A/N: still catching up... couple chapters to fill in 5.6

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Weller was prepping for the mission when he suddenly looked around and realized what had been feeling off for the past while. He hadn't seen Jane since just after they'd started gearing up for the trip, ironically not noticing her slip away because he'd been so internally fixated on her.

He had been lost in thought, remembering how stiff she had been when they woke together on her bunk, the loud groan she couldn't contain when she tried to move. It didn't make any sense that Jane was going anywhere that day, she shouldn't be doing anything other than resting and taking care of her wound.

Kurt grumbled to himself as he searched through the bunker, finally finding her in the medical supply room prepping shots of something.

"What is that?" he asked, frowning at the syringes.

Jane's head snapped up but she quickly hid a guilty expression by looking back down at the needle in her hand.

"It's just lidocaine," she finally replied, giving him a tired look. "I'm fine right now but I'll need it later if there's going to be any action."

"I don't think you should do this," he said, the words falling out of his mouth before he could hold back the impulse.

"I'm fine, Kurt," Jane said sharply.

Weller sighed, pride and sorrow and worry all fighting for space inside of him.

"You had a bullet taken out of you yesterday," he growled. "You almost died."

But Jane just shrugged it off with an impatient tilt of her head, a certain set to her stance.

"And I feel okay today," she argued. "I'm just a little sore."

"Which means you're in agony already and we haven't even left yet. I know how this works, Jane."

She gave him a piercing glare, then put the syringes in her pocket.

"I'm fine for now and I have these for later," she grumbled. "I'm going to get geared up."

Jane moved to leave the room but Kurt stepped in front of her and she stopped in her tracks, looked up at him irritably.

"Please, Jane. Don't do this," he pleaded. "Just stay here and rest, give your body some time to heal."

Jane tilted her head up at him and suddenly he could see that the fire in her glare held an under layer of some other emotion. She held him in place with just her eyes for a long moment and by the time she spoke all the edge had gone from her voice.

"And what about you, everything you went through yesterday?" she asked tiredly. "Are you okay to go out there and be put in a morally compromising situation? Should we even be doing this?"

Kurt sighed, his anxiety heightened by the doubt in Jane's voice. She was right in so many ways. It was a dangerous mission that they didn't have to do, they could just walk away from the potential info on Madeline and find another way to take her down. And yet the possibility of finding incriminating evidence on their enemy and stopping a chemical attack made the job enticing enough to go along with.

"I know, none of this is ideal, especially after what happened yesterday. But I keep coming back to the fact that we need that intel on Madeline to stop her from doing whatever it is she's doing and clear our names."

Weller paused, thinking back to their first interaction with the Gardner paintings. He had been wary about planning a heist back then too, even with the authority of his badge behind their actions.

"It's not so different from when we stole those paintings the first time. I questioned it but Mayfair thought it was worth it based on the mere possibility of getting Sho Aktar. Now I guess I see her side of it. If it's for the greater good and we're going in against a career criminal then we need to do it, if there's a chance we can take down Madeline with the intel we get."

He hoped he sounded convincing because he'd already resigned himself to doing whatever it took to get access to info on Madeline. Not only was she planning some kind of mass attack, her cronies had hurt his wife and threatened his daughter. They had to stop her, no matter what it took. Even if it involved being part of illegal situations and doing things he wouldn't usually be okay with. At some point, the end really did justify the means.

Or so he kept telling himself.

Jane looked at him with conflicted eyes, her left hand clutching at her abdomen.

"Okay, I guess you're right," she said. "It just feels so wrong planning to steal something."

Weller hated the sound of defeat in Jane's voice, the shaky edge in her words. He wanted to just put her to bed, curl up with her and forget about the heist. But of course none of that was actually an option.

"Yeah," he agreed. "I know. It does feel wrong, back then and now. But I think we're doing this and I really don't think you should go. Especially if you're feeling this way. Oh and you got shot yesterday."

Jane scowled.

"Kurt, I'm fine. We need to get going," she said as she tried to stride by him.

But Weller just stepped in her way again and stopped her by grabbing her hand firmly.

"Jane," he said. "You don't have to do this."

"Yes, I do," she fired back immediately, in that tone that said he had no hope.

Yet he pushed on, couldn't stand the idea of her out there while injured, having to shoot herself up with anaesthetic just to go on a mission.

"Give me one good reason," he challenged, sure that he could counter anything she had to offer.

"I don't want you to go alone," Jane stated.

"I won't be alone, Tasha will come with me," Kurt replied.

Jane shook her head.

"I don't want Tasha to have to go either. And that's not what I meant."

