Author's Note: Okay, so I changed a detail in the first chapter so this would fit. Originally, in chapter one, Kurt had found out about Remi not being Jane a week earlier, and had managed to get her into house arrest immediately. I changed that so this chapter would make more sense, so that she actually went missing for a while before being caught and put under house arrest. I haven't gone into details about her crimes, because I still have no idea what Remi is going to do (and it's scary!).


Kurt ended his call to Reade and wearily leaned back in the chair beside Remi's bed. The doctors had medically induced a coma to prevent the ZIP progression from becoming too advanced, too quickly—she wasn't going to wake up anytime soon—but he'd informed Reade he was going to take the rest of the day off anyway.

The rest of the team were still trying to sort out the clues from Roman's drives, patching together everything they could. But progress was slow, and no one had any clue how much longer Remi could hang on for. Kurt would go back to work tomorrow, hopefully with his head on straight, but for the rest of today, he wanted to be by his wife's side.

"If I talk to her, can she hear me?" he asked the nurse checking Remi's vitals.

"We don't know," the nurse said sympathetically. "If she can, she won't remember what she's heard when she wakes up. A coma shuts down the brain function to the bare minimum, which is what we want in your wife's case. But there's no reason you shouldn't talk to her, just in case."

Kurt murmured his thanks, barely taking his eyes off Remi's face. With a sympathetic smile, the nurse left the room.

Kurt took hold of a hand almost as familiar to him as his own, tracing the honeycomb tattoo on the back of it with a finger. When he'd done this to Jane, on a few different occasions during their romantic relationship, she'd always laughed and tried to pull away, insisting that his touch tickled. Remi's face didn't twitch as he traced the multi-hexagonal design now—not that the tubes in her nose and throat would have permitted her to laugh easily.

Sighing, he pressed his forehead against the back of her hand and began to speak. "Remi… Jane… Whichever part of you can hear me… We're doing everything we can, I promise. The team are searching as hard as they can for leads. I'm gonna take a break for the rest of today, go back to it with fresh eyes in the morning."

He guessed he should at least tell her what was happening to her. "The doctors have medically induced a coma. The ZIP was damaging your brain at a faster rate than before, so they thought it would buy some time. They can keep you like this for months, if they need to. But if we can find Roman's last drive, it might only be a few days."

Remi didn't move or speak, not that he'd expected her to. The life support machine beeped a steady rhythm to monitor her heartbeat. The ventilator that kept her breathing hissed quietly with each forced breath into her lungs.

Kurt kissed her hand before gently settling it back on the blanket. He should leave, go get something to eat, have an early night to recharge his brain. But all he could think about was that if not for the coma, the ZIP would be ripping through Remi's—Jane's—brain and destroying the woman he loved. As well as the woman he barely knew, and all her hatred for the world as well.

If the ZIP could only take the part of her that was bitter and resentful, that caused her to lash out at her targets without care for the innocent people she harmed—that would be by far the best outcome. He wasn't that naïve, though. He knew that if the ZIP took anything more, it might be as inconsequential as her knowledge of the lyrics of nursery rhymes, or as huge as her ability to walk or talk.

"I love you," he whispered, unsure if he was addressing the part of her that he'd known as Jane, or the woman he'd only just begun to get past the defences of—Remi. He understood why she thought of herself as two different people. It was so much simpler that way, though he'd refused to let Remi treat Jane like a dead woman. "Just hold on. Don't make me live without you again."

As he sat back, something on her other hand glinted—her wedding ring. Kurt stared at it, for a moment sure he was hallucinating out of stress and exhaustion. When had she put it back on?

The moment she'd last taken it off was ingrained in his memory, so painful that he still felt raw inside every time he relived the memory.


Three months earlier

Kurt had finally shared his suspicions about Jane with the team, to find that they'd all been thinking the same things as he had. They'd all been concerned by her odd behaviour over the past few weeks, but they'd written it off as symptoms of the ZIP poisoning until recently, when there was too much oddness to ignore. Independent of each other, they'd all begun testing her in subtle ways—adding inaccurate details into their anecdotes, making snarky comments about former Sandstorm members to watch her reactions, and other small, subtle things.

As they'd sat around the conference table, they'd argued about the sheer impossibility that the ZIP had only taken the memories she had of being Jane, while reinstating the memories from her Remi days in full. It made no sense, but it seemed to be the only explanation that added up. They'd decided to watch and wait for more evidence, but to stay vigilant.

