I do not own Blindspot or its characters.

Weekends were the worst.

Kurt focused on the rhythmic pounding of his footsteps on the asphalt, on the traffic flowing past him as he ran, on his surroundings, anything to keep his mind off the nightmare that had become his living reality for the past month. If only he could outrun it as easily as the miles fell away beneath his feet.

He'd thought his world had been completely shattered by discovering Taylor's body, by the realization that his father truly was the monster he'd only just stopped believing him to be, but nothing could have prepared him for the horror that awaited him back here in New York. In twenty-four hours, he'd lost his father, his childhood friend, his mentor, and the woman he'd begun to believe could be his future.

His lips twisted in a sneer. Well, he hadn't exactly lost her. In fact, she was closer to him than ever—physically, at least—though he hoped that arrangement would be short-lived. After a careful review of the evidence, the federal prosecutor had declined to bring charges against Jane at this point, feeling that her version of events would be more than enough to inspire reasonable doubt. Her amnesia would make her all the more sympathetic to a jury, the man argued, as would her recent assistance to the FBI, which had helped save countless thousands of lives. Better to wait until they had something more concrete, something she couldn't possibly wriggle her way out of than to roll the dice now and lose. Double jeopardy would prevent them from ever getting a conviction against her in Mayfair's murder in that case.

Kurt hadn't argued. Sooner or later, Jane would show her true colors again, and he would be there waiting to arrest her when she did. In the meantime, he was following the old adage to keep his friends close and his enemies closer. He'd managed to convince Pellington to allow Jane to return to the team to investigate the potential threat this Shepherd posed to the US government, provided she wasn't armed and agreed to wear an electronic monitoring device, and he'd moved her into the now empty spare bedroom in his apartment to ensure she didn't cut it off and run during off hours.

Having her that close to him was its own special brand of hell because even in private, she still persisted in acting exactly like the Jane he had been falling for. He wanted to yell at her, shake her, demand that she drop the act and quit torturing him. But of course, he couldn't do any of that. Instead, he hid behind the wall of professionalism his new job demanded, making no effort to hide the disdain in his eyes, but always speaking to her with a cool politeness that deepened the sadness in hers.

He'd lost that mask briefly last night when she'd confessed to an almost unbearable loneliness and begged him to talk to her, scream at her if he needed to, anything but treat her with such chill indifference. He'd snapped at her that if she wanted a confidant that badly, she should have run off with her lover instead of stabbing him to death like the Grim Reaper. The devastated look on her face as she fled to her room had guaranteed that he didn't get a wink of sleep all night and had driven him out of the apartment at this ungodly hour to put some distance between himself and the woman he was still heartbreakingly, maddeningly attracted to.

The sound of raised voices jolted him out of his abstraction and he glanced down the alley he was passing to see three teenage boys forming a circle around something at their feet. An animal, he guessed as one of them drew back his foot to kick it. "Hey!" he yelled, already sprinting down the alley to its defense. He placed his hand on his gun as they turned to him menacingly.

He barely spared a glance for the bedraggled kitten at their feet, keeping his eyes trained on theirs as the feline scampered away to hide under a nearby dumpster. He pulled his shirt up to reveal the badge on his belt. "FBI. You punks leave that animal alone and get out of here. Go on!" he growled as the two shorter ones looked to the older boy that was clearly the ringleader. "Before I change my mind and have the NYPD pick you up for animal cruelty." He hadn't seen anything that would make that charge stick, but these three didn't look intelligent enough to discern that.

The three exchanged looks and then took off at a dead run without a backward glance. Kurt sighed as he approached the dumpster and knelt down, knowing if he left the animal here, the boys would likely return and kill it. He laid down on his belly and blindly felt around for the kitten, biting back a curse when it slapped at his hand. "I'm trying to help you, you ungrateful beast."

There was no response. He softened his tone. "I promise I'm not going to hurt you. I just want to take you home and give you a nice bowl of warm milk and—" He paused. What was he going to do with the mistrustful feline? No shelters would be open on a Sunday.

A grim smile appeared on his face as he suddenly knew exactly what he was going to do with the little spitfire. "Here, kitty, kitty," he began calling softly.

The kitten finally emerged from under the dumpster and Kurt pounced.

xxx

He hated her.

