It's a bomb. Why is it always a bomb?
Weller hears Jane hollering into her comms unit from a short distance away and curses at how fast she is, despite rationally knowing that she's their best chance, closest to the little girl strapped to a chair with a bomb.
Jane's sprinting her hardest, takes a knife out as she's running and slices through the girl's bonds, picks her up and runs for their lives away from the bomb just as Kurt arrives at the chair and sees that the device is absurdly just taped onto the chair with duct tape, easily rips away when he grabs it.
Weller only has time to run a few feet with the thing before he throws it as hard as he can, then sprints away, praying as he runs that he'll make it back to Jane, that he can shield both her and the girl from the blast.
He's almost there, catching up to Jane because she's carrying a sobbing girl as she runs. But then there's an extremely loud explosion, a giant blast of pressurized air, his body flying through the air. And then, before he even hits the ground, there's just the dark, nothing else.
Weller comes to slowly, his head both ringing and hammering all at once, his body not quite responsive yet. But the panic hits him immediately and he starts looking around the scene for Jane, before he's even assessed his own injuries.
He spots her just about the same time he's figured out that his lungs are in a hell of a lot of pain but the rest of his body is relatively functional. There's blood from shrapnel, something embedded in his thigh, but mostly he'd been protected by his body armour.
Kurt pushes himself to his feet as fast as he can, limp runs over to his wife who is face down on the ground, not moving. His heart feels like it's going to to jump straight out of his chest as he kneels next to her, realizes she's somehow not wearing her own vest.
Jane is completely still, a dead weight as he supports her head and rolls her over onto her back to reveal the little girl; wearing the vest and peering up at Weller with a scared look.
Kurt returns the look of total fear as he realizes that Jane isn't breathing, hasn't got a pulse. But thankfully his body immediately jumps into action and he immediately has his hands on her chest, pumping her heart for her.
The little girl cries beside him but Weller barely notices when another agent comes and carries her away. Nothing but insane frantic need pushes through him as he hammers on Jane's heart, breathes air into her lungs. He feels her ribs break under his own hands and still he has to keep at it frantically. His own lungs can barely keep up with his exertion but Weller keeps performing CPR on pure adrenaline and panic, somehow ignoring the distress of his body.
At some point he realizes he's sobbing as he calls out to Jane, tells her to come back to him. It feels like he's been beating her heart manually forever, he has no sense of time since the explosion. But he just keeps at it, will keep at it until he hears her breathe. Because there is no other option, he can't even contemplate losing her.
Kurt pushes and he pushes and, just as the very first sinister tendrils of doubt start slipping into him and he's about to pass out from physical exhaustion, Jane makes a little breathy noise, shudders a tiny bit.
He's so spent that Weller thinks it's possible he imagined it, wanted it so bad he somehow made it up. But when he slips his fingers against her neck, he feels a pulse – weak, but unmistakably there. And then her chest rises as she takes in a breath, makes him completely come apart.
So Kurt's unabashedly bawling when she finally raises her eyelids slowly, searches for him right away. He reaches for her through a veil of tears, his hand on her jaw, his eyes meeting hers with complete desperation.
Jane tries to sit up right away but grimaces and there's no strength in her body as he presses lightly on her shoulder to tell her to remain lying down. He knows she's definitely got things broken inside of her, that she should not move at all. So he encourages her with his eyes to stay on the ground, tearfully tells her over and over that she's okay, that the paramedics are coming.
Jane's trying to say something, but her voice is nearly inaudible and it's clearly making her distressed. Thankfully it only takes him half a second to realize what she's asking about, tells her that the little girl is fine, that he's okay too. But still she looks upset, glares at his bleeding leg, the chunk of metal still protruding out of it.
He'd been so numb to everything else that the wound had genuinely not even registered in his mind until she pointed it out. Even now he doesn't feel it, just keeps on staring at Jane in half panic; not entirely convinced that she's alright after not breathing for so long.
"I'm fine, Jane. It's just a shrapnel wound, it's not bleeding that much," he says. "But I'm worried about you. Can you tell me where you're hurt?"
She still looks stunned, stares at him with wide eyes. Weller realizes she hasn't managed any words since waking up, starts to worry that there's been damage to her brain from oxygen deprivation. But he tries to swallow back that fear as he talks to her soothingly, tries to calm them both.
"it's okay, breathe with me," he says, feeling momentarily elated and somewhat less panicked when Jane does as he suggests, starts to inhale and exhale in time with him.
For awhile he just holds her head and her chest gently, keeping her calm and still until she can tell him how badly she's injured, if he can let her move, if he can crush her in his arms like he wants to more than anything.
Finally, Jane's eyes stop searching around wildly, settle into a deep focus on his. This time she tries to get up again and he doesn't stop her, supports her back as she pushes to her elbow and groans.
"Hey, slowly," he cautions, holding her gently from behind, supporting her front and back. "Talk to me, Jane. Tell me what hurts."
She pushes up a bit further and he gathers her into his lap, wraps his arms, feather light, around her torso. Then waits to see if she's managed to find words yet, how anxious he should be.
