Disclaimer: I do not own Blindspot. I'm just borrowing the characters so I can play with them a little bit.

A/N: Sorry, inspiration was slow to come for this chapter, but I eventually wrestled it out of my head. Now that the new episodes are back on, it's strange to look back at episode 2, when they barely knew each other… and yet, the connection was always there. Hope you enjoy this chapter!

Season 1, episode 2

Jane stood in the street outside the building that had sheltered them from the blast. The front façade had been severely damaged, the explosion having occurred just outside the front doors, and who knew how much more damage had occurred beyond what was obvious from outside. Really, they were lucky that more of it hadn't come down around them. Or on top of them, for that matter. Really, they were just lucky to be alive, in general.

The smoke was still floating through the air as she looked around numbly, taking in the devastation around her. The metal skeletons of several burned out cars sat by the curb, what little was left of them still on fire. Debris was strewn everywhere. Large and small chunks of glass and metal, as well as piles of unrecognizable ash, covered every inch of the ground for a one block radius. The body of a man, who had unfortunately not known to take cover, was sprawled out on the street. Further down the road, there was another, also clad in a suit. She tried not to look any farther, not to see any more.

It was overwhelming, to say the least. Her eyes continued to dart everywhere, unable to rest on any one thing for more than half a second. She noted that nothing was moving except the smoke that threatened to choke her. If they hadn't gotten through that doorway, if Weller hadn't gotten them through that doorway, they may have ended up as nothing but charred remains, or at the very least, in the same state as the man now lying in the road, dead. Inside, she shivered at the thought.

Her eyes landed on the spot where the bearded man, the one from her memories, had stood only seconds before the explosion, just before Weller had pulled her inside. What had happened to him? she wondered. It was important that he was okay. No, it was more than important. After all, they had known each other somehow. He was one of the only real connections to who she was. She just had to find him. But how?

When Weller followed her out of the building a minute or so later, she only vaguely heard the crunch of his boots on the rubble-laden ground. She didn't even register the fact that the sound came from nearby. It was like distant background noise, secondary to her roaring thoughts. Then suddenly, he was standing beside her, looking around at the scene before them with a similarly shell-shocked, albeit less terrified expression. She didn't look directly at him – her eyes were still searching frantically for signs of life, signs of the bearded man, taking in what had happened as her brain struggled to process it all. That man from her memory had been close enough that she could have called out to him. Would he have been able to survive the blast that caused this much destruction? Had he been able to get away?

There were sirens in the distance, coming closer and closer by the second. Jane almost jumped when she heard noise nearby and turned to find Zapata and Reade, with Musgrave in tow, who had seemed to suddenly appear behind her. She'd been so consumed by her thoughts, she hadn't heard them approach, despite the noise that that three additional pairs of shoes made as they walked through the rubble. All of them, like her, were disheveled and covered in streaks of dirt from head to toe, all holding themselves up with the soreness of people who had been knocked to the ground without warning by the force of an explosion, which was exactly what had happened.

Weller had heard them, however, and he was already back in work mode, conversing with the other agents while simultaneously holding his phone to his ear as he dialed Mayfair's number to check in about what had just happened. All of their faces reflected varying degrees of shock, something that wasn't often there, Jane noticed. She supposed that hers did, as well, even more so.

Weller ended the call with Mayfair, glancing around quickly once again. "We need to get Musgrave back to headquarters," he said in a tight voice. The others nodded in agreement, all of them scanning the blast radius nervously. They'd almost been killed just standing outside in the open beside this man only a few moments before. The drone might no longer be a threat to his life – its operator may or may not have simply assumed that he'd been killed – and therefore also to their lives, but that wasn't to say that there wasn't another danger out there. It stood to reason that anyone who was willing and able to use a drone just to take out Musgrave might try again, using the same drone or a similarly lethal means if they knew that he was still alive.

Weller looked at the man at the center of the current situation sternly, raising one eyebrow. "Any problem with coming with us and answering some questions?" he asked, just daring Musgrave to argue after they'd just saved his life.

But to his credit, though he'd tried to run from them initially, Musgrave just shook his head, appearing even more shocked than Jane. He was still confused about how the agents had suddenly known to dive back inside and therefore save all of them from the explosion, and for the moment he just stood quietly. He seemed to be okay with waiting for them to figure it all out, shaking his head unconsciously in disbelief.

That explosion was meant for me, was all he could repeat to himself.

"No," Musgrave replied simply, overwhelmed.

Weller looked pointedly from Reade to Zapata. "Reade, Zapata, you two stay and coordinate with the police. It sounds like they'll be here any second," he said, noting that the scream of police sirens was growing louder by the second. "Jane and I will take Musgrave back with us, find out what he knows. We'll see you back at headquarters." The agents nodded at each other, each having their orders. Jane just stood looking from one of them to another, then back at the empty space where the bearded man had been. She'd heard Weller, but was processing his words slowly.