Jane curled up on the couch, making herself as small as possible, and rested her head on her knees. She had given up on pretending to sleep when she heard the front door close behind Kurt, but it had taken her some time to work up the nerve to come out here. His words had replayed over and over in her head all night, and for the first time, she had been tempted to do exactly what he moved her in here to prevent: cut the tracking device off her ankle and run.

It wasn't as if he was going to forgive her, after all. She'd been stubbornly clinging to hope for the past month that if she just gave him time and space to mourn his losses, to look past her betrayal and consider why she had acted as she did, that he would come around, would realize that just as he'd told her at the beginning of their relationship, the person she'd been before wasn't who she was now.

But last night had made it glaringly apparent to her that those words had never been meant for her, not really.

They'd been meant for Taylor Shaw.

A solitary tear trickled down her cheek and she was just reaching a hand up to swipe it away when she heard the door open. She flinched and glanced toward the hallway, mentally gauging the odds that she could reach her room before Kurt spotted her. Slim to none, she realized, and hunkered down, hoping he wouldn't notice her and would go on to his room.

Of course, with the way her luck had been going lately, that didn't happen. She sat up straight as she heard Kurt approaching, her head down, her hands clenched into fists at her side. If he wanted to argue with her this morning, he was going to have to start the conversation. She was all fought out.

Kurt hesitated as he approached Jane. This was the first time she had refused to meet his gaze since all this began, and it bothered him more than he cared to admit. "You're up," he said lamely. "Good. Here." He dropped the kitten into her lap.

Jane's hands automatically came up to stroke the frightened animal as it dug its tiny claws into her thighs, and her eyes shot up to meet Kurt's. "What's this?"

He shrugged. "A kitten. Found it on my run, and thought of you. You said you were lonely. Now you won't be."

What she had said was she wanted him to talk to her. She opened her mouth to reiterate that, and then thought better of it. The studied indifference in his eyes still stung, but at least he was back to being civil to her this morning. And whether he realized it or not, this gesture was incredibly sweet.

Time, she reminded herself as she studied the scrawny charcoal kitten watching her with baleful blue eyes. He just needed more time. She could give him that. She owed him that after all her actions had cost him. "What am I supposed to do with it?" She had no idea how to take care of a pet—or if she'd ever even had one.

"Her," Kurt corrected, having determined the kitten's gender on the long walk home. "Feed her. Name her. Love her. Cats are pretty self-sufficient; she'll take care of the rest. I'll, uh . . . I'll run to the store and get you some supplies." He grabbed his car keys and exited the apartment as quickly as he'd returned.

He was gone far longer than he'd anticipated—it turned out there was much more to keeping a cat than he'd realized—and when he entered, Jane and the kitten were nowhere to be found. He opened his mouth to call her name, but before he could utter a syllable, a disturbing cacophony of noise greeted his ears from the direction of the bathroom.

There were several loud thuds, followed by what sounded like muffled cursing and someone wailing, and then came the loudest bang of all. Kurt dropped his purchases in the entryway and drew his gun as he raced down the hall to help. He burst into the bathroom, ready to confront the unknown assailant, only to find . . .

. . . Jane? His mouth dropped open as he took in the scene before him. Jane had changed into an old tank top and shorts and was sitting with her ass in the half-filled tub, her legs dangling over the edge and the most sheepish expression he had ever seen on her face, holding a spitting mad wet kitten by the scruff of the neck.

The chuckle that burst forth from him startled both of them. He was still grinning as he holstered his gun and walked forward a few steps. "You know, Jane," he mentioned, leaning over to take the kitten from her so she could stand, "cats really don't like water." Although this one had certainly needed it. It had gone from a dirty charcoal to a beautiful cream with a brownish-gray face and ears. He never would have guessed such a cute kitten existed under all that grime.

"You don't say," she murmured dryly as she pulled herself up, doing her best to wring the excess water from her shorts before reaching for a couple of towels. She wrapped one around her waist and handed him the other to dry the kitten off, and it was then that he noticed the scratches on her hand. "It would have been nice to have known that before I decided to do it."

Kurt's smile faded as her words recalled him to a sense of reality. "I would have if I'd known you were going to."

"I know that, Kurt," Jane assured him quietly. She knew he would never stand by and deliberately allow her to be injured. Not physically, at least. "I wasn't suggesting that you—"

"It's fine, Jane," Kurt interrupted, a bit more sharply than he had intended. He finished toweling the kitten off and set her down. "Grab the first-aid kit out of the cabinet over there, and I'll patch up that hand."

