A/N: I'm not a 100percent happy with this but I'm leaving on a trip to Amsterdam over the weekend and won't be able to get anything out before Tuesday at best. Hope you'll still enjoy this. :)

"How are you feeling today, Jane?" Doctor Hall send her a friendly smile and sat back into his chair, his left leg crossed over his right, a pen in his hand ready to start scribbling notes on his clipboard and his gaze open.

Jane watched him closely, like she had every session, she was still looking for something treacherous or suspicious that could tell her that he wasn't really on their side. Up until now she hadn't had much luck with her scrutiny but she wouldn't just trust her first impression of this man when the last therapist she had had, had ultimately turned her over to Shepherd.

"I'm good" she replied – her default answer for the question – and like every day he simply cocked his head to one side and waited for her to continue. They played that game for roughly five minutes until he realized, again, that she wouldn't be the one to break the silence. A fact that, in itself, worried him.

Eventually it was him who started talking again.

"I've heard that the president is going to be visiting the NYO today and that he is going to want to talk to you. How do you feel about that?"

She nodded and – remembering that she had promised to at least give therapy a try – answered "I'm not sure what to expect. I don't know what he wants to talk about with me."

"Does that make you anxious?"

Jane frowned at him "In what way? Am I scared? Not really, I know he couldn't fight me. Am I insecure of what to say? I have told this story so frequently, I think if someone woke me in the middle of the night I could recite it perfectly. Am I eager for his words? No, I don't think they will change much." The people would still be dead and it would still be her fault.

"I know the president is not very likely to physically fight you" the psychologist agreed seriously and leaned forward in his chair, his elbows resting on his knees, his hands holding the pen. "But you could be scared of what he could say. He wants to talk to you one on one, am I not right? Are you afraid that he could attack you with words? I know we have talked about this already but it's not a shame to be afraid."

"I'm not afraid" she insisted "Whatever he's going to change isn't going to change the facts."

"Yes. Facts." Doctor Hall picked up the word, underlining it in the air with his pen "You seem to be very focused on the facts but I think we can agree that facts always look different from different point of views."

Jane shook her head and crossed her arms in front of her chest, leveling the good doctor with her gaze "Shouldn't a fact be something objective and you know – factual?"

"Indeed" he nodded, taking in her posture "But in this case, for example, the fact is that something horrible happened. That is unlikely to change and we have to accept it as it is. The question of guilt – or fault for that matter – however is something else entirely."

"No" she denied "There are things that led up to … the event. Those are facts. They are documented, written down and well known about. The question of fault is not really a question." She hadn't wanted to say that much, she had gotten caught up in the moment, wanting him to understand that this was indeed as she said it was.

"There are facts" he agreed calmly "about what happened on the days before the attacks and the files have been gone through probably a million times. Still, no one seems to blame you, except for yourself. Why do you think that is?"

She glared at him. "They're not objective."

"But you are?" he shot back without batting an eye but raising his eyebrows incredulously.

Jane wouldn't answer that. With her arms still crossed in front of her, she leaned back in the chair and returned the doctor's gaze unblinking.

"Fine" he sighed, giving up the silent contest "Let's talk about your connections to Sandstorm" he glanced down on his clipboards and his notes from the last two sessions "Are you still in contact with any member of that organization?"

"No. Of course not" she gave back, annoyed at being asked the same questions over and over again.

"Have you actively supported Sandstorm in conducting the attack?"

"Yes."

Again he raised an eyebrow at her stoic gaze "Things you did after the memory erase?"

"Yes." She had gotten Mayfair killed, she had helped steal the microchip and hadn't even managed to upload it to the FBI servers.

"Did you consider joining your former organization when they were carrying out the attack?"

"No. Never. I was with Weller, we were trying to locate them."

"So, your fault lies in not being able to locate the bomb in time" he summarized "Is that right? Because the other things were barely the build- up for what was supposed to happen after the attack. You didn't trigger the attack itself."

She nodded, not sure where he was going with this.

"Following that logic, wouldn't Agent Weller be just as guilty?"

What? "No!" she exclaimed, letting her hands drop to her knees and leaning forward – mimicking the psychologists posture "He's not in any way guilty of what happened in Washington! He did everything he could, more than anyone else would've done. He's a good person! A good agent!"

Doctor Hall nodded slowly "But didn't you work together?"

