lift her lips even a single degree. "You know I—can take care of myself, Weller. Told you that from day one."

He's shaking for the both of them now, crying for the both of them as he couches over her, and he doesn't care; he doesn't fucking care that she sees or what she thinks. He tries to remember the last person he allowed to see him cry—it was probably Sarah, after their mother left. Or… No, it was Allie, that one time, when she'd stayed at his place during the anniversary of Taylor's disappearance. She'd refused to leave even though he'd yelled at her to do so, shouted at her to get the hell out before it got any worse. She'd stood her ground and stayed with him, and she'd come to regret it. They all did.

He used to think of each of those times—losing his best friend, losing his mother, breaking down like a child in front of his new girlfriend—as the worst times in his life. He used to look back on them and cringe, and mourn for the person he was before they happened.

Now, though, he thinks, he will have a new standard from which to judge the worst moments in his life.

"You know that, um, that you're gonna be fine," he forces out, smiling because he doesn't know what else to do, smiling because she doesn't deserve to see him frown, not for another damn second. "You're gonna be fine; the, uh, the bleeding's slowing, I think, and—"

"Don't lie to me while I'm dying, Kurt."

He blinks, momentarily frozen in shock. Not only at the force in her voice—the life—but because this is the first time she's ever called him by his first name. As he stares down at her, not knowing what to say, he can't help but think that he likes the way his name sounds, when she says it. Even when she's being short with him. Even when she's dying.

"You're not dying," he bites out, his voice rough with tears and fury and loss. "You're not going to die, not—not you too."

She blinks at his words, a little more awake than before, and he watches her green eyes open fully as they find his. "Sorry," she whispers. She stars to reach up a hand, the one that doesn't have a bullet shot through its arm, and he takes it quickly, not wanting her to exert herself. "I'm sorry that you didn't—that you never got to say goodbye to her."

He shakes his head sharply at her, refusing the comparison, refusing the memories, refusing to add even more pain to what they're already enduring. "This isn't about her," he bites out, and he can't tell anymore, if he's telling the truth like she'd demanded or if he's lying to her face. He doesn't know. They have the same eyes, and he can't look away—

"It's not your fault, you know," she whispers, and her voice is so faint, he has to lean close, lean over her, lowering his ear barely two inches from her lips, in order to hear her. "It's not your fault: not her, and—and not me."

He shuts his eyes, not able to say anything, hardly able to breathe through the searing pain in his throat. "Jane—"

"Guilt's easy," she whispers, and even though he doesn't want to, he opens his eyes to look at her as she says each word, for he knows they could be her last. Her voice is getting fainter and fainter all the time; he finds he needs to see her lips, read them, to know exactly what she's saying. "It's natural; even I know that. But that's doesn't mean—doesn't mean it's right, Kurt."

"It is for me," he whispers, his voice as broken and hushed as hers. "She was my fault, and—and you're my fault, too. I should've—should've been there. Here."

There's that flicker of a smile at the edges of her mouth again.

A flash of red teeth that should be white.

"I'm not your fault, Kurt," she says. Her breathing is shallow, labored. Her eyes are flickering shut. He can practically hear her heart slowing. "Don't carry me with you like you carry her."

"Jane—"

"Promise you won't, Kurt. I don't want to be that to you. Don't turn me into that."

He swallows, not able to speak. He just nods his head.

He watches her green eyes fall closed, and feels his heart surge in his chest, thinking she's gone already, just like that—

"Always felt safe with you," she whispers, her eyes still closed. "After that first day… Always felt safe."

"And today?" he can't help but ask, torturing himself, torturing her.

She tries to laugh, and then chokes on the blood filling her mouth. He helps prop her up, helps in what tiny, inconsequential ways he can. Just like before: checking the front door of the Shaw house, the back door, never checking what really needed to be checked. Never looking in the right place.

"Today I felt…" She has to pause to get a breath, pause to remember what she was saying. He watches as she thinks, struggling to remember what words are, and what order they go in. "I felt like I was being useful," she whispers finally. She's trying to open her eyes, he can tell, but she can't quite manage it. "Felt like I was doing something—something good."

"You were," he tells her. He can feel the tears again, streaming down the sides of his face, but he doesn't bothering wiping them away. A clear face is not worth missing out on holding her, in that last moment. "You were doing something good."

Just the edge of her mouth jumps up, only for a split-second.

He smiles back despite himself, he smiles back for her, though he knows she can't see. He presses his forehead down against hers, close enough so he can feel what little warmth is left in her, close enough so all he can smell is the blood on her breath, the blood on her body. So little of it is left in her body.

He's close enough that he feels it, when she goes. He feels her go limp all at once, as if she'd merely fainted in his arms and not just died. It takes him a few seconds, in his denial and his delirium, to realize. He's silent, for a while. The only sounds he can hear are the sound of his own breath, his own heartbeat, his own life, still going on, still forging ahead…

And hers gone, destroyed, taken from him just like Taylor's.

A man starts to yell, at some point. A man that sounds a lot like him, perhaps another version of him, a desperate and angry and wronged version of him.