She did as he asked without comment, but hesitated as she set it on the counter. "You don't have to do this. I can manage it on my own."

Kurt's mouth tightened, but he didn't respond, simply reached for her hand and disinfected and dressed the wound. "There you go." The kitten was still sitting in the doorway, grooming herself, and he scooped her up and deposited her in Jane's arms. "Have you thought of a name for her yet?" he asked as he led the way to the living room.

"Bethany," Jane said softly as she paused beside the large pile of cat accessories he had purchased. "I want to call her Bethany."

Kurt sucked in a breath as he swiveled to face her, pain and anger and disbelief warring for dominance in his eyes.

"I miss her too, Kurt," she pleaded, wishing she still had the freedom to hug away the hurt she saw reflected on his face. Wishing he still cared enough about her to comfort her the same way.

You got her killed. Kurt didn't speak the thought aloud, but he didn't have to: it hung in the air between them. It had been between them even before he heard her confession; from the moment that Reade and Zapata had broken the news to him, he'd known instinctively that Jane had somehow had a hand in it.

Those same instincts were screaming at him now that her remorse was genuine, that she wasn't the cold-blooded monster he was trying to make her out to be in his mind, but he wasn't ready to give credence to them. After all, their track record hadn't been too good of late. "She's your cat," he said brusquely, brushing past her to take a seat on the couch. "Call her what you want."

Jane started to immediately follow after him and then thought better of it. There were a few things she needed to say to him, but this time, it needed to be a calm and rational discussion, not another confrontation in the heat of the moment. She took a seat on the floor, sorting through the cat paraphernalia, as she considered what she wanted to say.

She filled one of the brightly colored food bowls with a small amount of kitten chow and watched until Bethany began to eat before getting up and taking a seat on the other end of the couch. Kurt didn't glance at her, keeping his gaze on the magazine he was reading, but she knew he was hyper-aware of her proximity. At least he hadn't instantly gotten up to put more space between them. That felt like progress. "Can we talk?" she asked softly.

He supposed that was long overdue. Kurt sighed as he tossed the magazine onto the coffee table. "I'm not real sure what you want me to say here, Jane."

"You don't have to say anything, Kurt. You haven't done anything wrong, and it clearly feels like a punishment to you to even come home anymore." Jane hesitated. "I think I should move out. And before you say no—"

"No," Kurt ground out.

"At least hear me out," Jane begged. "I'm not going to run, Kurt. I've submitted voluntarily to wearing an electronic monitoring device and every other restriction you've placed on me." Including being unarmed while out in the field, which basically made her a sitting duck if anything went wrong. "I'll face what I've done and take whatever punishment you deem appropriate, but this . . . this isn't fair to you, Kurt. You deserve a life outside of work. You deserve—" Someone special to spend the rest of your life with, she started to say, but she couldn't force those words past the lump in her throat. The thought of him with anyone else was just too painful. "You deserve better."

"Mayfair deserved better," he retorted. "David deserved better. Sarah. Sawyer." He hadn't even begun to come to grips with his horror at leaving his nephew unattended with his father when Reade had confided in him that someone had threatened him and Sarah. Hearing Jane's confession and realizing that someone was likely a member of her organization had been like a knife to the gut. "And probably countless others that I don't know about yet. I was the one who refused to listen to everyone who tried to warn me not to trust you so blindly, so it seems to me I'm getting exactly what I deserve."

What could she possibly say to that? She certainly wasn't in a position to tell him none of this was his fault, even though every bit of it had been her fault. He was clearly not willing to hear that from her. Jane blew out a breath. "So . . . where does that leave us, Kurt? Is there any chance that we could . . .? I know I don't have any right to expect that we'll ever be friends like we were before, but I'm willing to do anything to work out our differences so that we can at least coexist peacefully. Is there any chance of that?"

"I don't know, Jane." Kurt glanced at her briefly before clenching his jaw and looking away again. "I don't know." He only knew that he couldn't stand to sit there next to her another second right now, and he rose quickly, feeling her disappointed gaze on him as he exited the room.

"Well, Bethany," Jane said sadly as the kitten bounded over to her, scooping her up into her lap, "I guess it's just you and me for now." She snuggled the cat onto her shoulder, burying her face in Bethany's fur as she began to purr.

It's just you and me.