Author's Note: Okay, by the end of this chapter Jane will have revealed all her betrayals to Kurt! I'm excited to have all this recap stuff done. Jane still has to tell him about the day she killed Oscar, but some plot stuff will be happening before that.
"So, the GPS chip." Weller tried to steer the conversation back on course, wishing she hadn't reached out and touched him. It made it that much harder to stay objective.
Jane took a moment to readjust to the conversation's new course before she began. "Oscar gave it to me the night before the burning rose tattoo case. He said he wanted to keep tabs on me. I figured it was more likely to be that he wanted to keep tabs on the team, but I didn't have a choice if I wanted to keep you safe. I switched the chips just before…you got hurt anyway."
Weller touched the scar on the side of his neck as he recalled the explosion that had almost killed him. "The assassin who was after you. What happened there? I'm guessing there was more to it than we knew at the time."
Jane nodded. "I ditched my comms and went after him alone because I recognised him. He was one of the group. I remembered drinking with him and Oscar and Markos, so I set up a meeting with Oscar right away. I knew he was after me, so the team would be safe if I left. And you were supposed to stay at the hospital."
Noticing her flinching as she shifted on the bed, Weller reached out for the over-the-counter painkillers on the nightstand. "Speaking of hospitals…"
Jane swallowed three of them without water, her lips twisting involuntarily at the bitter taste of the medication. Weller got up and grabbed her a glass of water from the bathroom faucet.
"Thanks," she said, seeming a little surprised that he'd bothered to help. She drank half the glass, then set it aside. "And speaking of hospitals—not tonight. Last night I slept on the floor in an abandoned building. Tonight is the first night in three months I get a mattress and pillows, so I want to enjoy it, not spend half of it in a waiting room with a bunch of strangers."
God, Jane, I'm sorry. The words wouldn't make it past his lips. He'd already apologised for his part in her ordeal. If he kept saying it, he was going to sound like a broken record.
Recognising her stubborn expression—it was very similar to the one he got at times—Weller dragged his chair a little closer to the bed and sat down. "Tomorrow, then."
"I might feel better by then."
"Sure. And I might start dating Rich Dotcom."
For the first time since he'd found her, she looked amused. He took the moment of victory—just happy to see her halfway to smiling—and let the subject drop.
"So you went to Oscar when you recognised the assassin."
Jane's eyes sharpened as she got back on topic. As she related how she'd spent those hours he'd been terrified for her safety, he reminded himself how competent she was in the field, how resourceful under pressure.
"So Cade wanted to kill you as revenge on Oscar, because Oscar killed Markos?" he summed up, writing down what he knew.
"I didn't know it was Oscar who'd killed Markos until the night you arrested me. Before that, he just said it was someone Cade cared about. But yeah, that about sums it up."
Weller moved on. "So next was you deleting Donna Hollaran's file from the FBI server?"
Jane folded her arms across her chest defensively. "I didn't know that was what the USB stick would do. Oscar said it would be copying some files."
"So you thought you were just stealing confidential information, not deleting it."
"They were going to kill you if I didn't, Weller." Jane's voice was sharp with hurt and anger. "Stop making out like this was all my ide—"
Weller didn't have to say a word. She'd already proved his point.
"You know I didn't know. And no, that wasn't what happened next. Before the USB stick, Oscar asked me to break you and Allie up."
Flashing back to the way Allie had put an end to their relationship after all of Rich's little digs about how Kurt and Jane were meant to be together, Weller exploded. "That was completely out of line, Jane."
She blinked. "What? No! I told him no. He wanted me to get closer to you, to be the one person you confided in. I assume to become that person, I was supposed to sleep with you. But I told him no, because your relationship with Allie was none of my business and I didn't want to manipulate you." She gave him a withering look. "But clearly you're determined to think the worst of me."
Kurt took a moment to process everything whirling around in his mind. Irrationally, his foremost thought was that Jane had refused to carry out a mission to sleep with him. That's good, his logical self pointed out. She didn't want to manipulate you.
And she didn't want to sleep with you, his impulsive side argued.
He sighed, trying to pull his thoughts into order. "I'm sorry I jumped to that conclusion. You have to admit, though, it's not the worst thing you've done."
Jane said nothing, staring off into space.
"Wait. Your ex-fiancé was asking you to sleep with me?" Either Oscar was able to put the mission before everything else, or that had caused him some serious pain. "He must have been relieved when you told him you wouldn't."
