Author's Note: Okay, I felt like writing Roman today, so here we go! I also messed around with the timeline of episode 4 of season two a little bit. In the show, Roman takes Jane to Lake Aurora before Patterson cracks the honeycomb tattoo, and then two days later it's the museum gala. I'm stretching things out a bit for my own purposes here.

"Why won't you tell me where we're going?"

Roman had been driving upstate for over three hours now, and Jane was beginning to get antsy. He'd been fairly quiet the whole way, letting the radio fill in for conversation, but the farther they drove, the more concerned she became. Sure, it was Saturday and she wasn't due at the NYO until Monday, but still…

"You know I don't have a passport, right? You keep driving north, and we're gonna hit the border."

"We're not going that far. We're nearly there." Roman turned down the radio, as if finally inviting conversation.

Jane held her questions about Shepherd's plan at bay for now. They'd have plenty of time to talk on the way home. Instead, she asked, "Can I ask you something? About the past?"

Roman inclined his head. "Shoot."

"Have I ever had PTSD before?"

She'd only skipped that one night of nightmares; last night they'd come back with a vengeance, and without Weller or a detail to wake her, they'd seemed endless. She'd written them down and picked them apart as Borden had asked her to, but the process was still oddly familiar to her, and she had no idea why.

Roman was silent for a moment, as if assessing what he could safely tell her. Finally, he said, "After Orion was shut down and you came back to the States, your nightmares started. You'd done some recuperating over in Afghanistan, so you were mostly physically healed, but I guess it was a delayed reaction thing. You were screaming in your sleep. The first time I tried to wake you, you almost killed me before you realised it was me. It took you a lot of time and therapy to get past the worst of it."

He glanced over. "You're going through similar stuff now?"

Jane attempted a smile, but failed. "Nothing like knowing your country has no respect for your constitutional rights to not be tortured. We are US citizens now, right?"

"Yeah, we went through the naturalisation process as teenagers. Retained our South African citizenship, too, if you ever want to go back there."

"I don't think you have any idea how hard it is for Jane Doe to do anything. It wasn't so bad until the FBI figured out I'm not Taylor Shaw and I couldn't use her identity anymore. Now I have no passport, no birth certificate, no social security number… It's ridiculous, all the things I can't do. I've been wrestling paperwork and waiting on hold for so many hours, trying to convince people I exist. The IRS, the bank, health insurance… Ugh." She finished her tirade with, "Long story short, I won't be leaving this country anytime soon."

"Once phase two is over, we can get you false papers. You can go wherever you want."

"I've always wanted to see Venice," Jane said, then corrected, "I mean, not always. But since I came out of the bag and saw pictures of Venice, I've wanted to go there."

Roman grinned. "Some things don't change."

"Have I been?" Jane asked.

"Like six times. No, wait. Seven. You and Oscar took a vacation there just before you got tattooed."

"More things I don't remember," Jane said ruefully.

"It's coming back, though, right? You remembered Oscar when you saw him. Remembered us as kids. The rest will come back eventually, Remi. I know it."

They drove in silence for a few minutes. Then, curiously, Jane asked, "How about you? Have you ever had PTSD?"

"I didn't deal with what happened to us as kids so well. You were the strong one. I fell apart." Roman didn't look at her as he spoke.

"You were younger than me, though, right? Of course you dealt with it badly. They murdered your pet, for god's sake. Made us sleep in that horrible basement. And I don't even remember anything else." She watched him with an ache in her chest. He was a terrorist, and he'd murdered untold numbers of people for their cause, but he was also her brother. She didn't want it to mean something, but it did.

"Better that you don't remember."

Roman turned off the highway onto a road that had once been well-maintained, but now was full of potholes and weeds. Sensing that they were nearing the end of their journey, Jane asked one more thing.

"You're okay now, right? You got over your childhood issues?"

He gave a short, bitter laugh. "Mostly. The claustrophobia never went away, though."

He pulled over by the shore of a lake dotted with run-down properties, and shut off the engine. No one seemed to be around.

"Welcome to Lake Aurora," Roman said.

A poisoned lake that tore apart hundreds of families, while the government watched and did nothing, is not 'visual propaganda'. It's an outrage.

