So…. seven months ago I started a "short fic" that would "give me something to do during the winter hiatus." Go ahead and laugh. :) So, 50k words and 25 chapters later… we've finally reached the end of this. THANK YOU, from the bottom of my heart, to all of you who have read all this way or taken the time to tell me you were enjoying it. I wouldn't have stuck with it for this long if it wasn't for you!

There will probably be an epilogue at some point… I like thinking about the Wellers being happily married. It makes the inevitable Season 3 angst a little easier to take!

Shepherd was dead, but the paperwork from her case would live forever, Kurt was sure.

It had been nearly three weeks since they'd raided the farm and the silo and taken the remaining Sandstorm troops into custody. None of them had been willing to provide any information, but the FBI had seized several computers in the raid, and Patterson was steadily working through the data on them.

He read the latest report—this one detailing financial records that the team had been able to trace back to various Sandstorm holdings—and initialed his approval at the bottom.

Pellington had opted to keep the tattoo database open for the foreseeable future. His reasoning was that the corruption that had been uncovered thus far as a result of the tattoos was real and following up on similar leads was in the best interests of the American public. Kurt was sure that part of his decision was a desire to thumb his nose at the NSA who had, as expected, buried all information that might connect them to Sandstorm or Shepherd.

In the bullpen outside his office, Tasha said something that made Jane laugh. The sound didn't carry through the glass, but the brilliance of Jane's smile drew Kurt's attention like a beacon. Beside her, even the normally taciturn Roman cracked a small grin. He and Kurt hadn't exactly become best buddies in the weeks since Shepherd's death, but Roman's attitude had warmed from completely impassive to grudgingly tolerant. Basically, as long as Jane was happy, Roman was happy.

Kurt could definitely relate to that.

"She looks happy."

Kurt nodded before realizing that Patterson was standing in front of his desk, looking out at Jane through the glass wall too.

"Um, yeah." Kurt turned back to the paperwork on his desk, trying to pretend he hadn't just been caught mooning over his wife. "What's up?"

"So do you," Patterson observed with a teasing smile.

He had to work to subdue the smile that threatened to break through. Because the thing was, he was happy. Happier than he could ever remember being. But he answered neutrally, "I think we're all sleeping better at night now that Sandstorm isn't out there preparing to launch Phase Two."

He and Jane hadn't said anything to the team about the nature of their relationship. Neither of them were comfortable with public displays of affection, and they'd already been coming into work and leaving together, so it wasn't like there was any obvious change for anyone to notice.

Patterson raised her eyebrows but didn't push.

Then again, maybe they weren't doing as good a job of hiding their feelings as they thought.

"What do you have?" He nodded at the folder tucked under her arm.

"Oh! Yes, right." She pulled the folder up and then stopped, trepidation flickering in her blue eyes.

Kurt held out his hand, but she didn't let go of the file.

"These are unofficial copies, but they check out. I've requested certified duplicates. They'll be here by courier tomorrow morning."

Kurt blinked at the barrage of words and Patterson's obvious reluctance to hand the folder over. "Patterson, what's in the file?"

She swallowed. "I found Jane and Roman's adoption papers."

For a moment, Kurt didn't understand. And then, once he did, only one thought came through: I thought we had more time.

He tugged the file out of Patterson's hands and opened it, only half-listening to her rambling explanation about South African paper records and file backlogs and overseas Army postings.

The file contained only two pages. The first was a photocopy of a faded, typed document, attesting that Alice Kruger had been adopted by Ellen Briggs on November 8, 1992.

She'd been ten years old. The same age as Sawyer was now. And at that point, she'd already been trained as a soldier. And Shepherd would continue to mold her into a weapon.

Kurt turned to the next page. A nearly identical document stated that Ian Kruger had been adopted by Ellen Briggs on the same date.

"…We still haven't found any paperwork for her name change to Remi, but if that happened here in the United States, they probably destroyed those documents when they erased Jane's military records." Patterson finally ran out of words and ground to a halt.

He closed the file and set it carefully on his desk. Pellington had agreed that both Jane and Roman could remain in the US on their FBI-validated informant visas until their paperwork was found. Both had accepted his offer to remain at the FBI assisting with the tattoos and remaining Sandstorm investigation in the interim. When the official copies arrived here in the morning, they would be free to leave FBI custody, with valid paperwork that would allow them to live and work anywhere in the United States.

He couldn't stop himself from looking out the window into the bullpen, where Jane was now pointing at something on her computer screen as she spoke to Tasha and Roman.