"Please…" The man is begging at intervals, between the yelling. "Please don't…"

Other times he is shouting, weeping, at the same time. "Don't die on me now. Please, goddamn it, don't you die! Not again!"

Kurt wants to tell him to shut up, to leave them in peace at this moment, so he can go with her, can disappear from this world and the pain it gives him just like she did. Just like they both did.

But the words keep coming, the man keeps cursing and crying and screaming and sobbing, and it's only later, perhaps a year or a decade later, when there are more sounds around him, more people around him, that he realizes the two versions of himself are one in the same. The man yelling and swearing and crying, that's him… Somehow, that's him?

And then there's a hand on his shoulder, and a familiar, soft voice saying, "Kurt… Kurt, she can't hear you. Kurt, you have to let go…"

He doesn't want to. He wants to stay with her; better yet, he wants to follow after her. He hates it here; all he does it lose people here. Why is he always losing people? Taylor and his mother and Allie and now Jane… Jane, is she really gone? Is this really her, dead in his arms?

Is this a dream, a nightmare? A flashback? It has to be anything but reality.

"Kurt, come on. You have to look at me. You can't do this again. You can't disappear. Not again, not to me."

He recognizes the indignation in her voice, placing it suddenly, back in time, and he looks up, seeing her, seeing his surroundings as if for the first time. Through all the Bureau agents and the paramedics and the police officers surrounding them, he finds her face, right next to his.

"Sarah," he whispers. Her name is hardly audible coming out of his ravaged throat.

But she smiles, somehow, at the sound of it. More optimistic than the sun, his sister.

"Hey," she whispers back. She's crying, he notices. Her eyes are red and streaming. She's sobbing, silently, without pause. She did that once before, he remembers… "They need you to move, okay? They need to—to take her back. And they need to make sure you're okay."

"I'm okay," he replies, not even knowing what he's saying, or why. It just seems like the right thing to say. Sarah always likes to hear that he's okay. It always makes her smile.

But she doesn't smile now. Her chin is shaking, and when she sucks in a breath it's a horrible sharp, gasping sound, and he wants to reach out and hold her, to promise her everything's going to be fine, but his hands are already full.

He looks down, wondering why, and then he sees her ashen, blood-smeared face, and he remembers. He sees her green eyes, open and yet not blinking for some reason, and he remembers.

"I let her die," he whispers. It's a quiet statement, a soft realization. There's not any pain anymore. There's no feeling at all. He's been here before, he thinks. Maybe in another life?

At his side, Sarah is shaking her head frantically. "No," she's whispering, crying, calling out to him through the fog of memories and reality that are currently crashing together in his mind, and before his eyes. He can't see straight. "No, you didn't, Kurt. No. You didn't let her die. She was ambushed; you were on the other side of the lot, Kurt, okay, there was nothing could've—"

"But I was supposed to watch her," he whispers, remembering suddenly. He can't look away from those green eyes of hers. "Her mom was at work, and I was supposed to… She put me in charge. She said she trusted me; said I was old enough. Well, she said I had to be." He turns to his sister, feeling fear for the first time in a long while. "Is she here already? Taylor's mom? What do I—Sarah, what do I say?"

His sister is staring at him blankly, her eyes big, so much bigger than before, so big it's almost scary. She looks like a cartoon. He wants her to go back to normal.

"Sarah," he says again, his voice more insistent now, rising with his own growing fear, "You have to help me. What am I supposed to tell Mrs. Shaw?"

A few seconds longer she stares at him in silence: not speaking, not blinking. He can't even tell if she's breathing.

And then all at once, she's screaming. She's turning away from him, turning towards the masses of people all waiting a good fifty feet away, like an audience here to watch the drama unfold, and she's shouting out to them, any of them, all of them.

Please! Please, for God's sake, someone get me a psychiatrist! He needs a—

Psychiatrist.

Kurt remembers that word. They made him go to one, after she died the first time. He hated it. He told himself he'd never go back, once he was old enough to say no. He never did go back.

She knows this. He stares at his sister when she finally turns back to him, her screaming pleas finished, and he feels a slow, creeping betrayal infiltrate the nothingness he was previously feeling. She knows he hated that psychiatrist; why would she get him another one? Why would she do that to him? She knows how hard that was for him. How horrible it was.

He finds her eyes, and asks as much, whispering the words through ruined lips because he hardly has the voice to speak anymore, after all the crying and the screaming.

"Why?" he asks finally.

She balks at the simple question, her chin shaking horribly again, before her whole body joins in, convulsing as if she's terribly sick, or about to die.

Not you, too, he thinks. Don't leave me too.

"I'm sorry, Kurt," she chokes out finally, reaching for his hand, "But I don't know what else to do. I—I don't know how else to help you."

He looks down, catching sight of her long, slim fingers against his. They're painted blue, he notices. He watches the skin around her knuckles tighten, and turn white, as she squeezes his hand as hard as she physically can.

He doesn't feel a thing.

A/N: Thank you for reading. Sorry to post this right before the show gets back, but I couldn't leave it sitting on my laptop anymore. I'd love to hear your thoughts. :)