Jane paused, frowning at him "That's… different. He didn't do this."

He could see that her mind was reeling with everything that had just talked about and so he gave her a minute to collect herself before he spoke again, taking up another topic.

"You have told me on Monday that you feel like they won't ever let you be" he said gently, leaning back in his chair again and watching her reactions "You feel like you're being followed and we talked about paranoia. There has been sand in front of your apartment. Did you ask your neighbor whether he has a terrarium or not?"

She shook her head. The sand had been gone when Kurt had gotten home and if Patterson hadn't seen the sand as well she wouldn't even have believed herself that it had been there. There hadn't been anymore sand on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday, the hall was as clean as it always had been. Not even a trace of a sole sand grain.

"Has there been another incident like that?"

The doctor pulled her out of her thoughts and suddenly she remembered the message she had gotten and she felt her heartbeat accelerate. How could she have forgotten? Was it all the hectic in the office that morning? For some reason she hadn't even thought about that message again but now… Was it really paranoia talking to her? She should've asked Patterson if someone else had gotten a similar message.

"So, yes?" intrigued he dropped his pen and watched her intently "What happened?"

"It's nothing" she tried waving her hand to put the thought off but suddenly her limbs felt limp.

"Then tell me about the nothing" he urged her and for a moment she wanted to get up and leave and go somewhere else – anywhere. But she had promised Kurt she would try to get better to her best of her abilities and this was a part of that… talking to a psychologist about her worries.

"I've gotten a message this morning" she began, pulling out her phone and turning it so he could see the text.

"A storm is approaching New York City. Better prepare and keep the people you love safe" he read aloud "Do you know where this link leads?"

Jane shook her head, regarding the message again herself "Patterson once told me I shouldn't click on links I don't know the origin of. There could be viruses and all sorts of stuff there…" It seemed like a distant memory now. When the blonde had inculcated this fact into her it had been about some online game she had been playing that Tasha had shown her.

"That's true. May I?" he asked reaching for the phone and taking a closer look when she gave it up to him "You can't see the number that sent this?"

"It's something like 11111" she said, having tried looking at the number beforehand "Like some companies use for sending out ads."

"Maybe it is an ad for you know first- aid books and shopping lists with what you should buy beforehand…" he suggested "I get messages like this all the time. Mostly from the pizza delivery company, though."

"Yeah maybe" taking back her phone Jane locked it and put it back into her pocket "I'll ask Patterson about it…"

While the psychologist nodded in agreement and ended their session, telling her again that she shouldn't carry all that guilt on her shoulders and wishing her good luck for the talk with the president, her thoughts were racing and she barely heard half of what he was saying.

Finally, he got up and held out his hand "Goodbye, Jane. I'll see you tomorrow." With that she was released.

Jane left the room as fast as she could without looking as if she wanted to escape something. When she had turned a corner and the office wasn't in view anymore she slowed down and leaned against the wall for support, trying to calm herself down. Slowly she let herself sink to the floor, her phone in her hands without a conscious thought.

With closed eyes she tried out the breathing exercises Patterson had shown her but they wouldn't work – her head was still spinning and after a moment she gave up on it and glanced back down on her phone. Pulling up the message again she stared at it for a long while.

Should she follow the link? Would that do her any good or would she go even crazier? Maybe it was some website to prepare for actual storms… or it was a hidden message Sandstorm was trying to send her…

Keep the people you love safe.

That was all she wanted to do, wasn't it? Why was she failing so miserably at it?

Without further ado she tapped the screen and followed the link. It seemed to take forever to load and she was about to simply close the tab again when it finished.

ERROR 404. The website you were trying to reach is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later.

Letting out a breath she hadn't even realized she had been holding, Jane dropped her phone into her lap and leaned her head back against the wall. It was a false alarm. It was some weird ad linked to some weird website that wasn't even working. It was nothing… Nothing at all. She had been overreacting again.

Suddenly the phone she was still grasping in her hand vibrated and she almost let it fall to the floor suddenly frightened of what she would see next.

But it was just Kurt telling her that he was busy and that he was sorry he couldn't pick her up as usual.

Just Kurt, no eerie messages with strange links. Nothing out of the ordinary. Except for the fact that he trusted her enough to not go running again. That was new.

Getting up she quickly considered her options before typing a reply. She didn't want to spend more time in SIOC than absolutely necessary, not when today everything and everyone seemed to be hustling from one place to the next, always busy and she would be sitting there useless as usual… no, there'd be enough of that later.

