A/N This one is for lurkingwhump, from a sad Kurt prompt. Ended up being a lot longer than just that of course :P
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Not a lot of sleeping happened in the bunker, everyone's ghosts keeping them up even when it was the dead of night above.
Jane had always been a light sleeper, the cumulative result of an abusive childhood, military life, governmental torture. She'd spent so many hours burrowing into the bed in the dark hours before dawn, her heart settled by watching Kurt slumber soundly beside her. But now even Kurt woke easily, was often not in his bunk when she sought him out in the middle of the dark hours when the generator didn't run.
Even that little change in him ate into her, made her worry about the end cost of life on the run. Seeing him so on edge, mourning the lost time with Bethany, it cracked her heart a little more each day.
It wasn't that she didn't miss it, the life they had and the one they had been looking forward to, closer to Bee. But as hard as it was leaving behind what she had only just won back, Jane was well practiced at cutting and running, what it took emotionally to leave everything behind. At least this time she had Kurt, her teammates. It had made the loss of their regular situation less bleak, considering she was used to facing death on her own.
The others, they'd all spent some time on the other side of the law too. Even if it was officially sanctioned undercover work or supposedly white-hat hacking; they had all known the experience of committing unlawful deeds, living life as a criminal.
But the only illegal things Kurt had ever done with his position were to protect her. And now he was walking around in the underworld with a raw, gaping emotional wound, desperately trying to claw his way back to his child.
Jane sighed, standing beside her husband's empty bunk, wondering where he was this time. The bunker wasn't that big but in the dark there were a lot of places for him to hide away with his pain.
Looking around, she saw that no one was asleep in their bunks the way they were meant to be, then rolled her eyes and shook her head with a wan smile at the realization. It was strange to have such a clear window into everyone's trauma when they were all so good at individually hiding their own issues.
Jane left the bunk room and wandered around in the dark, her eyes just managing to adjust to the dim light as she spotted Zapata in the designated work out corner, pounding out a set of pushups.
Her heart ached for Tasha, but she absolutely didn't know what to say, how to even approach that amount of grief. Jane thought back to David's tragic death, how she had felt so emotionally overwhelmed herself at the pain Patterson was going through. Back then she had thought it was because she had so few emotional experiences at the time. But even now, with all her memories, she didn't know what to do for Zapata.
Jane was still wondering if she should just walk by silently when Tasha finished her set and sat back against the wall, her knees bent in front of her.
"I haven't seen him," she said quietly, her voice a bit wavery.
Jane changed her trajectory and approached Tasha, sat down next to her.
"Hey," she said. "Yeah, I'm looking for Kurt. But I'm here for you too."
She didn't reply but Jane could feel the explosive strength of her teammate's sadness just sitting next to her. Yet knowing that Zapata wasn't usually the type to express that kind of emotion with anyone, Jane didn't want to push too hard. So she just put a hand on Tasha's knee, gave it a little squeeze.
"So next time you want to not talk about feelings and just hit things in the middle of the night, we can spar in the dark," she said.
Zapata huffed a little laugh at the offer, then inhaled a slightly sniffly breath.
"We probably should have done that before the raid on the Boat," she replied. "But thanks. All I want to do right now is scream and hit stuff."
Jane nodded, knew that feeling well.
"Yeah," she agreed. "Those CIA goons didn't have a chance."
She sensed Zapata crack a little smile at the compliment and gave her a nudge with her shoulder. and squeezed her knee once more before getting up to continue her search.
"I mean we could talk too. I'm just not really that good at it," she continued awkwardly.
Zapata exhaled an amused breath.
"I'm okay right now. But thanks for the offer," she said. "Just go find him."
Jane nodded in agreement and squeezed Tasha's knee once more before getting up to continue her search. She stood and walked into the next room where Patterson was frowning in the glow of a laptop screen, fiercely typing code into the machine. She had that patented Patterson look of concentration, barely glanced up as Jane approached.
"Everything okay?" Jane asked as their eyes met in the dim light coming off the computer.
Patterson nodded, looking somewhat more energized after seeing her father, getting a message from him.
"Yeah, best time to code is in the middle of the night," she replied. "Even if it's always night down here."
Jane smiled at Patterson's hacker energy, glad that her mood had improved since the trip to Finland. Although they hadn't come out with the phone in the end, they had made contact with Weitz and given Patterson a chance to see her dad, even if it was a very short visit. More importantly, no one had died and they were all free to continue on with the mission.
Walking away though, she thought about how much Bill had wanted to be there for his daughter, despite the risk involved. That kind of parental love was something Kurt had missed out on, why he was so desperate to be a good father and give Bethany all the love and care she deserved.
