Disclaimer: I do not own Blindspot. More like it's the other way around… I've come to realize that THEY own ME. :)

A/N: I need to apologize for going so long between updates on any of my fics. The first draft of my book is now finished and has been sent to my beta readers, so I have a little time to breathe and to catch up on Jane and Kurt. I want to get them home before season three starts next month (!), so I'll be putting my other two fics on hold while I finish this one. But I will get back to them.

She'd tried to politely decline his insistence that they get up, as if it was a choice, but he had just smiled and shook his head, and began the arduous process of unzipping the zipper from behind him. Taking pity on him, she put a hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry, would you like some help with the zipper?" she asked.

His arms came back inside the warmth of the sleeping bag quickly, and he smiled at her. "From you? Always."

At that moment they were on equal footing, so to speak, because Jane didn't have to be standing up. She scooted herself towards him, finding that she had a much harder time reaching around him than he had around her. In fact, even when she was pressed tightly against him, which neither of them minded in the least bit, she still couldn't really reach the zipper. Huffing in frustration, she shrugged and told him, "Well, it's official. We're stuck," then adding, "That means we get to stay in here, right?"

He chuckled and shook his head at her, eliciting a grumpy response from Jane. "When the whole team is home and safe, I'll happily lock myself in a sleeping bag with you, alright? For as long as you can stand me. But right now… We need to solve this problem." Nodding glumly because she had known all along what he would say, she pretended to pout. Laughing quietly again, he laid his hands on her cheeks and then leaned in to kiss her for far less time that he would have liked, before releasing his hands slowly from her face.

"We're going to switch places, alright?" he asked her. "Don't worry, I've got you." All she could do was nod, unsure exactly what was about to happen. With that, his hands skimmed her sides until he found her waist, where they tightened around her and suddenly she was lifted into what small amount of empty space there was within the sleeping bag. Somehow he was able to lift her first directly above him – which she wasn't at all opposed to, and then, scooting himself at the same time, suddenly she was on his left side, her back now against where the sleeping bag would open, as it had been the previous morning. It happened so fast, so was a little bit breathless as she came to rest on her right side, laughing the whole time.

"Now, let's try that zipper again," he mused, moving closer until he was flush against her once again.

"You could probably reach it from where you started, couldn't you?" she asked jokingly. "You just wanted an excuse to get closer?"

When he shrugged and asked, "I don't know, does it matter?" as he worked on the zipper behind her, she just shook her head at him, enjoying the closeness and knowing that it would be short lived. "Besides, I don't need an excuse. I always want to get closer to you."

"Smooth," she commented with a grin.

"Let's do this differently than last time," he told her, the zipper now down far enough to let them crawl out. "I'll go grab your clothes and toss them over, and you don't even get on your feet yet. We need to have something to eat before we go anyway. I don't want you hurting yourself by standing up when it's not even necessary."

She was already dreading another day on those feet that hadn't had a chance to recover, and she nodded. "I mean… I'm fine… I can get up…"

Shaking his head at her quickly, he replied, "Again, it's not that I don't think you can. The point is… You don't have to. You don't have to do it all yourself, Jane. Let me help you." His expression was slightly pained as he added, "I hate that there isn't very much I can do for you right now, and that I have to keep pushing you when all I want to do is let you rest… Let me do this."

It hadn't been her intention to say no, and she found his plea extra sweet. Unable to contain the smile that was bursting from her, she just nodded at him. "Okay," she whispered.

He'd finished with the zipper and now had his arms around her again. Suddenly she felt him lifting her up again, moving until she was directly above him, cool air leaking into the sleeping bag from the opening he'd just created. This time he stopped moving and released her, so that for a few seconds she was lying on top of him, bracing her forearms on either side of his head so that she could lean down and kiss him. It was a short but sweet moment.

Much too soon, he began turning slowly so that in a few seconds, his back was to the zipper again. He had his arms around her to help her gently slide back down into the inside of the sleeping bag, so that he could get out and leave her with as much of the warm air as possible.

There will be more of this, she had to remind herself as he pulled back the flap of the sleeping bag reluctantly, moving away from her. She'd had a sudden urge to stop him from going any farther, but it had to happen and she knew it. Besides, all things considered, she had no right to ever tell him not to move away from her.