We're leaving? But I need answers! I need to find the bearded man! her mind screamed.

While she desperately wanted to run down the side streets and look for him, now before it was too late, even if she had been ready to talk about her memory, it wasn't the priority right now. The team had more immediate concerns. That didn't matter, of course, because she wasn't ready to talk about it, so she had no excuse to do anything besides fall in step with Weller. After all, randomly charging off down the street would elicit more than a few questions from the lead agent and the rest of the team.

Feeling his eyes on her, Jane looked back at Weller just as he cleared his throat and spoke to her.

"Jane," he mumbled to get her attention.

He tilted his head in the direction of the car and, seeing her nod slightly, began walking briskly, with Musgrave close beside him. Jane took quick steps, attempting to keep up with Weller, who was now clearly on a mission to get the other man to safety as quickly as possible. The two black SUVs in which the team had arrived had, thankfully, been parked around the corner and therefore outside of the small blast radius in front of the building. Musgrave was ushered to the backseat as Jane climbed into the passenger seat beside Weller, and within minutes they were on the road back to FBI headquarters.

The air in the car was tense, which wasn't much of a surprise given what they had just been through. Weller, for one, knew that he wouldn't be able to relax until they had Musgrave safely inside of the FBI building. Almost being blown up? Well, it didn't happen every day, but it was part of the job. It wasn't as thought it had never happened before. It had been a shock, and yes, strangely, it had scared the hell out of him at the time, which he hadn't understood at first. As crazy as he knew it sounded, almost being blown up, while not any fun, had long since stopped being as big a deal as it would have been to the average person. It was simply one of the risks of his job. It happened.

Still, this time had been different. He realized with a start that it had been so much more stressful because his first instinct had been to worry about Jane. She was the variable that had never been there before.

Of course I worried about her! It's my job to protect her, his mind protested defensively.

Right… sure, that's why you felt so panicked about whether she was okay, the other voice in his head replied immediately. Because of your job.

He chose to ignore the sarcastic tone that the voice inside his head used, also ignoring the fact that deep down, he knew that it wasn't just because of his professional responsibility that he'd been terrified that something had happened to her. Of course, there was no way he'd ever have admitted that to anyone.

Glancing to his right, Weller saw Jane staring out the window beside her, lost in thought somewhere a million miles away, more than likely struggling to process what had just happened. It was perfectly logical, he decided, to attribute the stormy look in her eyes to the fact that they'd just nearly been blown up. Whether or not she had actually experienced something similar, to her it was the first time. He tried to put himself in her shoes, and imagined how overwhelmed she must feel – not only at that moment, of course, but then even more so than usual.

Jane was far tougher than the average person, but even so, Weller was concerned about how this was going to affect her. Not only did she not have the experience and training of a federal agent, she didn't have the life experience of even an average adult. She had functional memory of how to walk and talk and exist in society, but not of how to deal with any of the situations that were thrown at her. She had no context for how to process any of it. All she had was a few days' worth of memories with which to compare the day's experiences. All things considered, Weller didn't find it strange for her to be lost in her own thoughts. He was actually surprised that she was doing as well as she was with it all.

And yet, whatever training she'd had in the part of her life she didn't remember, combined with her natural determination, everything he'd seen of her so far made him think that she'd get through it okay. Whether it was learned or instinctive, Jane seemed to possess a strength as fierce as a warrior. It was obvious that she wasn't unbreakable, of course, and that side of her brought out a protectiveness in Weller that he couldn't remember feeling in himself since he had been ten years old. Not since…

Don't go there, Weller, he told himself. You have too much work to do to go down that road. Not now.

And because he'd forced that little girl out of his head so many times over the years, out of sheer necessity, in order to function in his job and in his life, he was able to push his thoughts back to the task at hand. He had no allusions about his baggage, however. He knew that he would revisit that thought later.

Where Jane would likely need a lot of time to process their near death experience, Weller, on the other hand, would be physically sore for a day or two from being knocked to the ground by the explosion, but considered himself to be otherwise relatively mentally unphased by it, all things considered. He already felt himself getting his footing back, felt what was basically the default setting in his brain – "work mode" – re-engaging as he thought of the steps that came next. Assess the damage. Gather information. Make a plan.

Jane's thoughts were so loud in her head, she was surprised that Weller couldn't hear them. While he was right about her having trouble processing what had happened, of course he couldn't have known that it wasn't for exactly the reasons he thought. Sure, she was slightly traumatized by the fact that she'd just almost been blown up. It was hard not to be. After all, if not for Weller's insistence that she get inside, despite her protests, she would simply no longer exist. That fact alone was pretty significant, and not easy to wrap her brain around. Between that and the physical trauma – she felt like she hurt pretty much everywhere… not, of course, that she would let that stop her from doing what she had to do, stubborn as she was – she had a lot to think about.