A few hours later, Kurt returned home to find his wife listening to jazz, a photograph held in one hand and tears on her cheeks. She tucked the photo away as soon as he came close, and tried to change the subject when he asked her if she wanted to talk about it. She wouldn't even stand up when he held out his hand, meaning to pull her into his arms as soon as she got to her feet.

He backed off, retreating to the kitchen to make them some dinner, but halfway through putting ingredients on the counter, another puzzle piece slotted into place. He leaned against the wall opposite her chair, watching her.

"I thought you hated jazz."

Every time he'd caught her in a misstep lately, she'd always rubbed her temples and asked him to leave her alone for a while because she had a headache. He'd been taken in by it for weeks, too concerned with the fact that she was slowly dying of ZIP poisoning to think beyond the surface. She'd played him like this so many times, but that day, his team's suspicions fresh in his mind, he refused to drop it.

"No, Jane. Just give me a moment, here. I know you hate jazz, because you turn it off every time it comes on the radio. After a while I started noticing a pattern and asked you why, and you said you hate it because it reminds you of Oscar."

She gave him an impatient scowl. "Yeah, I remember. What's your point?"

"If I took a look at that picture in your pocket, whose face would I see?"

Her jaw set mulishly, and she pressed one hand against her pocket. "Roman's."

Kurt held out a hand. "Prove it."

"What's with you tonight?" she asked, her tone and expression so injured that he almost gave in and went back to the kitchen. "I feel terrible, Kurt. I don't need the third degree from you as well."

"Just show me the picture, Jane."

She stood up, her eyes flashing. "And if I don't want to?"

"Then maybe we should talk about how more and more things aren't adding up about you these days. You claim to remember things from our past that never happened. You don't remember things that did. You're eating meat again, which would be fine on its own, but put together with everything else, it makes me think it's because you don't remember the time in your life when you stopped."

"What are you…?" She began to cry, full-on sobs and a river of tears that wrenched at his heart, even as he knew they were entirely fake. Jane only ever cried this hard after he put his arms around her, and even then, she had to be encouraged to let go before she fell apart like this. The way she was acting now was normal for a lot of people, but not for his Jane.

Between sobs, she protested, "I collapsed and went into a coma because of the ZIP, Kurt. If my memory is a little fuzzy now, that's why."

"It doesn't explain why you keep sneaking out at night, while you think I'm asleep."

She froze for one telltale instant before shaking her head. "I can't sleep, so I go out walking."

"I thought for a while that you might be cheating on me. Maybe Clem was back in town, or you'd found someone else." He shook his head. "You're never gone long enough for that. And even though you always manage to lose me, when you come back to bed, I can never smell anyone else on you, either."

"You never used to be so paranoid. I told you already, Clem was a mistake. I just needed to walk. Why won't you just let this go?"

He held firm. "Show me the picture."

"Why are you doing this?" she whispered, swiping at her tears as she looked around for her shoes. "Just leave me alone, Kurt."

Kurt intercepted her on the way across the room to where her sneakers were peeking out from under the coffee table. "If you have nothing to hide, why are you running away?"

She pushed at his chest, trying to get him to move. "I'm too tired and sick to argue with you. Please, just back off."

"Give me the picture, and I will." God, if he was wrong, and he was giving Jane hell for things that were just coincidental… He stifled the guilt that rose through his chest. Something was very wrong here. He knew it now.

"Let me get to my shoes, and I'll show you the picture," she said, her voice dangerously level all of a sudden. As though she knew there was no point in pretending anymore.

Kurt stepped back, standing between her sneakers and the apartment door now. Jane—Remi—stepped into the footwear, then slammed the photograph into his chest, the fury and hatred in her face taking him aback.

Jane had never looked at him like that.

Jane had never looked at anyone like that.

He had the presence of mind to keep himself between her and the door as he glanced down at the picture in his hand. As he'd expected, it showed Oscar and Remi, standing close together, completely absorbed in each other and unaware the photograph was being taken.

The look Remi was giving Oscar in the picture shook him more than he wanted to admit. He'd seen that loving, unguarded expression before—aimed at him.

As he looked from the picture to the real thing, the contrast was clear. Remi felt no trace of the love she'd had for him when she'd remembered Jane's life. But he couldn't think about that, not until he had her subdued and on her way to the NYO for interrogation.

Was he really about to arrest his dying wife?

"Remi Briggs," he said, drawing his weapon from where he'd tucked it into the back of his waistband, "You are under arrest for conspiring to commit acts of terror."

