Author's Note: Glad to hear from so many Rich Dotcom fans! I'm not sure if he'll be appearing later in the fic. Since he's wanted by the FBI, I don't think so. Anyway, have some cute family-oriented Weller. :)

Weller's plane touched down in Portland early the following afternoon. He spent the six-hour flight alternately looking forward to seeing Sarah and Sawyer, and wondering how he was going to explain to Sarah that he was planning to take off at short notice to try to rescue Jane—who was not their long-lost childhood friend—from her CIA torturers. Probably on his own, because there was no way he was waiting for Zapata and Reade to fly out here as backup if he could help it.

The arrivals area was milling with newly landed passengers and expectant family and friends there to greet them. Kurt cast his eyes over the crowd, searching for Sarah's blonde head, and instead caught sight of a familiar curly-haired child. Sawyer was holding a clumsily decorated sign meant to catch the attention of 'Uncle Kurt', and as Sarah caught sight of her brother and pointed him out to the boy on her shoulders, the sign began to wave enthusiastically.

Breaking into what felt like his first genuine smile in months, Kurt wove through the crowd to get to his family. "There you are!"

"Uncle Kurt, I missed you!"

Weller swept the kid up in his arms and hugged him. "Missed you too, bud. Did you grow again? Soon you'll be taller than your mom."

Sarah accepted his one-armed hug as he juggled Sawyer and his carry-on luggage. "Hey… How was your flight?"

"Someone kept kicking the back of my seat. The food sucked. You know; the usual."

He set Sawyer down on his feet, and the three of them began to head for the exit. Surreptitiously, Kurt checked his cell phone to make sure no communication from the office had come in while he was in the air.

"Hey, Mister Deputy Director. Take a break for just a few hours, okay?" Sarah admonished.

"Yes, ma'am." He stuck his cell back in his pocket with a wink at Sawyer.

"You got in trouble," Sawyer whispered, giggling, and Kurt grinned back at him.

In less than an hour, they were back at Sarah's apartment, which was surprisingly neat and tidy. Kurt suspected she'd cleaned up in preparation for his visit; when it came to domestic chores like housework and cooking, she was usually hopeless.

Sarah sent Sawyer off to do his homework, so that he could hang out with his uncle for the rest of the weekend without worrying about it. After a token protest, sensing that the grown-ups wanted to have a 'boring' conversation, he agreed. Sarah and Kurt settled on the couch with cups of coffee, gazing at each other in silence for a moment.

Sarah looked somehow older. It had only been a couple of months since their father's demise, but his deathbed confession and Kurt's discovery of Taylor's body had dimmed some of her natural enthusiasm for life. Kurt suspected she was assessing him and finding a change there, too.

"So, how've you been since…?" Sarah trailed off. Neither of them wanted to go into detail about the circumstances.

Kurt sipped his coffee before shrugging. "To be honest, it's not that much different to know for sure that he did it. At least now we know where she is. I know you were always on his side, but me? I just knew he was responsible."

"Even though you reconciled for a while?" Sarah didn't mention Jane, but she didn't need to.

"I was right about him my whole life. If not for Jane's DNA test, I would have let him go to the grave without speaking to him again. My only regret is that I made him feel forgiven before he died."

Sarah frowned. "I wish it were that simple for me. I defended him for so long—to you, to Emma, to everyone else in Clearfield—and he just let me do it. He knew he was guilty, and he let me believe he was innocent, and had the nerve to thank me for staying on his side. When I talked to you after the funeral, I think I was still in denial, but ever since then I can't get it out of my head. How could he have let a seven-year-old kid be his chief defender? Mom never stood up for him to you or Emma. I guess she knew the truth all along too, and then she took off and left her kids to be raised by a murderer. But I'm over what Mom did. It happened so long ago."

"It's okay to feel angry. At Dad, I mean."

Sarah gave a small nod. "I am. I am so mad at him, and I never got to tell him. And I never will. And the worst part is, I have to pretend to miss him when Sawyer talks about him, so he will never know what an awful grandfather he had. I let a child murderer help to raise my baby, Kurt."

Weller grieved for his sister's lost innocence. "We both let him be around Sawyer at the end. If I could change my part in that, I would."

"I think the worst part is, we'll never know why he did it. Why would he kill Taylor? Was it an accident? Did he hit her with his car? Did she see something she wasn't supposed to and he killed her to stop her from talking? Or was it something…worse?"

Kurt put an arm around her, and they sat quietly, hurting together.

"Have you spoken to Jane at all?" Sarah asked. "The last you told me, she didn't know that she wasn't Taylor but the CIA had just taken her into custody anyway?"

He took a deep breath. "What I'm about to tell you, Sarah, can not leave this room. Okay?"

His sister nodded, wide-eyed.