But all that took up only a fraction of her attention at that moment. Instead, her mind pulled obsessively at every tiny thread, every detail, every aspect, of her memory of the bearded man, the man she had seen only a short distance away from her – there in real life! – the same man from her memories of the shooting range in the woods. He would have the answers to her questions – at least some of them. Of course, he also raised more questions. Who was he? How did hefit into all of this? And why was he following her?

She'd tried to tell Weller about him, in that second when he was standing right there, to tell him that he was the same one from her memories, but of course that had been the same moment when he'd been pulling her back inside to safety. Weller hadn't been able to listen at the time, since he was too busy saving their lives. She was glad that he hadn't listened, knowing what she knew now. But for some reason, now that they were safely sitting beside each other in the car with no distractions except their thoughts, for some reason she couldn't bring herself to tell him. She couldn't explain why. He had proven to be nothing but sympathetic and trustworthy so far – more than sympathetic, actually, to the point where if she hadn't know better, she'd have thought that they had some special connection… which, obviously, was impossible… And yet even so, it was there.

So then, she wondered, why will the words suddenly not come out?

Jane turned to look at Weller in the seat beside her, studying him as he stared forward at the road, and tried to identify what was stopping her from telling him about the man she'd seen. It didn't make sense.

He happened to glance over at her then, seeing her movement in his peripheral vision, and he couldn't help but think that she looked… haunted. Almost desperate. His eyes swung quickly back to the road, as safety dictated.

"Jane?" he asked, making her name a question without adding any other words, glancing back at her again quickly with concern.

She shook her head without hesitation, understanding what he was asking. "I'm fine," she whispered, attempting to make her face look as neutral as possible, though rather unsuccessfully.

Although he couldn't tell what the problem was, it was clear that she was not "fine." Instinctively he knew that there was something more going on in her head than just thinking about the explosion – not that that wouldn't have been enough to upset most people – but he let it go for the time being. He wanted to believe that she'd talk to him about whatever it was when she was ready. Besides, they had a passenger with them, so it wasn't a great time to talk about whatever was bothering her.

For the rest of the drive back to FBI headquarters he glanced at her frequently, but found that each time, she was simply staring out the window, her face unreadable. Her mind was obviously somewhere far away.

She had seen the questioning look in his eyes. The fact that he hadn't vocalized an actual question didn't matter, because it was obvious to her that he knew something was wrong. But as much as she wanted to tell him what she had seen, the words remained stuck in her throat. When he didn't press her to talk, she was surprised but relieved at the same time.

Then again, she told herself, Musgrave was in the car with them, so it wasn't as though they could talk in confidence. Honestly, she'd forgotten that he was in the seat behind them at all, and she was suddenly glad that she'd been unable to tell him about the bearded man. Despite not knowing FBI protocol, she knew it would be a bad idea to talk about such a sensitive issue in front of someone with absolutely no need to know that information. If Weller asked later, she could pretend that that was the reason for her hesitation to talk – assuming that she decided to tell him the truth later, of course. Consequently, they rode the rest of the way in silence as she tried to reconcile the thoughts that continued to assault her brain.

Back inside the FBI building, she was unsure what to do next, never having been in this particular situation. Almost as if on cue, Weller said something to Musgrave, who nodded, then he stepped a few paces away, indicating that she should follow him.

"I'm taking him to Interrogation room 1," he told her.

Nodding slightly, she thought back to the good deal of time she'd spent in that very room not too long ago at all. She remembered the sign outside the door from each time she'd been escorted in and out of the room.

"There's an adjoining room where you can watch everything on the monitors. See if you pick up on anything." He looked down at her with concern that she could feel just as strongly as she could see it in his eyes.

"I'll be right there, I just need… a minute," she mumbled, not even sure what she was saying.

He looked at her intensely, trying to measure whether there was anything in particular that she needed to hear at that moment, anything he could reassure her about, but her face was reflected too many emotions to isolate just one. So instead, giving her the slightest hint of a smile, he nodded and turned back to Musgrave.

I need to tell him, she continued to think to herself as he walked away. At the same time, she wasn't sure if she could… or if she should. What would he think of her? She was a little bit horrified by herself and what she had seen herself do in her black and white flashback just then, and she wasn't sure she wanted to put it all into words, to make it any more real than it already was.

And then, just like that, he nodded at her once again and then turned to escort Musgrave to the interrogation room for questioning. She took a detour, needing a few minutes away from everyone else, just as she'd told Weller. That much, at least, was the truth.