You want him close to you. That's how you feel, the voice in her head told her matter-of-factly. Of course you have a right to your feelings. Even when they don't make sense, you have a right to them. You know very well that leaving him behind was a sacrifice, and it hurt you as much as it hurt him. You just refuse to admit that to yourself.

She knew that the voice was right, but she also knew that it was going to take some convincing to change her mindset. However, watching him hop quickly towards her clothes and toss them to her before even grabbing a scrap of his own, despite the chill in the air and his own nakedness, she knew that Kurt would work as long as it took for her to believe the best about herself.

When they were both dressed, he rolled up the sleeping bag and took out what was left of the food, Jane staying seated obediently. It wasn't easy to let him take care of her, but she was trying.

Their food supply was low, and their water supply was even lower. It made sense, since this was their third day on the mountain, and the trip should have taken them three days. The monks had given them sufficient provisions, but not an excessive amount. It was hard to know what percentage of the trip they'd actually completed, but if he had to guess, Kurt would estimate that they wouldn't reach the village until at least the end of the following day, if not later. While this wasn't a huge difference, perhaps, it was going to make it feel much, much longer if they ran out of food and/or water before then.

Kurt didn't say a word about it as he gave Jane the last roll, the one he'd saved from the night before, and looked at her sternly until she ate it. He was glad to see that she knew better than to protest by now, his stern expression having told her that 'no' was not an option. He had also pulled out the fruit and nuts that the monks had packed for them, none of which were familiar at all. They both tried different kinds from the assortment, as they tried to keep a balance between eating enough and conserving their supply for later. It didn't take long for them to eat as much as they dared, putting the rest away and then brushing their teeth. Without even asking, he gave her two pain relievers and the last water bottle.

"Do we have another one after this?" she asked him.

He admitted reluctantly that no, they didn't - that was their last water bottle. They tried not to dwell on it, but they also tried to drink as little of it as humanly possible.

"We should be passing the stream today… I think," he reminded her. "It was early in the trek that I remember passing it on the way up. It'll be a landmark that tells us we've almost made it down the mountain."

Though she'd assumed since they'd started the journey home that they would make it, back to civilization, back to New York, at that moment, it was a very hard thing to imagine. Even making it to the stream felt impossible. She wasn't even convinced she could make it through the next hour, but she didn't dare say any of this aloud, lest she get Kurt started on the idea of carrying her again. Instead, she nodded weakly.

Kurt had wrapped Jane's feet in gauze until the sores on them were no longer visible. It had taken most of the gauze they had in their first aid kit, but she hadn't argued with him. He deemed it a necessary precaution against infection, which was just one of the many urgent reasons that they needed to get off the mountain – their first aid supplies were also down to almost nothing. Besides that, Jane was down to her last pair of clean socks again, and they would have to find a water supply in order to be able to wash the blood out of the others. She liked to think that the pair she was wearing over the gauze wouldn't end up smeared with red again, but knew that that might very well happen. The most frustrating thing was that there was nothing she could do about it.

"I can carry you, you know," he told her as he laced up her boots for her. He'd looked up to find her cringing, even as he was being as gentle as humanly possible.

"Kurt, no. We're going to be walking all day. And besides, I'm not as light as you think I am, for some reason."

"What? You're saying I can't do it?" he asked, pretending to be offended.

Smiling at him with a mixture of amusement and love for this man who was offering something that would end up being physically impossible, simply because he hated to see her suffer, she just shook her head.

"Save your strength for when I can't walk. If it gets to that point, okay?" she asked, unsure of whether her words would comfort him, or agitate him further.

He hated to think of how much pain Jane would have to have been in before she surrendered completely, but she made an interesting point. Right now she still had the will to go on. If that will ran out, he would have no choice but to carry her. Even though he knew logically that she hadn't meant her words as a promise, he took them that way.

"Right," he replied. "When you can't walk anymore, I get to carry you."

Jane could see that he hadn't quite taken what she'd said quite as hypothetically as she'd meant it, but she supposed that the fact that he wasn't insisting on carrying her anymore for the time being would have to be good enough.

Once again, Kurt stood up and then hoisted Jane up as well, ensuring that she had her balance before dealing with the tarp and once again strapping all three bags to himself securely. "Alright, here we go," he mumbled as he reached his arm around her waist. "Ready?"

Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath. Without having walked a single step, her feet already felt like they were on fire. She tried to envision dousing them with cool water, but at that moment, using her imagination wasn't helping.

Taking a deep breath, she opened her eyes and tried to smile. "Let's get this over with," she told him through clenched teeth.

"So," he said as they started walking slowly, "What's worse, blistered feet, or poison ivy all over?"

She chuckled, recognizing yet another effort on his part to distract her from the reality of her situation by bringing up the severe allergic reaction that she'd had to the plant years ago. "That's a tough one," she said slowly, trying to split her focus between putting one foot in front of the other and talking, which wasn't easy. "They both kinda suck."

Chuckling to himself, he nodded, not having expected that particular answer. It wasn't as though he could disagree with her.

"Though if I have to choose, I'm going to say that poison ivy was worse."

"Oh yeah? Why's that?" he asked, curious how she had come to her decision so quickly after just having declared that the question was difficult.

"Well," she began slowly. "Even though having poison ivy was almost like a mini vacation from work, and I had your undivided attention for a few weeks… In the end, we went back to being… coworkers. And not just that. Things got a lot worse before they got better. More than once… A lot worse." Her voice had grown quieter and quieter, and by the end it was barely a whisper.

She was remembering now, thinking back to that night, when she'd watched him walk away from her front door, and to that sinking feeling in her stomach. She could smile sadly at that night now, remembering the feeling that it was all over, even if she hadn't known what "it" had been at the time. So much had happened since then. So many painful memories… but so many sweet ones, as well. She had been naïve enough to think that that night was hard. Now, looking back, she felt sorry for the Jane she watched in her mind, because there was so much pain ahead of her. This was silly, of course, because she was that Jane, even if she didn't feel like her, and that pain was in her past not her future.

He swallowed hard, remembering that night just as vividly as she did. "It was stupid to think that that would work," he now announced, and she looked at him in surprise.

"That what would work?" she asked curiously.

"Going backwards. Us. Back to just coworkers." He shook his head then. "No… we were never just coworkers," he told her quietly as they continued walking. "But then, I don't think we were ever just anything."

She nodded, the corners of her mouth in the shape of a smile, but the light that belonged in her eyes wasn't there. Of all the things in the recent past to stew over, he could only hope that she wasn't now adding the old ones back into the mix as well.

"Jane, we made it past that a long time ago," he reminded her. Glancing up at him in surprise, she nodded quickly – too quickly – as if to reassure both of them that she knew that. Of course, he knew her well enough to know that when she did that, it meant that either she didn't believe it, or she at least had doubts.

"I know that look," he told her knowingly, and she looked down at the ground, half smiling, half guilty. They both knew he'd caught her with her head full of doubts, but he let it go. After all, this was a delicate balance they were dealing with, and finding their way back to whatever normal was supposed to be was going to take a very long time. Glancing back up at him uncertainly, she nodded, but said nothing.

"We barely knew anything back then," he continued. "About you… about any of it. So many things have crashed down around us in the time since then… but we've always come back stronger. Haven't we?" He looked down at her, raising his eyebrows.

Now her smile was back, tentative as it was, and the light was back in her eyes as she glanced up at him for a second. That was how he knew he'd gotten through to her.

"Yes, we have," she agreed softly, looking back down at the path ahead of them.

"And we will again," he replied, watching her smile widen even as she didn't look back up at him.

In her chest, it felt as though her heart had just swelled to twice its size, and for a moment she was overcome with the warmth that spread from her chest throughout her entire body. There was no logical reason why he should love her at all, when she thought about it objectively… and yet, not only did he love her, but he did so seemingly without question or hesitation. Which, of course, was an oversimplification, but that was the way it seemed to her at that moment.

After that, they leaned into each other a little more than before, nothing else needing to be said for the time being.

The day was warm, but the air felt sticky more than hot, and their walking, even at their slow pace, didn't help. Now and then he offered her the last remaining water bottle, insisting that she have a sip. She did so only because he refused to relent unless she drank at least a little. It did not escape her attention, however, that he wasn't drinking at all himself, and she started to use that as a bargaining chip. She wouldn't take a sip unless he did. They both knew that their situation was growing desperate, and that if they didn't reach the stream soon, they would have no water at all. There was nothing they could do except continue forward, hoping that the stream would soon come into view.

