A/N Started continuing this scene and meant for it to go in another direction but it came out with an ending that surprised even me.

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She hadn't thought it would be so different, to be the one making the call. And yet Jane suddenly found herself full of anxiety, worried that her decisions would lead to someone getting hurt, losing Kurt forever.

She remembered back to some of the decisions he had made, way back when she was completely raw and empty. Keeping her out of the field because she was an explosive unknown, one he desperately wanted to protect. She had been so pissed off at him, thought he didn't trust her. But now she understood how he would have felt if she'd died on one of those many close calls, the result of one of his choices. Now she really knew the cost of being in charge, something she had never really experienced before.

In the past she had operated on her own, making her own decisions. Or worked in a partnership, with equal powers. But she'd never led a group, had everyone's lives relying on her judgments.

Jane walked away from the team, stewing in doubt about her decision to risk meeting up with Weitz. Of course, Kurt followed immediately, reaching out to touch her on the back, reassure her with his words and his presence.

Her head was full of what ifs that she poured onto him but Kurt was bull headedly optimistic for absolutely heartbreaking reasons. It shattered her to see him hurt so badly, re-enact his own childhood trauma in the opposite direction. She knew how much it bothered him to not be there for Bethany, to have her wonder why he had disappeared from her life. It played on the worst of his anxieties of being a bad father, despite the fact that he would do absolutely anything for his little girl.

The problem was the way Kurt could be when his trauma and emotions got stirred up. Although it was reassuring to have his unwavering confidence, she was worried about it being driven by too much hope in retrieving the phone.

Jane felt a constant ache, seeing how life in the bunker was affecting him. It was a starred item on her mental list, somewhere between keeping them all alive and making high stakes decisions about their future. And at the moment, it was pretty clear that Kurt's anxiety about being on the run was preventing him from adapting, accepting their current situation. Which made her want to just wrap him up and shield him from everything, give him back the life he loved.

But it didn't do any good to think that way, fall into magical hope when the danger in their lives was much too real. Though it did give her some measure of mental fortitude to push through the difficulty of it, do it for Kurt. After everything he had done for her, it was her chance to repay some of it.

"This has to work, it will work," Weller declared, wearing his stubborn look.

Jane sighed internally, needed to temper his expectations. Kurt's single-mindedness when it came to emotional situations tended to create more problems than it solved.

"Kurt, even if we can trust Weitz, it's possible there isn't anything incriminating on that phone," she said. "I'm worried you're putting so much focus on it as the solution to everything."

Weller furrowed his brow in disagreement, set his shoulders in that way that indicated he wasn't going to hear anything she said. Jane sighed to herself, felt her leadership role sit even more heavily on her. He needed her right now in a way that was new to both of them, one that she was still getting used to.

And yes, she had a lot on her mind, considering she was in charge of a clandestine mission with traumatized operatives and very few resources. But out of everything, what mattered to her most was him. Stopping Madeline, getting the rest of the team out of this alive; that was her most important goal rationally. Yet, what sat deepest in her heart was the need to get Kurt through it with his soul unharmed. Her gruff special agent with the soft, too-sensitive centre.

So did her best to put aside her anxiety about the mission, shelve her doubt about the future to take care of the solvable problem in front of her at the moment. Reaching out, Jane took both of Kurt's hands in hers, gripped his fingertips tightly to focus his attention on her.

"Hey, I know it's tough right now," she said, running her thumbs along his knuckles as her love for him poured out of her cracked heart. "Being away from Bethany just when we'd decided to try and be closer to her. Not being in control of our own lives."

Kurt flinched a bit, the blue of his eyes somehow hard and watery at the same time.

"This bunker might not be our home and I miss Bethany too," she continued. "But last time I was on the run in Europe I was in places like this and I was so alone."

She could still feel it, that yearning that had never let her go while she'd been away from him. The longing the Tibetan nun kept calling her out on. It hadn't been all that long ago that she'd been grinding her way through the world by herself. She hadn't forgotten at all how much it hurt, especially not after almost losing Kurt in that drone strike. She still woke most nights dreaming of terrible things happening to him, felt the agony of losing him nearly every night.

Unexpectedly Jane found her arms wrapped around her husband, the emotions of the past suddenly flooding over into the present. She mentally groaned even as she burrowed into him; she'd been meaning to comfort him, had not anticipated running into her own trauma along the way.

She could tell that Kurt was surprised as well, had still been stuck in his own anxieties until she'd been overcome with the need to hold him. But his arms reacted automatically to her embrace and he folded himself around her like he was sheltering her from the entire world. She could feel him shift into concerned husband mode instantly, ready to be there despite his own suffering.

"Hey, I'm here now," he said, his voice a bit husky. "And you're right. We're together this time and that's what matters the most."

It really was. In the end, wherever Kurt was, that was home to her.

Even if it was in a bunker, far from the light.