Jane said she loved him, and he believed that she did. But he was also uncomfortably aware that she'd said so when she had no other choices available to her.

From the moment she'd crawled out of that bag in Times Square, she hadn't had any say in what happened to her. Yes, she'd chosen to marry him, but only because the alternative was possibly being sent back to the CIA.

What if falling in love with him had simply been her way of making the best of a bad situation?

And then there was the envelope full of money that he'd found in the bottom of Jane's dresser drawer when he'd been putting her laundry away, not long after she'd moved her things into his bedroom. He hadn't asked her about it. He knew what it was for. If she wanted to leave, all she'd have to do was to throw her meager possessions in a bag and grab the envelope, and she could disappear without a trace. He'd hoped that she would feel safe enough with him that eventually the envelope would go away, but it was still there the last time he'd looked.

"I won't say anything to Jane or Roman. You can… take your time." Patterson eyed him worriedly.

Kurt pulled himself together. "No, I'll give them to Jane tonight."

He'd given her his word when he'd made her his offer of marriage. His offer of temporary marriage. It's three years at the most, he'd told her. Maybe a lot less.

Maybe less than two months.

He'd told her that it would just be until they found her paperwork, which they had. She'd helped stop Shepherd, she'd done everything that the FBI and the NSA had asked of her. She had more than earned her freedom, both from the FBI… and from him, if that was what she wanted.

She had the right to choose.

"It doesn't have to… change anything," Patterson said, a reassuring expression on her face.

Kurt wanted to believe that it wouldn't. But there was another part of him that expected the rug to be pulled out from under him. Experience had taught him that was how things usually went. He'd thought he'd regained faith in his father, only to find out he'd killed Taylor. He thought he'd found Taylor, alive and well, and then he'd dug up her tiny bones. Whenever he'd been happiest, something happened to show him it had only been an illusion.

But god, this time he had wanted it to be real.

# # #

Jane eyed Kurt out of the corner of her eye as they rode the elevator up to their apartment. Something was bothering him. He'd been quiet the whole way home, answering her attempts to talk about dinner with distracted grunts until she'd given up.

She'd let him stew about whatever it was until they were done eating dinner, she decided. And if he still wasn't willing to talk about it, she was going to drag him off to bed early. If she couldn't help him work through it, at least she could distract him from whatever it was.

"So," she said brightly, as she preceded him through the door. "You're okay with pickled pig's feet for dinner?"

He didn't even crack a smile as he dropped his briefcase on a stool. "Yeah, sure."

She stopped then, putting her hands on her hips and rotating to face him.

But he wasn't looking at her. He'd pulled a folder out of his briefcase and was staring down at it.

A shiver of worry skittered down her spine. The last time she'd seen him looking this grim, she and Roman had been heading off to find Shepherd.

"What's that?" she asked.

He looked at the file and drew a deep breath. He held the folder out to her. "Patterson found your adoption records."

She blinked, staring blankly at the file. Whatever she'd expected him to say, it definitely wasn't that.

She reached out slowly to take it from him and flipped the cover open. There were only two pages inside, and it took her no more than a few seconds to skim the contents and verify that they were what he said.

"You're free, Jane. You can go anywhere you want."

She looked up at him then as his words sank in, leaving her off-balance.

"I'm sure Roman will be glad," she said carefully. She didn't want to go anywhere but right here. And he knew that.

Didn't he?

"You don't have to stay here," he said.

She sucked in a breath, feeling as though he'd kicked her in the gut.

He… didn't want her to stay?

She tried to read his face, but for the first time in a long time, she couldn't read his expression at all. He seemed distant. Unemotional.

As though he was pushing her away.

Which made no sense. She stared at him, trying to make some sense of his words.

Kurt loved her. She knew that, with every fiber of her being.

Regardless of how their marriage had started, he wouldn't just throw it away. He wouldn't push her away. He couldn't, any more than she could push him away.

The fingers on her left hand curled reflexively around the gold band he'd placed on her ring finger. And then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Kurt's left hand curl into a fist, protecting his ring the same way.

Clarity struck in a rush, and she suddenly understood.

The idiot thought he was being noble.

She sucked in a deep breath, torn between the need to hug him and the urge to smack him for having so little faith in her. In them.

Very slowly, she walked toward him, watching as his chin lifted up, as though preparing himself for a blow.

Idiot.

She stopped right in front of him. "Then I'll go pack my things."