And yet, once again she was breathing heavily and Kurt slowed to a stop, pulling her to a stop as well. "Jane," he said sternly, stepping in front of her and immediately feeling her lean forward the bulk of her weight against him. "We need to stop and rest."

"We have to get to the stream before we run out of water," she insisted stubbornly. "You know it's the truth."

He wasn't about to deny his worry that they would run out of water, so he exhaled in frustration.

"I promise to rest when we get to the stream, if that's what you want," she added, the harshness in her voice falling away. "Besides, it can't be that much farther… it's not like we made a wrong turn somewhere."

For a second he wondered, afraid that this could be exactly what had happened, but he reassured himself that there had only been one path down the mountain. They had never come across an alternate route that they could have taken.

"We're not going to die of thirst if we take a 15 minute break," he insisted.

Sighing in resignation, she could see from the look in his eyes that he wasn't going to let up easily. Though she was normally equally stubborn, she didn't have the strength to argue with him right now. She wasn't against taking a break, but she knew that starting again after sitting down was going to feel even worse. At the moment, her feet felt a little bit numb – though she knew better than to say this to Kurt.

"Is the grass wet? Can we just sit right there, save the work of packing and unpacking?" she asked, suddenly feeling the tiredness catch up with her now that she'd stopped moving.

Upon a quick inspection, Kurt stood up, shaking his head. "Not wet," he assured her, already having put down the three bags he'd been carrying and helping Jane lower herself to the ground. He positioned himself behind her, so that she could lean against him, which she did immediately.

Closing her eyes, she tried to ignore the throbbing sensation coming from her feet. She knew that she'd been through worse. Of course she had. She'd been both shot and brutally tortured. Still, she couldn't deny that she was in pain. Leaning her cheek against the cotton of his t-shirt, she attempted to breathe in and out slowly, and to think about something else.

"I don't know why I'm always the lucky one when it comes to feet," Kurt said with a chuckle, out of nowhere.

Jane assumed that he was going to tell another story about Taylor, but no, this one surprised her.

"I'll never forget the year that Sarah had these rainbow sandals. She couldn't have been more than six, maybe seven at the most. They had every color on these things. Horribly tacky, as far as I was concerned – not that I cared one way or the other what my little sister's sandals looked like. But man, she loved those things. She wore them everywhere, and I mean everywhere. Literally wore them out."

He had pulled his arms around her without her even noticing, and she wondered if she was going to fall asleep. She knew that she shouldn't, but she also knew that Kurt would encourage her to while she could.

"She had complained to me that her foot was hurting. We were out riding bikes, and I had tiny little Taylor on the back of mine, holding on for dear life…" She could see him smile out of the corner of her eye at the mention of his friend, but she said nothing, not wanting to interrupt. "Sarah said that the bottom of her foot hurt. I told her to show it to me, and wouldn't you know? She'd worn a hole in the bottom of the thing – all the way through. Not just a little hole, either. I looked at the other one, and it was almost as bad. You wouldn't believe how she cried when I took the stupid things away from her."

Despite her exhaustion, Jane couldn't help but smile at that part, chuckling slightly.

"I only managed it when I agreed that she could hold a funeral for them, and bury them in the back yard," Kurt added.

For a second, it was if the air had been vacuumed out of the space that surrounded them.

Of course, they both knew who else had been buried in the Weller's back yard for so many years. "I hadn't thought of that in a long time," Kurt added, suddenly stammering. "Since before we knew…"

Jane turned to look at him, her heart breaking for him for the thousandth time. He met her eyes sadly, and for a split second she saw it – recognition of what they were both thinking. She just nodded, feeling powerless to help him. At the same time, he pulled his arms around her more tightly and breathed in slowly, as if drawing strength from her. Turning slightly, she put her hand over his heart, tucking her shoulder and the side of her face against him. Almost immediately, his hand came up to cover hers, there against his worn out t-shirt. She felt his heartbeat, and in the moment that was all that mattered.

And then he smiled, appearing to force himself back to the original memory, shaking his head and chuckling at his younger sister's childish silliness. "She never did get a pair that she loved quite that much again, as far as I know," he lamented. "Although, her relationship with shoes wasn't damaged by the loss of those, that's for sure."