"Ribs and lungs hurt. Headache," Jane chokes out quietly as she nestles further into him. "Nothing spinal, I think. But pain in my lower back and abdomen."
Kurt lets out a tortured breath, can't imagine better words coming out of her at the moment, despite the distress she's in. She had been dead, in his arms just minutes ago. His heart nearly stops just thinking about it now.
"Okay, you still probably shouldn't move," he says into her hair. "We'll just wait here for the paramedics."
He snuggles his chin into her hair and tells himself that she's alive, relatively okay. Yet there's still that deep pit of terror in his gut that fixates on the memory of her lifeless body in his hands.
"Are you okay?" she asks just then, her voice hoarse, barely audible.
Weller almost laughs with the absurdity of the question, how okay and not okay he is all at the same time. She saved the girl and is alive and in his arms, worrying about him after being dead. But part of him is emotionally frozen, stuck in the past, still praying for her to breathe.
When he doesn't answer, Jane frowns, struggles to sit up and look at him. But Kurt restrains her gently, kisses her to buy himself some time.
"How long?" she croaks, tilting her head up to search for his eyes.
Weller shakes his head.
"I don't know," he answers truthfully. But from how his body feels, it must have been awhile.
"You must have been so scared," she replies, trying to reach her hand up to his face.
Kurt shakes his head again, tries to fight off the emotion that surges into his throat. She's beginning to become awfully pale, tremoring a little in his arms as shock starts to set in. And still her eyes are searching for his, silently trying to determine if he's alright.
"Yeah, I was really scared," he agrees, exhaling loudly. "But you're okay and little Lily is okay so I'm more than okay now."
Jane closes her eyes for a moment, making his stomach clench. But then she takes a raspy breath in and opens them again, gives him skeptical look.
"You are not," she grunts.
"Help me up."
Jane manages to push to her knees before Weller reacts, tells her to stop moving. But of course she doesn't comply, even though her every action looks laboured and awkward. So then he's forced to support her aching torso as she turns around on her knees, shifting slowly with gritted teeth.
Finally, she achieves the position she wants and stops, kneeling in front of him, her arms wrapped around her own torso, looking straight into his eyes. Weller's not sure what she's searching for but he's in no condition to hide anything from her at the moment. He is physically and emotionally spent, locked up in too many moments of near death.
So when Jane unwraps herself and brings her hands up to his face, the last of his will fails him.
"I got to you, and you were dead," he mumbles, almost unable to say the terrible words.
"But you saved me," she replies, stroking his cheekbone. "I'm fine now."
Weller frowns, grinds his jaw.
"I felt your ribs breaking underneath my hands, Jane," he says. "And I think you're bleeding internally."
Jane almost laughs, then grimaces at the action.
"Well, you're bleeding externally," she sighs. "But we're both going to be okay."
Kurt shakes his head stubbornly, frowns at her tenacity. There had been much too much of this in their lives and he's terrified that one day he won't make it in time, or she won't perform her usual miracles. And he'll lose her the way he lost Taylor; regret it the rest of his days.
"Listen to me, Kurt," Jane says, her hand still firmly on his jaw, her voice barely audible due to lung trauma. "You weren't too late and you saved my life, probably twice. And we saved Lily too. Everything is okay now, because of you."
He wants to tell her that it's not true, that he was almost too late, that he should have been faster, stronger, better equipped to deal with the situation in every way. But then she pulls his face to her, kissing his forehead sweetly before cradling his head to her broken ribs.
"Listen to my heart," she whispers into his hair. "It's beating because of you."
"Everything is okay, Kurt. We did it, again."
"But what if…" he says, his breath still caught in his own damaged lungs. "What if you…"
"Shh," she murmurs into his skin. "You were there for me, Kurt. Just like I'll always be there for you. And I know you'll be there every time, from now until we stop doing this, together."
He's softly crying into her chest; against the ribs he was crushing not long ago, his head resting feather light on her sternum. She's shuddering a bit as she holds him, reminding him that she's going into shock even as she's trying to reassure him.
"You're shaking," he says, feeling her tremble go through his own body. "You should lie down again. I'm alright now."
He can't see her from his position, but he can tell she's shaking her head. He confirms it by looking up, sees her frowning at him slightly, exhausted and pale.
"Okay, let's switch then," he offers, raising his head away from her chest, lightly folding her into his instead.
Jane seems accepting of this compromise, immediately wraps her arms around him and nestles her head in, just above his body armour.
For a long time he just holds her there, waits for his own mind to let go of the residual stress, all that trauma that still just sits in his brainstem. He breathes in Jane, all of her, continually reminds himself of the truth in her raspy words.
Until eventually he's no longer stuck on the what ifs, the picture of her lifeless in his hands. Kurt re-emerges in the present, holding onto a trembling Jane, feels his body finally release the last of its tension knowing that she's right, as usual.
He will be there for her, every time, throughout time. He is never going to be too late.
##
A/N I know, I know, the likelihood of someone's heart restarting from CPR alone is extremely low. But the show already did it twice and I'm living in their universe :P