Author's Note: Any medical WTF in this chapter is entirely my fault. :D
Keeping her back to him, in the vain hope of retaining some modesty around a man who'd already seen every inch of her body a million times, Remi sat down in silence. Weller crossed to the kitchen sink and washed his hands, then returned. The couch dipped behind her as he took a seat, and she closed her eyes, steeling herself for the ordeal to come.
She hissed with the pain as he used surgical skin wipes to clean the wound. Was he hurting her worse on purpose because of what she'd done to him? She bit back the urge to curse at him and held as still as she could.
"Does it need suturing?" she asked, when he began to rummage through the kit.
"Three or four should do it, and some butterfly strips." His voice was distracted.
Remi bit back the urge to thank him. They were enemies now. Thanks were pointless.
"Just getting the Lidocaine ready."
"I'm surprised you're bothering," she said, unable to keep the bitterness out of her voice. "I didn't think terrorists warranted anaesthetic."
"Yeah, well, I'm no sadist," Weller responded shortly. A moment later, Remi felt the sting of the injection into her flesh.
As he returned his attention to the first aid materials, she tried to fill the silence. "You were out of line last night."
Weller made a sound that was suspiciously like a snort. "I was out of line? I wasn't the one whose actions put us in danger of being blown to little pieces, Remi. That was all on you."
She scowled, knowing he was right about that part. "I can't believe you're taking good qualities from me and applying them to your wonderful, saintly Jane, but you're making out like there's nothing of Jane in me, except checking you didn't die in the explosion. I know they say love is blind, but…"
"That's really been bugging you, huh? Why exactly do you want me to see the good in you?"
She'd asked herself the same question, several times. As had her hallucination of Roman. "Because I'm not some wicked witch, screwing with your life because I'm just so evil. You can't just see the world in black and white, Kurt."
Her wound was good and numb by now, but she still felt the tugs on the surrounding skin as he sutured the edges of her wound together.
"No. You're not a witch. You're a puppet, Remi. You dance to your mother's tune. In fact, I'm gonna bet you have a plan to find her and break her out of CIA custody, don't you? Because you don't act on your own. No, you're a good little soldier—always have been."
His words were casual, almost dismissive, and too close to the bone for her to bear. A chill swept through her. Gotta warn Violet he's guessed part of the plan. "Fuck you."
Weller's tone was almost amused. "That's about the calibre of response I was expecting." He leaned in and spoke closer to her shoulder, his warm breath ghosting over it. "Hold still."
Wishing she had six layers of clothing to hide the ripple of pleasure that ran over her skin, Remi snapped, "You think you know me from a few scraped-together flashbacks that Jane put together? No. You don't know anything about me."
"Yeah? I know more than you think." Weller took a few moments to finish whatever he was doing before he continued, "Even if your motivations and opinions aren't so clear these days, I can still read your facial expressions. Your body language. I didn't put together that you were Remi before, because it's not exactly a common situation. I assumed Jane was grieving for Roman, and then dealing with the terminal diagnosis. But now—now that I'm looking specifically for you—you'll never fool me again, Remi."
The determination in his voice was unnerving, and the familiar way he spoke her name set her on edge, even as his proximity and the brush of his hand against her shoulder made her shiver. "Good thing I won't need to."
His voice still held a sardonic note, untempered by his amusement. "You're trying to fool me right now. You think I can't tell what effect my touch has on you?"
Of course he'd know. He was one of the most observant men she'd ever met, which was why she'd known her cover as Jane wouldn't last too long. She crossed her arms more tightly across her chest, scowling at the wall.
Weller began to dress the wound, his hands still careful. He seemed to have backed away from the subject of her body's responses to him, which she had to admit was decent of him. Part of her wished he'd push the point, though. If he acted inappropriately, she'd have a reason to kick his ass.
"So tell me this, Remi. Why do you think the FBI are no better than terrorists? You've been working with us for months. You've seen the work we do. You've stopped terrorists right along with us, saved the lives of innocent people. Why make us out to be the bad guys?"
Remi rolled her eyes. "You think that because your team is one of the good ones, that makes everything okay? The first day Weitz started on the job, he made us stop investigating the links between the terrorist bank and the legitimate bank it was connected to."
"Terrorist bank? You mean the one you stole half a million dollars from without checking for surveillance first? Amateur move, by the way." Weller smoothed adhesive tape over the dressing, then dropped a clean shirt in her lap. "There. You're done."
Remi pulled on the shirt with relief, then got up and put as much distance between them as she could. "I had limited time and no alternative sources of cash," she defended herself. "And you're changing the subject. Weitz is dirty, or at the very least, morally questionable. And your team didn't even raise an eyebrow."
"If Weitz is dirty and not just self-interested, we'll get him. We've dealt with dirty directors before. You have to play a long game with them."
For a moment, Remi thought he was talking about Mayfair, before she remembered Hirst.