Warily, she looked over at him again. "Get to the point, Weller."
He backed off. It was cowardly, but he didn't want to hear a confirmation that she'd been sleeping with her ex. Someone who would know how to touch her in all the right ways—physically and emotionally. He would never measure up to whatever experience she'd had with Oscar.
But now you'll never have to, because your relationship will never recover from this.
He changed the subject, deliberately picked what he knew would be a sore spot for Jane. "So you faked a memory of being Taylor to get closer to me instead."
Jane deflated, seeming to become smaller and more fragile at his words. "I shouldn't have, and I'm sorry."
"You said you didn't want to manipulate me, but then you did exactly that. How'd you do it?" He hid his pain behind anger, not caring that this tied directly back to the night he'd arrested her and betrayed her trust.
"Oscar gave me photographs from your childhood. I don't know where he got them. In one of them, you were fishing with Taylor and your dad on a bridge." She raised her exhausted eyes to his. "I'd made up my mind that I wasn't going to fake it, but then your dad asked me if I remembered him and I didn't feel like I could say I didn't. Then you asked me if I really had, and…"
"All you had to do was say no. That you didn't remember."
"But I wanted to remember. I wanted those memories for real. Yes, I lied. But I didn't do it to manipulate you, Weller. I did it because I wanted to be closer to you. Because I wanted that connection between us."
Something in her words resonated painfully with the way he felt about her. He'd kept the tooth isotope results from her because he'd needed her to be Taylor, in the same way that she'd lied because she'd also felt that need. He wanted to blame her. Part of him did. But part of him understood, which kept him from berating her further.
Kicking her while she was down wouldn't achieve anything.
The worst of what she'd done was out in the open. For better or for worse, at least she was unburdened now. Jane wondered if Weller would ever look at her without condemnation again. Somehow, she doubted it.
His voice was rough when he asked, "What about the cash with Mayfair's fingerprints on it?"
She took the respite he offered, small as it was. Anything to avoid talking about the memory she'd faked any more. "I had nothing to do with that. Well, after my memory was wiped, anyway."
She told him about the way she'd remembered recruiting a suicidal Sofia Varma to help their cause, and how Sofia had taken money from Mayfair and given it to Donna. At least I had no part in planting that evidence, she thought, as she watched Weller write down the details on the notepad.
He glanced over with a frown, his question seeming mostly rhetorical. "What did Mayfair do to you? Why did you go after her specifically?"
Here, at least, her months of overthinking everything at the black site could be of some use. She'd come up with a theory. "I think Orion was linked to Daylight somehow. I have nothing to back that up, but it would make sense, right?"
Kurt had that absorbed expression she loved now—the one where he was sifting through the details of a case, making connections and coming up with theories. "It would explain why Mayfair had files on Orion as well as Daylight."
"I believe she was a good person. No matter what she did." Jane swallowed to try to get rid of the lump in her throat, but her voice still cracked when she continued speaking. "I had no idea that anything I was doing was specifically directed at her. When I heard Weitz laying out the evidence that I'd helped to fabricate, I couldn't believe how stupid I'd been."
Weller caught her gaze with his. His face was unreadable, as though he was purposely keeping all his emotions at bay. "This was very carefully planned, Jane. You weren't meant to see the bigger picture. They knew that if you saw what was coming, there was a very real chance you'd turn on them and tell us everything. So they kept you in the dark."
"I told Oscar right after we met that I wouldn't betray my team. He must have been laughing at me the whole time." A wave of exhaustion hit Jane, and she slumped back against the pillows. "I need to rest now, Weller. I'm sorry. Oscar did give me some more information I think we can use, but—"
He nodded, putting down the pad and pen. "We'll talk about it more tomorrow. Get some sleep."
She slid under the covers slowly, taking care not to aggravate her injuries too badly. If she'd ever needed to crash so badly in her life before, she didn't remember it. Maybe I'm getting sick.
"The CIA…" she started, struggling to hold onto consciousness.
"I'll stay here tonight. Sleep on the floor if I have to." He looked a little uncomfortable, but determined. After what had happened the last time he'd left her alone while he got some sleep, it was understandable.
It struck her as ridiculous that he wanted to sleep on the floor, especially since there was no spare blanket. "You can have half of the bed."
"Go to sleep, Jane."
That was the last thing she registered for a while.