After they sat in silence for a minute, she leaned up and kissed his cheek. "Come on," she told him. "Let's get going."

Letting out what sounded like a disappointed sigh, he nodded glumly. "It's hard to let you go," he told her with more emotion that his words usually held.

"You're not letting me go, silly," she reminded him. "You're coming along with me. Threatening to carry me, I believe," she reminded him.

"I still might," he replied, the smile returning to his face. Still, he didn't move.

Looking at him with a tender expression, she just shook her head. "My husband and I have somewhere to be," she reminded him. This seemed to do the trick, because he finally removed his hand, still holding hers, from over his heart, loosening the tight cocoon he'd formed around her. He got up first, and then scooped her up once again, gently placing her on her feet and watching her wince for a split second, determination once again taking over.

She reached her hands up to his waist, holding on to steady herself as he loaded the gear back onto his back, and then he put his arm back around her waist, as he had many times before.

They'd taken about five steps when she asked, "Can you see the stream yet?"

"I promise you'll be the first person I tell," he said soothingly, grinning when he saw the unamused look on her face.

"Considering that we're the only ones here, I think I'd be upset if I wasn't the first one you told," she replied, shaking her head at him. He kept chuckling at his own joke as they walked, falling into step beside each other once again.

Jane was trying to occupy her mind with something besides how much her feet hurt. This was dangerous, she knew, and she couldn't afford to stumble across Remi's memories – she couldn't afford to break down again, now that time was so important.

"What other distracting stories do you have for me?" she asked Kurt, who looked over at her in surprise. It wasn't often that Jane asked for help quite so directly, but they both knew that was what she was doing.

She tried not to let her face look as pathetic as she felt just then. "I don't really trust myself to comb through my thoughts at the moment… There's no telling what's in there." At that instant, looking up at him and slightly distracted from the ground in front of her, her foot hit an uneven patch of dirt at just the wrong angle, causing her to put too much weight on it in just the wrong place, and to gasp in unexpected pain. For a second she couldn't breathe, and she held in the feeling of wanting to scream.

Kurt caught her quickly, lifting her off the ground to relieve the pressure on her feet. "Alright," he told her without hesitation. "My turn." He didn't specify exactly what he meant by that, but when he swung her up in front of him, one of his arms now under the back of her knees and the other around her back so that he was carrying her across the front of him, she got the idea quickly.

"Kurt, no, I said if I couldn't walk…" she protested, but he was shaking his head at her sternly.

"I care too much about you to watch you in pain like that any longer. Now, I'm not saying I'm going to carry you the rest of the way home. I probably can't. But at this moment, I'm going to carry you so that you give yourself a break. Do we understand each other?" His words had been stern, but now he was looking at her worriedly, and she felt the fight draining out of her.

Would it really be the worst thing to just let him take care of you? she asked herself. The answer, of course, was 'of course not.' It just wasn't something she was used to. She was accustomed to sacrificing her well-being for others, not letting people do things for her.

Nodding sheepishly, the words started to tumble out, and she caught them only half way. "I'm s—" Inhaling deeply in frustration, she shook her head. She wanted to say other things too, things that he would tell her were equally unacceptable. Like that she didn't deserve such devotion. That she was fine. That she could handle it all, she'd been through worse.

Instead, she settled on something that was very difficult for her, but that she knew was the right thing to say. He'd told her that he was going to carry her so that she could give herself a break, and he'd asked her if they understood each other.

"Yes."

That was it, just one word. For a second he looked down at her in surprise. He had honestly expected to her fight him on this.

She rolled her eyes at the look of surprise on his face. "Shut up, just keep going," she told her with a grin. He leaned down and kissed her forehead, and she let her head fall wearily against his chest. Of all the places she could have ended up, being carried by Kurt wasn't the worst thing in the world, even if she was pretty sure she could have walked…

Just enjoy it, the voice in her head told her. It wasn't long before she found her eyes closing. Of course, she felt guilty that Kurt had to carry her, but otherwise she was perfectly content.

It seemed like only minutes later that she woke up. They had stopped, and Kurt was still holding onto her – she was now curled up in his lap as he sat on the ground beside the stream they'd been trying so desperately to reach.