Weller forced his legs to keep moving, trying to combat the jitteriness he still felt in every cell of his body. He still had no idea what was real, if he was doing the right thing. But Tasha hadn't morphed into Ivy or anyone else yet and he desperately wanted to believe her. Because she kept saying that Jane was okay. And that was the only thing that kept him moving forward with her.
Yet a terrible thought kept nipping at his beleaguered brain - that they were still using his terror against him, tricking him into leading them to the team. Because those were amongst the very worst of his fears; betraying his people, losing his wife.
Kurt paused, the anxiety taking over his mind and making his chest seize with panic. He pulled away from Zapata, needing time to think things through.
What did he actually know? Only that Jane got shot. He had seen it on the video, before the drugs. Jane bleeding, on her knees. They were lucky she hadn't been taken too, while injured in that alley. Ivy must have only found the footage after Jane's assailant got back and reported the incident.
But Tasha had said that Jane was okay, that they'd gotten the bullet out of her. Which he had just taken as good news when she'd first said it. But now Weller was starting to have all sorts of questions about what had happened, if any of it was really true.
"Weller, we have to keep moving," Tasha said, tugging at his arm.
"How do I know they didn't set this up?" he asked, doubt creeping through his mind again. "I can't lead them to the bunker."
"And how do I know that Jane's really okay? You could just be lying to get me back there. Tell me what happened."
The fear was creeping up his throat again, threatening to take over his entire mind. He could no longer tell what had actually happened and what had only occurred in his head. And overwhelmingly he felt the emotional tug of war between wanting to believe Zapata, let her take him to Jane, and being afraid that he was betraying them all by leading the enemy to their safe zone.
"Kurt, you're still messed up from the drugs, you don't need to know what happened yet," Zapata said.
His suspicions jolted up with her reluctance, made him sharp with distrust.
"You just don't want to tell me what happened because Jane isn't actually okay," he stated, feeling the pressure build up in his skull again. "Why else wouldn't you tell me?"
"Whoa, whoa, I told you, I'm not lying Kurt," Tasha said, giving his arm a squeeze. "Look, fine. I'll tell you what happened once we're in the clear, but right now we have to keep moving."
"How do I know it's really you, Tash?" Weller asked, in a pleading voice he didn't even recognize as his own. "I just don't want to mess this up."
Zapata sighed, gave him a sympathetic look.
"It's okay," she said. "I know you're scared and you don't know what's real. It is me though, and I will prove it to you if you keep walking okay?"
She slipped her hand down into his and then started pulling him along again while he assessed her statement, trying to calm himself down.
"Good, come with me and while we walk we can talk about something only you and I would remember, something that's not in any of the field reports," Tasha said.
It felt like Zapata, the impatient way she was yanking at him. And he could see the sense in her suggestion; everything would be much easier if he could be sure it was her.
So Weller started moving his feet again, let himself be led towards whatever was awaiting him.
"Do you remember what I said to you when we were alone in Drackland?" she asked, once they had gotten going once more.
He hadn't thought about that mission in ages, had to sort back to it in his mind. But then when he went looking for the memory, it came through clearly, along with all the fears he'd had back then.
Taking Tasha with him on the mission instead of Jane, how it had felt being separated from her even way back at the start of it all.
He'd gotten so attached to her in such a short amount of time. It had scared the hell out of him, was something he'd never experienced before. Well. Except for once, when he was just a kid.
So yes, he had been trying to protect her; as best he could, considering she resisted nearly all of his efforts. Still, he hadn't liked being called on it, or knowing that it was so blatantly obvious to everyone around him.
"Yeah," he finally answered. "You were right. I just didn't want to admit it, even to myself."
That earned him a small grin from Zapata as she glanced back at him.
"Of course I was right. God, the way you used to look at her," she said, with a shake of her head. "Actually, you still look at her the same way. We're just used to it now. But back then it was so weird to see you like that."
