She's staring in the mirror, not sure what she's looking at, what she sees.
Her body is almost alien to her now, unfamiliar in too many ways. Waking up to it had been surprisingly shocking, despite having been in on it all along.
Remi looks at herself now and can't help but wonder about the three missing years, what Jane had been through. The tattoos are one thing but the new scars are extensive and brutal. It's a strange sensation looking at all those markings on her body and not really knowing where they came from.
It's almost weirder having read the files about what happened to her; it made her feel even more detached from her own body. Especially the way it was reported by Jane, the torture described so clinically, as if she hadn't been present at all.
Pain is a dream, she remembers.
In that case, her life had mostly been a dream. Leading up to this moment. Staring at herself in the mirror, fighting the feeling of impermanence, non-existence.
It's not exactly surprising that she hasn't felt herself since waking up in an altered body. Remi is still singularly determined but missing a chunk of her confidence. It had been hard for her to even identify what was wrong at first, hadn't felt emotionally insecure like that since she was a child, before she came to understand her place in the world.
But after a long period of rare introspection, Remi had finally come to realize that she just feels alone and unsure of herself. It's hard to keep up morale without anyone else around, especially after finding out that she had been the key to destroying the whole thing. She missed Shepherd's fervour, Oscar's love and loyalty, Roman's constant attempts to show his worth. She had destroyed the only family she'd ever had with a plan that she ultimately hadn't come through on.
So even though her fury and her hate are still there, none if it is as fierce as it should be, especially considering the circumstances. She should despise them all, her insipid "team", her pathetic husband. But they've somehow slowly gained her grudging respect, despite her ongoing prejudice against them.
The key point of evidence in her lack of heart is Weller's continued existence, despite the urgings of hallucinatory Roman. She can't explain it but there is an internal cry that emerges every time she thinks about actually killing him. Remi, of course, refuses to look at what that feeling is made of, tries not to acknowledge it at all.
She would be absolutely loath to admit it but she absolutely does not want to be sick and alone, despite how inconvenient it is to have Weller around. She's starting to feel weaker, the hallucinations becoming more real. There's palpable fear in her about her condition now, but she still tells herself it's only the worry that she won't get her mission done in time.
Yet why else would she keep him around, if she really didn't need him?
Sometimes her brain curses her with personal insight, despite her best efforts at denial. Remi scowls at herself in the mirror, frowns at the implication her own mind had just made.
She does not love the enemy, no matter how he touches her, so goddamned reverently she swears he forgets to breathe. She honestly keeps expecting him to have an aneurysm but, except for the stitched up hole in his side, he seems to be fine. She just had not been expecting how much he loves his wife, the way he looks at her, touches her.
Right now, standing in front of the mirror, she doesn't get it. Remi examines her naked tattooed and scarred body, frowns again at wearing Jane's skin. At least she is still fit, one thing Jane had managed to not fuck up. Yet her illness had already cost her some muscle and she's worried about losing the rest, wasting away.
She's looking down at her torso, at a particularly ropy scar when Weller sneaks up on her and puts his ice cold hands on her warm body. Remi nearly jumps out of her skin, caught in a moment of vulnerability; wants desperately to run away but forces herself to stay in place, keep up the act.
His hands start at her hips then slide up her spine, heating up by the time they reach her neck, where he finishes with a kiss that makes her entire body tingle.
"You are so beautiful," he says, genuinely sounds in awe.
Remi gathers herself, tries to tamp down her reaction to his touch. She needs to push it off somehow, forces her face into a scowl.
"I'm dying, Kurt," she mutters with a scoff.
It usually wounds him when she says it, gains her some emotional space. But even pressing on his pain has somehow become become less satisfying of late.
This time though, Weller brushes it off, kisses her again behind her ear.
"You are so alive," he murmurs. "You just saved how many people?"
She can't respond because she's holding her breath, the hair on her neck rising with a heady mix of fear and desire.
He moves his hands along her scars, has a particular path he takes. But this time he diverts along the route, brushes his thumbs over her new scrapes.
Remi's first reaction is to flinch away, despite how intimate everything has already been. She just hates how gently he touches her; how fucking good it makes her feel.
"Let me see," he says, soft against her skin.
He drifts his fingers against her new wounds, the ones she had deemed not serious enough for medical to examine. Remi swears she did not do it in anticipation of Weller doing it himself, but it's hard to lie to a party of one.
"You almost died today," he muses. "I am so lucky."
Oh Weller, you are the opposite of lucky, she thinks with a mental sigh. You've been fucked over all your life and still you care too much.
Kurt pulls out the first aid kit; cleans and dresses her scrapes so carefully she almost can't stand it. Then when he's done covering her wounds he runs his thumbs over the dressings, then goes back to playing with her tattoos, tracing all her scars. It's a pattern that is already familiar to her, though it had taken awhile to understand what he was charting. But he does it so often, she had quickly figured it out and now she doesn't know how to feel, doesn't see how he can find beauty in any of it.
"What do you really think?" she suddenly asks, in a tone that makes her cringe.
Weller shakes his head ruefully, kisses her neck again.
"We've had this conversation before," he says.
"I know, I just need some reassurance," Remi confesses, the words spilling out of her mouth before she even realizes what she's saying.
She has to restrain herself from putting her hands up to her lips in shock, trying to claw back the escaped words. Hell, she hates it when that happens, when Jane's vulnerability comes erupting out of nowhere.
"Well, then you've come to the right place," Kurt replies, nuzzling the bird tattoo on her neck.
Remi both knows it and hates herself for it. Yet she wants nothing more in the moment, can't help but give herself over to him.
He runs his fingers oh so slowly along the worst of the scars, in a way that makes it undoubtable how beautiful he finds her.
"You've gone through so much," he says, low and sad. "It's unbelievable."
Fuck, she thinks. She should never have let this happen.
"You are so gorgeous. Your fire, your resilience." he mutters, his hands floating across the bullet wound on her abdomen. "You are so damn tough. And I stand in awe of you every day."
His mouth takes over for his hands again, in that way that her body can't fucking resist despite what meagre resistance her mind puts up. Because by then he's kissing her all over and she's incapable of any more thought.