Author's Note: Enter Roman. :D And a little bit of divergence from canon, just because a) I could and b) a certain someone deserves it. Obviously, a fair amount of dialogue is lifted from the actual episode (season two, episode one) but I also switched things up a bit.
Jane yanked out the tracker not too long into her drive, scowling at it before she wound down the car window and tossed it out. Virtually undetectable was a risk she wasn't going to take. She'd gone through too much to get killed because of something she could have prevented.
Sorry, Nas.
By the time she reached the house in Woodside, it was dark, and she was lightheaded and half-numb. She stumbled on the way up the path, her vision tunnelling.
"It's you. I can't believe it's actually you!"
Jane turned unsteadily and squinted through the bright spots dancing in front of her eyes, just making out a male figure with a hood. He pulled it down and stepped forward, revealing tousled blond hair and a scarred face that seemed as oddly familiar as his voice.
"I'm Roman. Do you remember me?"
Jane opened her mouth to reply, but swayed dizzily and had to redirect all her energy into remaining upright.
"Ah—no, no, no…" Roman realised she was injured and came forward to support her. "It's okay. I got you. Don't you dare die on me."
Jane hoped like hell that this man had her best interests at heart, because she was losing consciousness and there was nothing she could do about it.
"Jane's tracker just came back online!" Patterson barged into Kurt's office, where he and Nas had just been discussing the Sandstorm infiltration of the NSA, and the need for absolute secrecy with this mission.
"How?" Kurt demanded, adrenaline spiking through him. If they caught onto the fact that she was transmitting, Sandstorm would kill her without a second thought.
"I implanted a second tracker on her belt," Nas said calmly.
"You what?" Was this woman a complete rookie? No wonder three members of her team had been killed by a Sandstorm mole.
"It's programmed to start transmitting two hours after she left. Look, it's a backup plan, in case she felt compelled to dispose of the first one."
Kurt scowled at her matter-of-fact tone. "So what happens if they scan her?"
"They'd do it the second they encountered her. That's why there's a delay."
Because of course, everything would go according to Nas' plan. Kurt groaned and ushered Patterson back out of his office, shooting a damning statement back towards the NSA agent. "You're gonna get her killed."
"You need that tracker shut down, right?" Patterson said as they made a beeline for her lab.
"And I need it done yesterday."
Patterson shot him a worried look. "You think she's okay?"
"I know she won't be if we don't get this done."
Jane groggily fought her way back to consciousness, fighting the urge to throw up. She was in a dimly lit room, a plastic tube protruding from her arm and disappearing into…
"Don't worry, we're the same blood type. Trust me. We've done this before." Roman smiled and held up his arm, where the tube siphoned blood from his vein to feed it into hers.
"Where are we?" she asked.
"One of our outposts, where we keep a medical supply cache and a few other things. You're lucky one was so close by. You might not have made it otherwise."
Jane struggled to sit up on the cot she'd been placed on, looking around. "I need to talk to Shepherd."
Roman's eyebrows rose. "Taylor—"
"I know I'm not Taylor. Oscar told me."
He rolled his eyes. "He should never have been your handler. What else did he tell you? And where have you been all this time? We were scared you were dead."
Jane opened her mouth to give him her cover story just as a door opened and shut.
She and Roman both froze, listening.
A male voice snarled, "Get in there." After a scuffle, someone stumbled into view of the open door, bloody and beaten but still recognisably…
Cade.
Oh, shit. There goes my cover story.
A man she'd never seen before appeared behind Cade, and looked surprised to find the room occupied. "Sorry. We'll use the other room."
He yanked a disoriented Cade down the hallway by the collar. A door slammed, and there was a muffled grunt of agony.
"You found Cade," she said dumbly.
"Been looking for him ever since you told Hobbes he was alive. We've had him for a few days now." Roman half rose to his feet, then seemed to remember their in-progress transfusion and sat back down again. "Where were you?"
Jane feigned a bout of dizziness to buy herself some thinking time. How could she salvage this situation? Think. Think.
"I have been in a dark hole for three months. I want to talk to Shepherd, and I'm not saying another word until you take me to him."
Roman blinked at her, then grinned the same way as Oscar had when she'd tried to get him to talk more about Shepherd. Obviously, there was a joke she wasn't in on.
"It's good to see you again," Roman said, affection shining in his eyes. "Don't worry. Shepherd will be here soon."
Jane watched as he examined the gunshot wound in her side, searching her memory. Why was this man so familiar, so important to her? Had she been having an affair behind Oscar's back? But no—she didn't pick up on any sexual vibes with him, not the way she had with her ex-fiancé.
"That scar," she murmured, flashing back to her patchy memories of the other children in the basement. One of the boys had a scar just the same as Roman's… "How long have we known each other?"
He looked amused. "A very long time."
"I remembered a basement. And a boy calling me Alice. Was that you?"
Roman leaned forward, appearing fascinated. "Your memories are starting to come back, huh? Oscar said you remembered him a little. Now me, and your birth name. Anything else?"
"A coin?" she ventured, seeing it more clearly in her mind's eye now.
"You mean this one?" Roman reached into his pocket and pulled out a silver coin.
With a shaky hand, Jane took it from him and examined it. It was the exact coin she'd sketched in her notebook.