Weller scowled. He didn't particularly like thinking about life before Jane, what he'd been like. But at least he'd put to rest any doubt that he was actually with Tasha, felt his gut settle a bit knowing that his team had found him.
Yet as soon as he had put his most urgent worry away, his most frequent one followed along almost immediately.
Zapata had said Jane was okay but he'd seen video evidence of her struggling to even walk, not long after she'd been shot. Which meant it had been a serious wound and made it unlikely that she was actually as fine as he was being told. Especially because he was sure that Ivy was right about one thing – Jane would never have let them take her to the hospital while he was missing, no matter how serious her condition. So whatever had happened to her, it was his fault for being abducted, for not being there to take care of her.
"Are you sure that Jane's okay?" he asked, even though he'd already asked her the same thing over and over. "Or did she just tell you to say that?"
If there was one thing he would never trust his wife about, it was taking care of her own safety before dealing with his. She would have instructed Zapata to say anything necessary to get him back without a struggle and knowing that made his entire body freeze in terror.
"Tell me what happened," he added. "I need to know everything."
Tasha gave him a worried look but didn't stop forcing him along.
"I'm not lying to you, Kurt," she replied. "Jane was in pretty bad shape when she got back to the bunker but she was doing fine when I left. I still think you should wait for her to tell you what happened though."
"No," Weller argued. "She's my wife. I need to know what happened to her. And there's no way she's going to give me the whole story."
Zapata sighed and gave him a glare that was tempered with empathy. Then she inhaled a bit shakily and frowned with obvious distress.
"Okay, I'll tell you," she finally replied. "But not until we're on the train. You've already been through a lot, Weller. You don't need to know this right now and I don't think I can tell it yet."
He did not like the sound of that, didn't want to think about a situation so bad that Tasha still couldn't talk about hours later. It just set off the fear in him again, ate into him even as it paradoxically helped him believe that she wasn't just being close-lipped because her story was untrue.
Weller could hear his heart pounding in his ears, the fear overwhelming him yet again. The thought of losing her after what he'd just been through was a kernel of despair sitting at his core. He needed to see her, touch her, make sure she was okay. He needed to feel her arms around him, to hear her tell him that he was okay.
"It's okay, Weller," Tasha said, as if sensing his distress. "Just let me take you to her and you'll both be alright."
The fear kept poking at him and he couldn't tell if it was the drug or just how scared he'd regularly be if his wife had taken a bullet and he didn't know what had happened to her. But he let it ride for the moment, focused on Tasha's words and kept telling himself that she wasn't lying to him, that Jane was going to be okay. He would let her get them safely on the train, then he'd get his answers.
Even still, it was hard to keep his worries at bay until they'd crept into the train station and onto the train, carefully avoiding all the CCTV cameras they spotted. But then, when they were finally sitting down and the train was moving, he turned to Tasha and exhaled loudly.
"Tell me," he said.
Zapata paled a bit, but she nodded slowly, seemed to be running through it in her head as she turned to him and sighed.
"Okay, okay," she said, taking in a deep breath. "So. We were waiting for you two and it had been over an hour since I got back so we knew that something was wrong. Anyways, Jane finally got back and said that she'd been shot and that she'd seen you get taken by Ivy. But she told us it was just a graze and made us focus on tracking you so we didn't notice that she was bleeding to death until we couldn't find any leads on you. That's when she passed out the first time and told us she wasn't going to the hospital."
Weller grumbled, acid eating at his belly. He'd seen Jane's reaction after getting shot, she must have known from the start exactly how bad it was. And still she'd pretended to be fine until her body had finally given out due to lack of blood.
His wife was so goddamn frustrating, he felt both angry and humbled all at once. He frowned at Tasha, unable to form words. She too looked a bit shell shocked, remembering what had happened.
"We didn't have any choice, she said we had to do the surgery there. But then we had to wait while Rich went and got blood – yes, I know, thankfully Rich had a blood guy – and that was hard, Kurt. She was in so much pain and so incredibly pale. I was really, really scared."