"The CIA isn't just detaining Jane. The tattoos on her body led us—the FBI, I mean—to some pretty high-level corruption in pretty much all areas of federal and military administration. The CIA is pretty interested in how that information ended up tattooed on her. How whoever did it had access to so much intel."

"Oh, my god. But she doesn't know, right? She's lost her memory. So…they haven't let her go?"

"They've moved her to a black site, somewhere that officially doesn't exist. And they're torturing her to see if they can get more from her."

Sarah's hand flew to her mouth, stifling her gasp. Her horrified, outraged expression evaporated Kurt's remaining professional detachment from the situation—what little he still had—and nausea churned in his gut. He set down his half-full coffee cup, knowing he wouldn't be able to stomach the rest.

"So all this time? More than two months?"

He nodded.

"And you've taken this right on your shoulders, haven't you?" Sarah shook her head. "Kurt, this is not your fault. I thought you'd feel lighter after we found out what happened to Taylor. I thought you could put down that…that sack of guilt you've been hefting around for twenty-five years, and be happy. Maybe even with Jane, though I know she's not who we thought she was. But now you have a new missing friend to obsess over, right?"

"I should have protected her. Regardless of how I felt about her not being Taylor."

"Oh, shut up. You're hopeless. You don't know how to live without guilt. You need therapy, like real therapy, not the kind where you go and you don't talk about your problems."

"Hey, why not tell me how you really feel?" he said wryly.

"I'm your sister. I get to nag at you when you're not taking proper care of yourself."

"You always have," Kurt said affectionately, and they exchanged small smiles.

Sarah drained her coffee cup and set it down. "Are you trying to find Jane? Is that why you decided to come here out of the blue?"

"It's not that I'm not happy to be here with you both," Kurt began sheepishly, but she interrupted him.

"Yeah, yeah. I know. But your job doesn't let you just drop everything these days. You said you'd need at least a month in advance to plan when to visit."

"The FBI needs Jane back. We think she might know where Mayfair is, so…"

Sarah rolled her eyes. "Bullshit. You need her back. I have never seen you so doe-eyed over a woman; no pun intended. And the way she looked at you, I was surprised you didn't kick us out and move her in within two weeks of meeting her."

Kurt shook his head. "Yeah, well, that was before I found out she was withholding important information from me. And pretending to remember our childhood when she wasn't even there." He stood up and took her empty coffee mug from her, then picked up his own.

"Are you running away from this conversation?"

Sarah followed him into the kitchen, where he rinsed the mugs in the sink, avoiding her eyes.

"I don't know what Jane wasn't telling you, but I don't blame her for pretending she remembered us. Remember the first time she came over for dinner, and she panicked and ran out? All those expectations... She thought she was Taylor because you told her so. She must have figured the memories would come eventually and taken a stab in the dark when you were talking about when you were a kid, because she knew how much that would mean to you."

Weller leaned back against the counter, shaking his head. "If not for her, I wouldn't have forgiven Dad."

"What came first?" Sarah asked. "Her faking a memory or you forgiving Dad? Because I remember when she first came over, she was very apologetic about not remembering any of us from back then."

Weller opened his mouth to say that of course Jane had faked a memory first, but then shut it again, recalling the day she'd pretended to remember going fishing with them. His father had already been bedbound by the time he'd introduced him to Jane, weeks after their reconciliation. It had only taken the false DNA result to get Kurt to cave in. That had been his own choice, without any deception from Jane.

"Kurt…" Sarah pulled him into a hug, sighing against his shoulder. "I don't want you to blame Jane, but I don't want you to blame yourself either. You made the decision to forgive Dad based on all the information you had at the time, and what you thought was right."

The gesture of comfort brought tears to his eyes, and he swallowed hard. "Yeah. I know. Thanks."

Sarah stepped back, her own eyes misty. "Things are gonna be better for this family from now on. I know it."

"Mom?"

At Sawyer's voice, they both straightened up, hiding their emotions for the child's sake.

"Is Uncle Kurt making dinner, or are you?" Sawyer asked.

Kurt laughed. "Your mom still can't cook a chicken properly, huh?"

"Mom's chicken is okay," Sawyer said loyally. "But yours is extra good, and I haven't had it in ages."

"Fine. Uncle Kurt can make dinner," Sarah said, as though that hadn't been Kurt's plan all along. "Maybe he can show me what he does to make the chicken extra good."

"Sure, I'll show you. Again," Kurt added, snickering.

Ignoring him, Sarah asked her son, "Can you go get your homework to show me?"

As Sawyer ran back into the bedroom, she turned back to Kurt. "So you think Jane is in Portland?"

"Somewhere in Oregon. I should have a specific location within the next few days. Since you guys are here, I thought I'd come out a little early and wait close by."

Sarah nodded. "Well, in the meantime, we'll do our best to take your mind off things."

"Just not with your cooking, okay, Martha Stewart?" Weller teased.

"Shut up!"