She laughed—not the soft, slightly hesitant laugh Jane would use when she found something amusing, but a harsh, one-syllable cry of derision. "You have no evidence. I slipped your tail every night. All you have are half-baked suspicions based on a medical condition that no one else but Roman has ever had."

"You were a member of Sandstorm."

"Eleanor Hirst gave me immunity for my past crimes. You co-signed the document. Or are you the one with memory problems?"

"Am I right?" he asked, watching her body for tells that would indicate a forthcoming attack. He couldn't look at her face, not right then. "Did you forget everything we've been through since you came out of that bag in Times Square? Remember everything from before then?"

"Believe me, it's a way worse nightmare for me than for you," she said bitterly.

"I really doubt that." Kurt wasn't feeling much of anything at that moment. He was numb, the way he had been when he'd first realised Jane had left the country while he'd slept, leaving her wedding ring in Bethany's bedroom in their Colorado home. He'd needed to function, to find out where she'd gone and to persuade her to come back. Only when he'd accepted her trail had gone cold had he crashed into despair.

He suspected this time would be much the same—he'd subdue Remi, get her to a cell, then allow himself to process the situation. But when he did, it would be a nightmare worse than any he could imagine, because Jane was gone, but she couldn't be found by physically searching for her. His wife's body belonged to someone else. A malicious, unpredictable terrorist.

"Oh, you think it's worse for you to find out that Jane is gone than what I've been through?" She shook her head impatiently, the gesture so familiar that his heart ached. "I woke up to find out that not only am I dying because of the poison I let myself be injected with, but I don't have anything to show for my death."

Kurt tried to speak, but Remi threw up a hand, so violently that he instinctively raised his gun a little.

"My fiancé is dead, and what's worse is, I killed him. Literally. With my own hands. On purpose." Her anger kept rising, but there were tears in her eyes now. "My brother is dead"—her voice broke, and she had to take a moment to compose herself before going on—"and I helped you to hunt him down. For months on end. After I wiped his memory and stuck him in a fucking cell. The worst torture I could ever have inflicted on him."

Kurt didn't even try to interrupt, knowing she wouldn't stop until she was done.

"My mother is being legally tortured in a goddamn CIA black site. Maybe the same one where Jane was held on suspicion of being me. Shepherd can be held and tortured indefinitely until someone gets around to trying and convicting her, and then she'll rot away in a cell for the rest of her life, if she's not given a lethal injection first."

Your mother deserves everything that's happened to her. Kurt didn't say it aloud. It would only make the situation worse.

"My friends are all dead or imprisoned, and I helped to put them there. I helped to capture and kill my family and friends, and I don't remember doing it. And what did I trade my whole life away for? This?"

Her voice was so acidic, so incredulous, that it made Kurt flinch. Jane had never sounded like this. Was his wife even in there at all anymore? Or was Remi too broken and toxic for any goodness to remain?

"This is what Jane sacrificed my whole life for? A federal drone husband, a comfy apartment in Brooklyn and a job at the FB-fucking-I? Oh, and don't forget the picket fence and stepdaughter out in Colorado. Sure, that makes it all worth it."

Kurt's blood froze at the mention of Bethany. She could rip their life to pieces and he couldn't stop her, but if she took one step in his daughter's direction—

"And Avery. She met Avery. She influenced my damn daughter, the daughter I searched for over eighteen years. She found her. I needed that so badly, I volunteered to fucking poison myself so that after Phase Two was over, Shepherd would tell me where she was. But no. I couldn't even have that. I couldn't even make my own first impression on my only goddamn child."

She wiped away a tear impatiently, her body still trembling with rage.

"I sacrificed my whole life for this country, and for a chance to know my daughter. And after five years of destroying everything I'd built for myself, I've woken up to this. I have nothing left. Nothing."

Kurt swallowed the lump in his throat before speaking. "You have me."

"What? A marriage where my husband is in love with the twisted version of me who killed the man I really love? Great. I feel so much better now." Remi pulled at her finger. It took a moment for his stunned mind to realise she was pulling off her wedding ring, and he tasted bile at the back of his throat as she slammed it down on the coffee table.

No. Please, no. Not again.

Her next words killed his protest before it could leave his lips. "Well, you didn't manage to knock Jane up. At least that's one thing that went right for me."

It was at that moment that Kurt could no longer endure. The numbness in his mind was fading, his desperation and agony rising to take its place, and he could hardly see straight as tears blurred his vision.

"You might as well put that thing away. You're not gonna shoot me, Weller, come on. You've just spent the last six weeks telling me how much you fucking love me."

