A/N: A quick Jeller about what could possibly be going through the minds of my current two favorite people after episode 2/29/16. And I just realized that so far on both Jeller fics I've written, the titles start with 'a'…
Started: 3/5/16
Finished: 3/5/16
Edited: 3/6/16
Alone
"Am I really Taylor Shaw?"
"…Yes."
Jane sighed heavily, and ran both hands through her hair again. Her body ached, more so with confusion than any type of physical exhaustion.
It pained her to visualize Kurt sitting in that park alone. She'd wanted to go see him. So badly. But Oscar was going to give her answers, and she needed those answers. She needed to know who she was.
But he'd hesitated. Oscar had hesitated when answering her question. "Why" he did that swirled around and around and around in her head until she wanted to reach in with her own hand and yank it out.
It almost seemed as if he hadn't wanted her to know she really was Taylor. It was the first question out of her mouth, and perhaps he'd been stunned. But she didn't think so. He was adamant that she was the orchestrator. He couldn't tell her everything because she herself had given him orders against it.
The notion pricked her pride, and it made her pause. He blindly followed someone – now someone who had no idea who they were – and refused now to give that same person a helping hand.
When she'd looked at him, trying to silently plead with him to tell her whether or not she and Taylor were the same, his eyes had shuttered. A mask had slipped over his face, and she couldn't read it. It startled her, set her rotating back on her heels.
Kurt wouldn't have done that. Kurt would have taken her shoulders – well, perhaps not – and stared at her with all the honesty he could express. His eyes didn't lie to her, and when he tried to hide something, she could tell. She could read him.
Oscar swore the people in the FBI were tainted. But who exactly?
Patterson was out – no question about that.
Reed was slow to warm up to her, but she didn't fault him for that. And there was no question his loyalty to Kurt.
Zapata was harder to read, but she was out, too. Except a few times where Zapata was probably dealing with personal problems and hadn't seemed as on top of things as usual, she was always quick to protect Jane.
Mayfair was the hardest. Something had pitted Kurt against her, and Jane knew it had to be something important for Weller to get so upset. However, Mayfair had relieved Jane's detail. It was difficult to decide, but Jane didn't think there was anything to worry about with Mayfair.
And Kurt. Kurt had been the one to fight for her first. Kurt had been the one with which she felt the most comfortable. Kurt was the one who couldn't hide it when he'd looked at her and saw Taylor. Kurt was the one who had his name tattooed on her back in large, bold letters. And Kurt was the one she had kissed a day or so ago.
Had it only been a few days?
Kurt constantly looked at her and told her she didn't have a choice in anything that happened to her. And she was so raw, so confused that she'd nearly cried after they shut off PA 921's engines. But she hadn't had a chance to tell him.
The guilt ate at her like acid.
So it hadn't been much of a surprise when the first question out of her mouth had been about her identity. She needed to know who she was, and she didn't want to be severed from any sort of identity ever again. She wanted that connection to Kurt, to someone she knew as Jane. He was something steady to grasp when she was certain the ledge was going to slip through her fingers.
Was that why her old self had decided to tattoo his name on her back? Her connection with him ran farther back than anyone, and Taylor had known him, had known that once her DNA was tested she would be linked to an old life and an old kidnapping.
But Jane didn't know Taylor.
Taylor was just a faceless name. Jane couldn't look in the mirror and see both entities, Jane now and Taylor in memory. She couldn't tap in to any of Taylor's emotions, to her drives and her beliefs. Taylor was a ghost, an entity now floating in space that Jane could not grasp no matter how hard she tried.
There were corrupt people, yes, but Taylor couldn't have meant this FBI team. There were always fault lines in teams, with people in power, and even in people that didn't have much power. That didn't make every single one of them corrupt.
Jane punched the back on the sofa with a cry of frustration.
It seemed Taylor hadn't even trusted Kurt. Oscar had been the one she trusted, the one she appointed to help carry out whatever mission this was. Taylor may have been engaged to Oscar, may have been his lover at one point, but she wasn't Taylor anymore. She was Jane, and Jane didn't feel anything towards Oscar except a conflict of interest.
He had been right – a part of her did trust him, or else she wouldn't have met him earlier that evening. But the other part of her – the larger part – knew without a shadow of a doubt that whatever orders Taylor gave Oscar, Jane would make sure none of them hurt her team in any way.
Standing up there with Oscar, looking at that tree tattoo, she realized that she had been hoping he would do for her what Kurt had done. He hadn't. He'd shut her out, talking about the mission as if the people who had helped her meant nothing, as if the PA 921 hostages meant nothing.
Kurt wouldn't have done that. He hadn't done that.
Jane gripped her hair so hard tears stung her eyes. She leaned forward, elbows on her knees.
Kurt was out there, sitting on a bench waiting for her. Perhaps not now – it'd been too long. But he'd waited for her, believed she would keep her word, and she had let him down.
Whatever Taylor had planned, Oscar had made it sound as if everyone within the FBI were corrupt. They – she and Oscar and others he hadn't mentioned – were the good guys. But what if this mission of Taylor's hurt her team?
A choked sob grated out of Jane's throat.
Just who was she?
-00-
Kurt sighed, and stood from the bench. The glowing numerals on his watch read 11:30 pm, and he was done waiting. Jane was supposed to be here an hour and a half ago. Something was up.
He wasn't stupid. Not that anyone at the FBI would assume so, but sometimes he wondered if Jane thought he didn't notice. When it came to her, he noticed everything. And something was bothering her.
After she'd left a few nights ago, there had been a smile on her face, a fluttering uncertainty to her touch. For the past two days, there was no touch, no smile, no glitter in her eyes. She would stare blankly for minutes at a time, lost in some memory inside her mind and she wouldn't share it with him. She'd shake her head, brush it off as a bad night's sleep, but he didn't believe her.
Somehow, he'd find out what it was. It wasn't like her to break her word, not when it was one of the only things she had at the moment.
For now, he'd go home, and let the sting of disappointment mutter to him "I told you so." Tomorrow, he wouldn't let it go until she told him what was going on.
End
A/N: So, another quick Jeller. This has been brewing in my mind since I saw the episode, and usually, I'm not one to write fics until a show is over. But Jane's facial expressions were so all-over-the-place in this episode that I wanted to speculate on what she's going through/thinking. By the way, it's not supposed to flow that well. It's third person following both Jane and Kurt's thought processes, so it's not the most coherent in terms of flow. Anyway, let me know what you think.