The smile dropped off her face as Jane thought about Bee, all the time they'd already missed in the little girl's life. Bethany had been the reason she'd run off without a word when the bounty was put on her. So he could stay and watch his child grow up, both of them safe from the threat of bounty hunters.
As stupid as it now sounded, she had never considered that he loved her that much. To leave his baby behind and chase her around the world, spending all of his money. She'd thought she was giving him an obvious out by taking herself out of the equation. That she'd find the dark web broker and then go back to Colorado, see if he'd changed his mind about being married to a ex-terrorist.
Jane sighed, annoyed that her thoughts kept drifting in that direction, to her time on the run. It was obvious why and yet that didn't make things any better. Even with her team there with her, even with Kurt there, it was just too familiar; that feeling of being completely uprooted, chased at every turn.
Except now she had the responsibility of getting them all through it, not just herself.
Jane rubbed her temples with that thought, closed her eyes for a moment and nearly ran into Rich who seemed to have been pacing and mumbling showtunes to himself in the next room.
They appeared to be equally startled at first, Rich yelping and darting back while Jane swallowed her relief that it was just Rich and not one of the enemies she'd just been thinking of.
"Sorry," she said, when she finally found her voice.
Rich was still humming what sounded like Hamilton and Jane exhaled a tense breath, looking at him in the near dark. She knew what he was doing, singing himself a replacement song to void out the excruciating one the CIA would play on repeat through the 'night'. They hadn't really talked since Rich got to the bunker, despite their now shared experience. Jane didn't like thinking about that time in her life for obvious reasons, preferred to try and forget that it had been her reality for months. Really, she wasn't one to talk about her trauma at all, had only told Kurt about it all because he'd insisted. And in her experience, she had needed some time to decompress on her own before being able to address what had happened to her; had to re-understand the world around her after experiencing so much pain and fear.
She didn't know what Rich needed but it only just occurred to her that she hadn't yet asked. Which was possibly because she didn't quite know how to form the question.
It could be so easy, an invitation to talk, some sharing of her own experience. But those things didn't come so readily to her, made her worry that she wouldn't make a good leader.
But then Jane thought back to those first few days after she'd escaped, how terrified she'd been that she'd be recaptured, that her freedom was just a ploy, about to be snatched away from her again at any moment. More than anything she'd been afraid of going back, knowing that escaping a second time was extremely unlikely.
When Weller had shown up at the motel that fear had been raging in her, she could still feel it now, how it sank into her shoulders, told her she was getting thrown into another dark hole. How it felt realizing that she couldn't shoot him, how angry she was that her terror of going back had been overcome by the stubborn resilience of her love for him.
She thought about Rich, his anger and indignance at the thought of going to Weitz, the guy who had given him up to the CIA. She remembered thinking fuck you, Kurt Weller, long after rationally understanding that he hadn't had any say in the CIA taking custody of her.
She went back to those first few weeks of being back with the team, wondering if they'd try to send her back if she screwed up on a mission, did anything suspicious. Not that she would have let it happen a second time. But the threat had still been there, omnipresent and stifling.
Just like it had to be for Rich, carrying around the thought that they could easily be caught and tortured further or killed without a second thought, just like Sho Aktar.
She wondered how long they'd been standing there, all that going on her in her mind with Rich still half-humming, half-singing his songs. But then the next line from the song is something like 'dying is easy, living is harder' and it was suddenly obvious what she was meant to say.
"Hey Rich," she said. "Just so you know, I will never let them take you again. No matter what."
Rich stopped singing to himself for a moment and Jane thought she could see his body language settle a bit with her pronouncement. She wondered what kind of glib, inappropriate response he was going to come up with but Rich surprised her by staying silent for a long while after her words, not replying with the first thing that came to his mind.
"Thanks, Jane," he eventually said, quiet and serious. "That actually kind of helped. Nothing else really has."
"Yeah," she replied. "It takes awhile. And even then, it's still there. But we're going to get you through this."
Rich nodded into the darkness, then started to hum again. Jane smiled a bit as she walked away, catching another snippet of the song.
"If we lay a strong enough foundation…" he muttered into the dark.
She knew nothing about the musical but Rich's song sounded promising at least. And she'd at least managed to say something useful, didn't feel quite so apprehensive about talking to him about it anymore.
Yet the fact remained that she still hadn't found Weller and the bunker wasn't exactly that large. Jane had started to look in less obvious locations when she opened a supply closet and heard a scuffle, what might have been a swallowed sob.