"Why is this important?" she asked, desperate to know. This man must have all the answers she was missing. If she could just get him to open up a little…
Before Roman could say anything else, the door in the distance opened again, then closed quietly. Measured footsteps approached as they both listened.
An African-American woman appeared in the doorway, slightly taller than average height, clearly in fighting shape. Her expression was closed off as she looked from Jane to Roman. "Did you sweep her?"
"Been a little busy saving her life," Roman said, lifting his intubated arm for emphasis. "It's not necessary. She's—"
Jane saw the suspicion in the woman's eyes and decided to play the only card she could: that she wasn't transmitting. That should earn her some trust. Scowling, she summoned her anger at the way Oscar had played her and injected it into her tone. "You think I'm wired? After all I just went through for you? You think I'm working for them? You know, if that's what it takes to meet Shepherd, sweep me."
Roman sighed and took an electronic gadget out of a box on the table. After fiddling with it for a moment, he began to sweep it through the air a couple of inches from Jane's body, seeking bugs or trackers. Jane held the woman's gaze, keeping her defiance strong. If she didn't get some intel she could use soon, she was going to have to beg for some rest and try again when she woke up.
Roman sat back down, putting away the equipment. "She's clean."
Almost immediately, the woman's unfriendly demeanour melted away, and she came to sit on the edge of the bed. "I'm sorry. We can't be too careful. It's so good to finally see you again."
The way she had been acting—like a superior, a commander—tipped Jane off. "You're…?"
"I'm Shepherd," the woman confirmed.
Well, that explains why Oscar and Roman both thought I was so hilarious. Shepherd's not a man. And apparently, I'm more sexist than I thought.
Before she could start firing off questions, Shepherd spoke again, knocking Jane's entire world off its axis. "I'm your mother."
Weller laid into the punching bag viciously, sweating and out of breath and not giving a damn about any of it. Would Jane even be back tonight? Had she managed to get decent medical attention for her gunshot wound? Had Patterson deactivated Nas' second tracker in time?
And what the hell was he supposed to do while Jane was out there, risking her life to prove to him and his team that she hadn't meant for any harm to come to Mayfair?
They'd already brought Nas up to speed on the files on Daylight and Orion that Mayfair had left them. She was putting her powerful, illegal server farm to work on the encryption Patterson hadn't been able to crack. Maybe it would yield something useful about why Daylight and Orion were important to Sandstorm; maybe not. But while the computers did their work, Kurt Weller was next to useless.
He'd sent Reade, Zapata and Patterson home, but he and Nas were still in the building, keeping their distance from each other so they didn't get into another argument.
He gave the bag one final, all-out assault, then hit the showers, his anxiety for Jane never diminishing. God, he hoped she was holding her own out there. She still wasn't in any shape to defend herself or make an escape.
"Agent Weller, are you in here?"
Recognising the voice of Frank, one of the overnight security guys, Weller shut off the shower and reached for his towel. "Yeah. What's up?"
"Jane Doe asked me to tell you she's back. She's gone straight to your classified area."
Weller closed his eyes and sent up a silent prayer of thanks before calling, "Thanks for letting me know. I'll be right there."
He dried off and dressed in record time, then headed straight to Zero Division.
Jane sat with her head in her hands, looking dishevelled and exhausted. She wore an oversized flannel shirt that bore no visible signs of blood, so Weller was reasonably sure she'd been given medical attention and clean clothing.
Nas sat opposite her, as close to impatient as he'd ever seen her. She was fidgeting with a pen, obviously frustrated by the way Jane wasn't talking. "There you are," she said with relief, spying Weller.
Jane raised her head slowly, and gave him a forlorn attempt at a smile.
"How'd it go?" he asked, taking his own seat at the table.
"Well, I'm not dead..." She seemed to view that as an achievement in itself.
"Did you meet Shepherd?" Nas wanted to know.
"Yeah. Apparently, terrorism runs in the family. I'm her adopted daughter."
Weller stared at her, unable to process what she was saying.
"I met my blood brother, too. Roman. Just as well he was there, really, since he had to give me a transfusion from his own vein."
Nas was scribbling notes on her legal pad, but Weller couldn't take his eyes off Jane. "Shepherd is your mother. A guy called Roman is your brother. Did you meet anyone else there?"
"Cade was there. Apparently, he really is alive. That blew the cover story I was planning to use straight to hell, and I didn't have anything else, so I…" She sighed. "I told them Keaton had me."
"You what?!" Weller practically yelled. Every time I think I can trust her, she goes and does something like this.
"Oh, Jane." Nas was shaking her head.
"You might want to give him a heads-up that he's a target."
Nas stood up, frowning. "I'll get on it. Don't carry on with the debrief until I get back."
Once the door had shut behind her, Jane closed her eyes. "Don't look at me like that, Weller. I didn't do it out of spite. You were the one who told me to keep myself alive, no matter what."
She did have a point. Kurt strove to put her actions in perspective, trying to put himself in her place. It had been an impossible situation. "I know. I was just…not expecting that."
"I didn't expect Cade to walk past the door, either." She shook her head. "Keaton will have the whole CIA to keep him safe. I had no one. Except you."