Author's Note: This fanfic will be a collection of one-chapter fics set in season three. None of them will be getting a second chapter, and each one stands alone from the others.

Strings Attached

Jane-centric, not really shippy even though Jeller is mentioned, and Jane/Clem is referred to. Tag to 3x11.

Jane stared down at Clem's hand. It rested on her thigh, warm and suggestive, and a tendril of desire unfurled in her abdomen. Why not? There's no ring on this finger anymore. And it would be so good to forget about all this, just for a little while.

She was too emotionally exhausted and indecisive to make herself move, either towards him, or away.

Kurt would be so–

She discarded the thought before it could blossom. Kurt had betrayed her.

But she'd been hiding something from him, too. Disgust rose to drown out her attraction to Clem - at Kurt, at herself…

At Clem, for trying this now, tonight, right after she'd unburdened herself.

He's never known me when I wasn't grieving. In Europe, it was for my old life, and Kurt, and Roman choosing Shepherd over me. Now, it's for Avery. Why am I confiding in him about this, and about Kurt? He's the worst person I could have come to.

She shifted, got to her feet, made her excuses. Clem asked her to stay, told her he'd keep his hands to himself, and anger dragged itself from its bed of numb exhaustion.

He's a good man - I know him well enough to know that much. But I just told him what I'm going through. He knows how much pain I'm in. This feels all wrong. And what secrets is he keeping from me?

She made herself keep things light, hugged Clem, told him she'd text him tomorrow. Maybe she was a little abrupt, because he reached out to her as she stepped past the threshold of his hotel room.

"Jane, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to push."

She looked back and saw sincerity there, but also longing. The same kind of heartbroken look Kurt had been giving her all week, but with none of the guilt.

This wasn't Europe, and she wasn't the Jane Clem had fallen for. That Jane had died the instant she'd seen Kurt's wedding ring, still on his finger after eighteen months apart.

"Yes, you did," she told Clem, attempting to soften the words with a smile. "Goodnight."

She didn't stick around to hear his reply, pushing through the door to the stairwell at a brisk walk. She made it down two flights of stairs before sinking into a crouch on the bottom step, hunching over herself and sobbing silently against her knees.

All she'd wanted was empathy from someone with no connection to her husband, but Clem's support came with strings attached, that much was plain. Now she felt more isolated than ever.

Avery was dead. Her marriage was dead. Her friendship with Clem was on life support, replaced by something far more complicated than she'd ever wanted - now that he'd tasted more, they couldn't go back.

If Roman had wanted her as alone and heartbroken, he'd succeeded.