He gritted his teeth and blinked past the tears, refusing to lower his weapon. "You could have killed me when you first woke up. Or when I was still weak and recovering after I got out of hospital. Hell, you could have killed me last night while I slept. Why didn't you? Why did you hang around long enough for us to get suspicious of you?"

Remi rolled her eyes. "Are you kidding? I was undercover at the FBI. All our original plans might have gone to hell, but at least I could get as much intel as I could. Some of it pretty useful, I have to admit. Shocking, even."

"What are you planning to do with that intel?" Could he shoot her? Could he really pull the trigger and injure someone who had his wife's appearance, her face, her voice?

He didn't know if he could even hit her. Sometimes, he still had nightmares about the way they'd fought in the motel after she'd escaped the CIA black site. It had been the only time he'd ever fought Jane as a true opponent, rather than a sparring partner, and she'd been desperate, vicious, throwing everything she had into the fight. Even then, when he'd distrusted and resented her for the lies she'd told, believing she'd intentionally played him and his team, he hadn't been able to throw his full weight into his attacks. Only the fact that she was recovering from torture had given him the upper hand that day.

Now, after they'd lived together, slept together, loved each other intensely for years… How could he hurt her?

"It's over, Weller. I hope you enjoyed what you got, because next time I see you, I will not hesitate to put a bullet in you." She took a step forward. "Now get out of my way."

"No." His voice shook, but somehow, he kept his gun steady. "You're not walking out of here unless you're in cuffs."

Remi took another step forward. "Go on. Shoot me. It's not like I'm dying or anything."

"Don't do this. Please, Jane." Did he think that by using her name, he'd magically summon her back to the forefront of Remi's consciousness? He wasn't that stupid. Still, he had to try.

"Shoot me, or get away from the door." Remi's face and voice were expressionless now. It was as though she'd shut down, after finally venting everything she'd wanted to say to him for months. Now she seemed like an emotionless husk. "Don't make me put you back in the hospital. You know I can."

He held out the picture of Oscar, a plan forming slowly in his mind. "Want this back?"

She did—desperately, if he could still read her right. She had to get within his reach in order to take the photograph, however, and that worked in his favour.

"Put it on the kitchen counter," she said, too cautious to allow him the opportunity.

"No." He let it float to the floor between them, knowing she'd have to drop her guard to pick it up.

Remi sighed. "Sometimes you can be a real dick, Weller."

"Makes two of us. But I'm not the one who killed your fiancé."

Her eyes narrowed to slits at that. If looks could have killed, he would have collapsed. But as it was, she crouched and reached for the photo.

Before he could bring himself to make a move—kick Jane in the face? There was no way he could do it—she grabbed his ankle and yanked him off balance, following up with a shoulder-rush to his barely-healed gut to send him crashing to the ground. The gun went off, and his heart jumped into his throat, but Remi didn't cry out with pain or topple over onto him. She wrenched the gun out of his hand, engaged the safety and tossed it across the room.

"Don't come after me, Weller. You don't have it in you to kill me, but I have absolutely nothing left to lose. Remember that."

And then she'd stalked out of the apartment, taking nothing with her but the photograph of Oscar, and leaving behind her wedding ring for the third time in their marriage.


Present day

Kurt moved around to the other side of Remi's bed, taking hold of her hand and running his thumb across the delicate silver wedding band on her ring finger.

After they'd finally brought her down, stopped her plan in its tracks and prevented her from breaking her house arrest by way of a radioactive tracker in her bloodstream, he'd told her the ring was in the nightstand on her side of their bed, and that she could take it or leave it. She hadn't even bothered to acknowledge his words at the time, but now she was wearing it. Had she been wearing it a week ago, when they'd slept together? He didn't think so.

Remi was here to stay. He accepted that. But the Jane part of her—her experiences and feelings and memories of the past five years—was slowly coming back. He'd seen that softness and vulnerability in her over the past week, and the determination to regain her lost memories. The fact that she'd put on her wedding ring was evidence enough that she remembered enough to feel something more than hatred for him these days.

Could he ever love the combination of Jane and Remi as fiercely as he'd loved Jane? He didn't know. It wasn't even worth asking whether he could have loved Remi alone, without any memories of Jane. She wouldn't have allowed him past her defences enough to get to know her, and even if she had, her need to see the establishment burn would have been too much for him to let her in.

"Remi," he murmured, squeezing her left hand gently. "I'm heading home for the night, but I'll be back. Sleep well, my love."

With a final soft brush of his lips against her forehead, he left the quiet hospital room.