If she hadn't been so close, she would have missed the muscle that twitched in his jaw. The rest of him stayed completely, unnaturally still, as he held himself in place with a control that would have been impressive had she not been so aggravated. He blinked, and for one brief second, she caught sight of the utter bleakness there, before blankness descended like a curtain and his gaze traveled to some distant point beyond her shoulder.

She reached out and wrapped her hand around his fist, her thumb stroking gently across the gold band that matched her own. "I'll go… just as soon as you look me in the eye and tell me that you don't love me and that you want me to go."

He closed his eyes for a second. "I can't tell you that," he said, in a voice lost somewhere between a growl and a whisper.

"Okay then." She was close enough that she could feel the warmth from his body. Close enough that he could kiss her if he were to bend his neck slightly. But the only contact between them was her hand on his. And he didn't move.

"You've never had a choice. Not since you came to the FBI. You should choose, Jane." He swallowed. "Choose what's best for you, not for me, not for anyone else."

She would have sighed from pure exasperation, had he clearly not been so agonized. He couldn't really think that she would stay with him just because she didn't want to hurt his feelings?

"Fine," she said to his jaw, since he still refused to look at her. She leaned in the rest of the way to rest her cheek against his shoulder, where it damn well belonged. "I choose you. I will always choose you."

He moved then, his hands coming up with a jerk to rest upon her shoulders. He didn't push her away, but he leaned back, away from her, so he could tilt his head to look into her eyes. "Are you sure? You could go anywh—"

She raised up on her toes and put her mouth on his to shut him up before he said anything else stupid. His lips stilled, but he didn't quite kiss her back. "This is where I want to be," she said, pulling her mouth only far enough away from his to get the words out, her lips brushing against his as she spoke.

And then she felt him shudder, as though his resolve had physically given way, sending an aftershock through his whole body, and his arms moved to grip her firmly. "You have to be sure." His voice was gravelly and broken. "Because I won't be able to let you go if you change your mind."

She brought her free hand up to cup his face, rubbing the pad of her thumb along the line of tension in his jaw. "I'm not going to change my mind. Not ever."

And then his arms tightened as he pulled her flush against him, burying his face in her neck. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and hugged him as hard as she could. This was home, here in his arms, and it always would be.

She didn't know how long they stayed that way, but it was a good while before his arms loosened up enough for him to raise his head and look at her.

He opened his mouth, and she could tell from the look on his face that he was going to ask her if she was sure again. She shot him a quelling look that told him, in no uncertain terms, not to bother asking her again. The lines in his face smoothed, and his lips quirked up.

Her own lips curled into a smile then, only to open in a small yelp as Kurt scooped her up.

She would have demanded that he put her down—or twisted to break free from his hold—but he was heading toward the bedroom, and that was where she wanted to go, too, so she did neither.

But when they got to their bedroom, he sat her gently on the edge of the bed and stepped back. "Close your eyes."

She frowned at him. "Why?"

"Close your eyes," he repeated. And something in his voice told her to obey.

She heard him open a drawer and then close it again. And then he took her hand in his and set something small and lightweight in her palm.

"Open your eyes," he said quietly.

A small velvet box sat in the palm of her hand. The lid was raised, revealing a delicate gold ring set with a rectangular emerald. The stone was the same dark green as the necklace she wore tucked against her heart, hidden beneath the fabric of her shirt. It was more polished than the raw emerald, but just as luminous.

"We've done this all backwards." Kurt was kneeling by her feet, both hands cupped around her hand holding the ring. "I asked you to marry me before I told you I loved you. So now…" He swallowed and looked up at her. "Jane Weller, will you please stay married to me? For the rest of our lives?"

She tried to smile, but her lips were trembling too hard. It took her two tries to push the single word past the lump in her throat.

"Yes."

Her hand was shaking, but she held it out, palm down and fingers splayed, as he pulled the ring from the box. He slipped it carefully over the tip of her finger, and slid it into place beside her wedding band.

And then everything got kind of blurry, and she had to blink away the tears in her eyes.

He squeezed her fingers, and she realized that he had tears in his eyes, too.

She reached up with the hand he wasn't gripping and wrapped her hand around the back of his neck, bringing her forehead to rest against his. "I love you. So much."

"I love you, too, Mrs. Weller." And then he stood up, scooping her up in his arms and pulling her close. He tilted his face down to look deep into her eyes as he added solemnly, "For as long as we both shall live."

THE END