Weller was just as afraid hearing Tasha talk about it now, even though he'd been assured so many times that everything turned out well. He remembered how pale Jane had been those last days in the hospital, when he almost lost her to the ZIP poisoning. The thought of her being that close to death and not being there for her was excruciating. Although part of him also recognized that he'd have been really losing his shit if he'd been there, unable to do anything to help her. If it was this difficult hearing the story, being there would have been incredibly brutal.
"But Jane was so goddamned tough. You know how she is. She just kept asking if we'd found you yet right up until things were so bad that we had to start surgery even though Rich wasn't back with the blood."
Kurt looked at Zapata in dismay, his heart clenched at the risk they took.
"How bad was it?" he asked, his voice as shaky as his shoulders.
Tasha looked at him grimly and shuddered.
"It was really bad. When Patterson first took the dressing away blood was pouring out of her. I almost freaked out. I didn't think we could do it. Even Patterson didn't think we could do it. I honestly thought she was going to die there and we were going to have to explain it to you. But Jane talked us through it and Patterson got the bullet out. I don't know how she did it, Kurt. She was bleeding so much and in so much pain, I don't even know how she was conscious, much less guiding us through the procedure."
Weller tried to wrap his head around it, the fact that the girls had performed surgery together in the bunker. He could tell Zapata was still kind of doing the same even though she had been part of it.
Thankfully his wife was resilient, to the extreme. Kurt's heart was still palpitating at all the what ifs, at how intense Tasha's story was. It didn't stop even when she finished by telling him how Rich had gotten there just in time with the blood, how Jane had started to regain colour as soon as the transfusion started. Instead, it just moved right onto a myriad of other fears, all that worry still floating in his head.
He thanked Tasha for telling him the full story, knew that the version he'd get from Jane would be much tamer. Then he told her he was going to try and sleep off the rest of the drug, even though he knew there was no chance he would sleep a wink.
The fear sitting on his shoulders was no longer so hallucinatory, but it didn't feel any less real. Even now that he knew what had happened, that Jane was alright. It had just shifted again, become different.
His wife had been injured, nearly fatally. And she'd still gotten herself and the team through it, even managed to find him too. Whereas he'd failed at his own, less life-threatening ordeal. Given Ivy new information about their location, possibly even more than he remembered.
Weller hung his head, his belly full of self-recrimination. He'd failed them, failed her. Nearly allowed his wife to die for him while he couldn't even face his own fears without giving something up.
He tried to keep his emotions at bay but everything that had happened just kept playing through his mind. He pictured Jane, refusing proper medical treatment, so pale that Tasha had been afraid she wouldn't make it. He'd messed everything up by getting taken; hadn't been there for her when she needed him.
Kurt felt the tears well up yet again, knew that there was no way to hide his emotion. He was ashamed of himself and still terrified for Jane; for everything she'd just been through, for everything that could still happen.
When he'd fully given in to the sobbing, Tasha reached around his shoulders and held him, letting him cry into her.
"It's okay, Kurt," she said softly but frankly. "You're going to be okay and Jane's going to be okay too. She almost died to give us the time to find you. But she's still here and you're going to get to see her soon.
Weller kept sobbing as he heard all that Zapata didn't say, pulled her close.
"Thanks Tasha," he muttered. "I'm sorry."
"It's okay, Kurt," she repeated. "We got you back and Jane's alive. Today, that's a huge win."
It didn't feel like that to him; Weller knew that he'd let all of them down, especially Jane. And yet he couldn't wait to see her, despite how nervous he was that she'd be disappointed in him.
But even if she was as ashamed of him as he was of himself, it didn't matter. He just needed to feel her heart beating; see for himself that he hadn't yet lost his.
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A/N: I know, I know, Kurt is extra angsty here but he's still on the drugs right...