Kurt found Jane in the FBI's gym facilities, around thirty minutes after she'd stormed out of his office. It had been a long weekend, but he'd made himself stay away from her, still unsure how things would play out if they spent time together outside of the NYO. He hadn't wanted to pressure her by dropping by her safehouse, especially now he knew that his presence in her living room triggered her PTSD.

He'd missed her, though. He was starting to come to terms with the fact that although what she'd done to his team had damaged his trust in her, he would always miss her when she wasn't around.

By this morning, his memories of her naked body against his had been driving him crazy for over three days. Jane seemed to have other things on her mind, though. She'd been incensed by the story behind the lake Roman had taken her to, and had spoken to both Kurt and Nas as if they were monsters for considering her brother's motives in doing so.

Now she'd had a little time to cool off, he approached the treadmill she was running on and leaned against the wall nearby. "Hey."

Jane looked at him warily, not slowing her pace on the machine. "Did we catch a case?"

"No. Still in paperwork mode before the museum gala tomorrow."

She nodded, frowning when the machine began its cooldown cycle, as though she wasn't ready to slow down.

"Your physical therapist okay with this much activity?"

Jane threw him a careful glance, as though assessing whether he was trying to work his way around to talking about the 'activity' they'd engaged in together on Thursday night. At least it's on her mind, too.

"As long as I don't overwork my arm, she says I can do what I want." She sighed as the machine slowed further, dropping her from a jog to a quick walk. "Maybe another week, maybe two, and I can start real workouts again."

"You miss it, huh?" It was mainly a rhetorical question. He knew she'd been crawling out of her skin while she'd been healing.

She gave a quick nod. "I need to fight. I need an outlet for…all of this."

The machine stopped its cycle, and she stepped off the treadmill, only to bend over and touch her toes. Kurt tried not to ogle her firm ass. If I didn't know better, I'd say she did that on purpose.

"You do seem pretty stressed today," he said, alluding to her outburst in his office.

Jane dropped to the floor in a split and leaned down so that her forehead touched her front knee. "I stand by my point."

Kurt sighed and sat down on the floor next to her. "It's not that we don't care, Jane. It's just… You came out of that bag and everything was new to you. How things are in this country. The corruption and lobbying and how politics works, and... It just doesn't shock us anymore. We're desensitised. And we know that what we do doesn't make any difference."

Jane lifted her head from her stretch, watching him but saying nothing.

"Law enforcement can only do so much. We can find criminals, try to prosecute them, but when corporate interests with too much money and no morals step in, the cases get thrown out. And there's not a damn thing we can do about it." He shrugged. "We shut our minds off to the horror, because if we tried to think about it on a deeper level, we'd lose all hope. I'm not proud of it, and if I have evidence of corruption, nothing will stop me from making the arrest. But after we catch the bad guys, it's up to the justice system to prosecute. And people with more money and influence than I'll ever have will derail the case."

"It's wrong," Jane said, repositioning herself so that her other leg was in front of her.

"I know. And I hate it. I just have to focus on what I can do. And hope that activist groups can eventually force a change."

Jane sighed and wriggled out of her stretch, lying on the floor and staring up at the ceiling. "Are we making a difference? Or are we just…treading water, trying to keep afloat?"

He'd asked himself the same question so many times, especially during his first few years out of Quantico. "In the overall social context, we're probably not achieving much," he admitted slowly. "But when you look at it closer—the lives we've saved, the crimes we've prevented—we've made a difference to the lives of a lot of people. And their families."

She nodded. "I shouldn't overlook the importance of what we do, right?"

"Sandstorm would probably be happier if you did."

Though her expression barely changed, something in the atmosphere shifted, cluing him in that his words had hit home. "Yeah. Probably."

He got up from the floor and offered her his hand. She hesitated, then shook her head, getting to her feet on her own. "Don't want to strain my arm. Thanks, though."

She took a step towards the locker room, and he lost the inner battle with himself. "Want to grab a drink after work? Talk some more?"

Jane turned, looking a little taken aback. "Umm… Sorry. I can't. I have a video chat scheduled with Kalina. She's not having a great week, so…"

"Okay." He stepped back, knowing a brush-off when he heard one, but couldn't quite let it go. "We have to talk about it sometime, Jane."

"No. I… I don't think we do."

Before he could ask what was going on in her head, she disappeared into the gym's female locker room, where he couldn't follow.