Peering into the darkness she could just make him out, huddled in the corner of the small space. When she approached she could see that he had his head down, his knees bent up to his chest and his arms wrapped around them.
Jane crouched beside her husband, put her hand between his shoulder blades and felt the silent sobs reverberate through his body. Each of his shudders made her own heart tremor as well, unable to absorb the depth of his hurt. She could feel everything in his sobs; how much he missed Bethany, how much he struggled with not being there for her, feeling like a bad father.
She wanted to hold him so tight that it would protect him from all the hardness of living on the run, existing in the criminal world. There was a softness in him that she would defend to her last breath, something so precious about how emotional he was under his stern exterior. No wonder he'd had to build up walls; his tender heart was much too vulnerable.
It felt horrible, to be in charge and not be able to do anything to ease his distress. Jane had a whole new perspective on what it must have been like to be Kurt when they first met, why he had been so irritatingly protective of her back then. Because at the moment she knew that he was still extremely capable both physically and mentally; yet she still wanted to cover him in bubble wrap and leave him in the supply closet safe and sound until it was all over and he could see his daughter again.
But the best she could do at the moment was sit next to him and rub circles on his back, tell him that everything was going to be okay. Which made her feel helpless in the face of his pain, unable to do anything of substance for him.
In a weird way it reminded her of what things had been like when her brain had been co-opted by her former self and she'd been dismayed to find out that her too-serious FBI husband was full of feelings that he wanted to express. She remembered plotting to kill him while fiercely pushing back on an urge to hold him and lie to him, tell him that she was going to be fine. It had been so hard to watch him hurt for her even when she was actively thinking of ways to murder him; a bundle of emotions that she couldn't quite unpack even now.
He just made her feel so many things, no matter who she was. The way he loved, the way he suffered in the face of loss. And right now it was all there, in a supply closet in an abandoned bunker, in the depths of the dark hours.
Kurt was still shuddering as he tried to stop sobbing and she wrapped her arms around his shoulders, then turned towards him and pulled his head up until it rested on her sternum. She wondered what happened to set him off, suspected a bad dream.
He exhaled into her chest, still a little shaky but almost breathing evenly. Jane responded by tugging him even closer, holding onto him like they would never get another moment.
With a future so unknown, it was probably best to act according to that mindset, despite how depressing it could be.
Eventually Kurt seemed settled, his shoulders still and his chest rising and falling rhythmically, without any telltale stutters. Jane planted a kiss on the top of his head, ran her fingers up and down his spine.
"What happened?" she asked, right up against his ear.
He didn't reply right away; she felt him breath in and out deeply a few times before answering.
"A dream," he finally said.
Jane brought her hand back down between his shoulders, hoping that it would help him feel more grounded in the present and let him escape the lingering grasps of the nightmare.
"Do you want to tell me?" she asked.
She felt him shake his head against her and smiled a little at the vulnerability of the gesture.
"It was nothing, just a dream," he mumbled.
"I get it if you don't want to talk about it," she replied. "But if you do, I want to hear it. Even if it's just a dream."
He seemed to think about that for a long moment, then raised his head from her chest and looked at her closely. Even in the dark she could sense the depth of his sorrow, how much the memory of the dream still hurt.
"It was Bee's birthday," he started, after a long sigh. "We got there and she didn't know me at all. She just put on that mad face when I tried to pick her up and stormed around asking who I was and why I was there."
He was radiating pain and Jane could feel pieces of her heart scattering around in her chest as he tried to seal off the wound, contain his emotion.
"I know, it wasn't real," he muttered. "It's nothing to get this upset about."
She could sense the shame in his words, hated that he would try and disregard his own hurt. While it was agonizing to watch him suffer and not be able to do anything about it, how much the situation was affecting him only reminded her of how precious he was to her, how much he cared about everything.
"That's a terrible dream," she said, affection overflowing with her words. "Of course you're upset. You wouldn't be the man that I love if you weren't. I'm just sorry I can't fix it."
She would do anything, sacrifice it all just to get him home and cleared. But of course he would then be burdened with even more guilt, despite it being her fault that they were in the situation to begin with.
"You make everything better just by being here," Kurt replied, while she was still ruminating about her own guilt, her own inadequacies.
There were so many words that could be said and yet she didn't bother, just lifted her arms back up around him, held him as tightly as she could.
Even if she couldn't do anything about his dreams, he was hers to protect. In the dark hours of deep night, through the bleakness of their current world. She was going to shield him as much as she could, bring him home to his daughter and see some happy tears for once.
"You break my heart, Kurt Weller," she whispered into his ear. "But I'm never going to let anything happen to yours."