He heard the change in her tone immediately, vulnerability suddenly slipping through. Jane's eyes shifted a shade as she held him firmly with just her gaze.

"I just don't want you to go anywhere without me today okay?" she said, her voice wavering precariously.

Weller felt a crackle go through his entire body, wanted to grab her and hold her to him until she stopped sounding so distressed. But there wasn't the time and Jane probably hurt too much too be hugged the way he intended so Kurt squeezed her hand instead.

"Okay, okay," he sighed. "I just wanted you to be safe."

Jane nodded, gave him a rueful side smile.

"I know," she said. "But I just need to be with you. So we do this together."

In truth, he would always want her there with him, didn't trust anyone else more to have his back on a mission. But he valued her safety over everything else, so of course he'd had to try and protect her.

Seeing the agitation in her changed everything though. If she was that upset at the idea of him going without her then he didn't want her to stay behind, even if it was the safest option.

"Together," he agreed, pulling her close enough to slip in a reassuring kiss and a lingering look. "Always."

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She had been tense all day, had so many qualms about the mission from the start.

For the most part, Jane had tried to push the foreboding feeling away, but it kept sneaking up on her, pressing at her self-doubt. It hadn't felt right setting out to steal the paintings, even though they were already stolen. Then killing a man after breaking into his home had certainly not improved the situation.

But it wasn't until Jane had her ear to the safe when she was overcome with a sense of déjà vu. Except in her case it was almost always a triggered memory, some past criminal deed she stumbled upon in her mind. Breaking and entering, killing and stealing, she hated how many times she had already done all of those things in her life. And now here she was, doing it all again, this time with Kurt by her side.

"You okay?"

She had thought she was but that was clearly not the case. So many things had gone wrong in the forger's place and Jane was still trying to wrap her head around what had happened, what had led them to being in such a precarious position.

What was clear was that she froze when she should have reacted and Kurt had been forced to shoot. After everything he had just been through, confronting all his fears about being a good man. She'd put him in that position, made him into a killer yet again.

"We killed a man this morning," she said, icy coldness spreading across her chest.

"A former hit man and a criminal that was shooting at us," Kurt replied.

It was weird; Jane had expected more of a reaction from him afterwards, had cringed at the thought of Kurt facing the same self-recrimination he had just been through. But he didn't appear to be particularly fazed by what had happened, had taken it all in stride. Which made her own reaction feel even stranger, because she was not okay with it at all.

"After we broke into his house."

But maybe it was his non-reaction that was the problem. That this was where she'd led him, to a place where he was okay with breaking into a man's home and killing him. Even if the man was a criminal and it was in self defense. It was too much like her life with Shepherd; manipulating and stealing and murdering people in the name of the greater good. And she had been wrong then. So what made her so sure that she was right this time?

"I just keep thinking about what you asked me yesterday. Are you the man you think you are? Maybe I'm not the best person to answer that."

The words spilled out of her mouth before she could judge them, all her anxious thoughts of who she was, what that meant about him.

"You know me better than anyone," Kurt stated.

Which was true, why she had been so sure when she told him he was a good man. And the thing was, she still was sure of it. What Jane wasn't sure of at all anymore was her qualification to judge good from bad. She was a child soldier, raised by a domestic terrorist. She had killed people all around the world for the US government, then had tried to take down that very same government by sacrificing innocent lives.

Because who was she to judge after all she had done in her lifetime? She had been so righteous the first time, sure that she and Shepherd were doing the right thing. But how many had died because of her actions then? And now it sometimes felt like she was reliving everything now that Jane had all her memories. Kurt had even said it jokingly, that she had another chance at taking down the corrupt FBI. But sometimes the parallels between her two lives gave her the chills. She didn't want to fall down the rabbit hole of seeking revenge on the government yet again, this time dragging Kurt with her

"Yeah, but what if that's the problem? What if we're too close? What if we can't see clearly? Maybe we have changed, maybe we're fooling ourselves."

Kurt frowned, clearly as unhappy with the way her thoughts had drifted as she was. Jane even recognized how she must sound, as if she was flip-flopping on everything she had just told him the previous day. But that wasn't what she meant at all. It was just hard coming to terms with actually doing criminal deeds again, pulling Kurt with her through the mud of the underworld.

She looked at him shaking his head and wished she could fix her angst and the issue it had caused. She wanted to explain to him that she still saw him as unfailingly good, the definition of a good man. It was her self-confidence that had left her, replaced with anxiety about having hurt so many people already in her life, being put in that place again.

The words were in her head and she was trying to push them through her mouth in a coherent manner when the last of the dials clicked and Jane missed her chance. The safe opened to reveal a geode and a bible just as another team came rushing in, pointing guns right at them.