"And you are the last person who should be talking about questionable morals," Weller added.
His gaze was knowing, and she tried not to squirm, knowing her conscience was hardly clean. "You've done what you came here to do. Now get out."
Kurt stood up, and for a moment she thought he was actually going to go, but he only crossed back to the kitchen sink to wash her dried blood from his hands. "Nice try," he told her, wiping his wet hands on the front of his jeans, "but you're not getting rid of me that easily."
"I can knock you out and leave you in my dust before you even see it coming," she warned him.
"I know. But you won't. Because I'm all the backup you have against Eve, and you know I'll keep you safe."
Remi cast a longing glance at the pistol she'd set down on the table by the door. Hopefully, it would distract him from the second weapon she'd stashed under the couch. "I don't need anything else from you, Weller."
He sat back down as though she'd just offered to make him a coffee, the antagonistic glint in his eye sending a combination of irritation and arousal through her bloodstream. "You never could admit it when you needed help."
Remi sighed. "I'm still not Jane."
"You don't remember anything of her life? At all?" The pain that flashed across his face made her feel almost guilty.
"No. They injected me with the ZIP. I went under. I woke up in the hospital three months ago and everything I had was destroyed."
Did she see sympathy in his expression for a second? It didn't matter. His eyes hardened again soon enough. "Think how Jane felt. She woke up in a bag with tattoos all over her, and nothing but my name on her back to tie her to anyone."
"You should be flattered. We sent her to you because we knew you'd take care of her until she could take care of herself."
For the first time, Weller's face showed true anger. "You sent her to me because you wanted her to be close enough to frame Bethany Mayfair. Don't you dare make out that this was some favour you were doing me."
Remi's temper flared in response. "Mayfair was dirty. She put away countless people with insufficient legal evidence to do so, using an overreaching secret NSA surveillance program."
"Mayfair was acting under duress. If she hadn't used Daylight, she would have been silenced. After it was shut down, she spent the rest of her career trying to make up for it."
"If she felt so bad, she should have blown the whistle. She was protecting herself. No matter how she felt, she was complicit."
"She was protecting Sofia Varma, her partner. If she'd gone down, Varma would have gone down too. And she had orders from the White House."
"Oh, that makes it all just fine, then," Remi said, rolling her eyes.
Weller got up and went to the front window, turning his back on her to check there was no sign of Eve and her associates. As she had at the evidence storage facility, Remi marvelled at the way he'd dropped his guard around her. If she'd been planning to shoot him in the head, she could have done it ten times already.
"We should come up with a way to lure Eve here. Take her out before she gets the drop on you again."
Remi bristled. "That implies she will."
Weller turned and advanced on her, his face cold, but his eyes pained. "You're sick, Remi. I'm guessing your symptoms are worse than you've told me, which means we don't have much time to find the rest of Roman's drives. Patterson and Rich found one last night, and it had a ton of medical data on it. They're sifting through it now, and if they find something, they'll contact me. But we need to act as fast as we can. We don't have time to hide from Eve."
Staring at him, Remi tried to make sense of everything. Weller was taking charge again, trying to problem-solve and step forward, the same way Shepherd or one of her unit commanders would have. It was tempting to fall in with him, accept the chain of command he was establishing. Sure, she could lead a team, and had done so on many occasions, but she was no general.
But Weller's support was conditional on her becoming Jane again. That complicated things. Did she trust him? Yes. From his perspective, she was almost holding his wife hostage. He couldn't betray her, or there was the possibility of Jane paying the price for it.
But she didn't want him around. Things were too complicated now he knew the truth. She didn't trust herself while she was with him. She just wanted to ditch him and run again—evade Eve, rendezvous with Violet, and break out Shepherd tomorrow night, as planned—but if she gave him the slip, he'd probably tell Patterson what was going on. If that happened, Weller would be her only link to the information on Roman's drives. She had to stay in contact with him.
She cursed under her breath, then marched into the kitchen to grab a glass of water. After draining it, she massaged her temples and the back of her neck, trying to fend off her rapidly growing headache.
Weller's voice behind her was closer than she'd expected, making her jump. "You don't want me here? The feeling's mutual. I don't want clean up your mess, Remi. I don't want to work with someone who has one eye on the nearest exit at all times. Someone who had no qualms exploiting my personal loss as part of a terrorist mission. But if there's even a chance I can save your life—Jane's life—and bring her back to me, I'm just gonna have to deal with you. Because I won't abandon her."
I don't like being in the same room as her.
Remi flinched, wondering if she was starting to hallucinate Weller's thoughts in her head now. But no—the wave of pain accompanying the words felt like…like Jane's.
"You look like you could use some rest," Weller said shortly. "Go lie down on the couch. I'll keep watch for Eve."
Remi shouldered past him, taking the advice only because she was suddenly too exhausted to do anything else.