Instead she went by the locker room quickly and donned her workout clothes before heading to the gym. As usual around that time it was empty, even more so now that everyone but her had something to do to prepare. Stepping around the room slowly she let her eyes wander over the equipment.

The good thing about their gym was the fact that it had video surveillance so that, if Kurt wanted to see if she was indeed still there, he would only have to log into the security system and see it for himself… he wouldn't have to waste time running through all of the NYO to see whether or not she had run off again.

She started with a quick warm up – stretching her shoulders and the back of her legs lightly before stepping up the pace more and more until she felt her breathing pick up and the first beads of sweat on her face. Following her usual routine she stepped onto the treadmill then and ran for 20 minutes nonstop with full speed and a slight incline.

It felt good to be huffing and puffing again, to feel her heart and lungs and legs work hard and she barely felt dizzy at all – better than she had been feeling just last week. She tried pushing herself without pushing too far… she knew that neither Patterson nor Kurt had the time to spare to take care of her today.

When she was done she stepped down and made her way towards the punching bag – her primary outlet for any emotion as of lately. Looking down on her hands she had them already clenched to a fist when she saw her still bruised knuckles going white. Releasing her grip she watched the blood return to her fingers in fascination before pulling another fist.

They were already scabbed- over, no open wounds, but she knew from experience that even light pressure could pull the scab open again and then she would be bleeding again.

Again, no one had time to take care of her.

She was only being practical, she told herself, when she stepped over to the shelf in the corner taking out bandages and fitting boxing gloves. It took her a while to administer the dressing but she did it to the best of her abilities and she could almost see Kurt being excited that she was taking care of herself. Undoubtedly he would be thrilled, thinking that she was on the way to recovery.

She silently promised herself that she wouldn't tell him the real reason behind it. He didn't need to know.

Highly focused, she started throwing punches, trying to stay fixated only on the punching bag and to keep her thoughts on the inanimate object instead of the faces that usually accompanied her boxing sessions. She didn't have time for a mental break down.

After another half an hour she was done and thoroughly sweating from head to toe. She felt good, as good as she hadn't had felt in some time. She felt alive without having to hurt herself. It was good for a start.

Texting Kurt again that she would take a quick shower and meet him in the bullpen afterwards she returned to the locker room did just that – the water temperature as cold as possible, she let the sweat wash from her body. She paid mind to not shower indefinitely because she didn't want him to worry if he should start looking and for her, so it didn't take her longer than 15 minutes until she was freshly showered and back in her normal clothes on her way to the bullpen.

7 minutes and 42 seconds.

Jane had been here for barely 8 minutes and already she felt her throat starting to close up again and had to consciously keep herself from clawing her fingernails into her thenar. She was sitting on her desk, the same working place she always occupied, and watched everyone else hustle past her with important tasks and documents – completely engrossed in the preparations for their visitor.

The files they had gone through so often and that she knew by heart were everywhere. Digital, analog, spoken about… there was no getting away from the words that were permanently etched into her brain telling her and everyone around her of her part in the whole disaster.

She couldn't see anyone from her closer team, for which she was grateful, but she knew some of the people rushing past her and even if she didn't know them, she was absolutely certain that they knew her. Their looks told her as much. Were it still the tattoos that attracted the attention or was it simply her presence? A traitor in their own ranks. A murderer. A terrorist.

Maybe the blackness of her soul had somehow bleed onto her skin?

Looking down she found that the tattoos were still the only black thing on her arms but she wasn't fully convinced.

Her skin looked exactly like it had that moment that she had stepped out of the bag in Time Square – safe maybe for more bruises and scars – and still she felt so much differently. She had climbed out of that bag, wanting to know who she was and who did this to her and now? Now she wanted to forget who she was and forget what she had been a part of.

She wanted to stop existing.

Feeling her heartbeat accelerate she stood up abruptly. She couldn't break down – not here where everyone could see. A quick look over her shoulder told her that Kurt was still deeply in conversation in his office and hadn't seen her stand up. Good.

Moving very deliberately, trying to act as if everything was okay and if her insides weren't currently screaming at her to punch something – herself? – until she would bleed, until she would feel in control again, she left the SIOC and wandered around the halls to the left – seemingly aimless.

But she wasn't. She knew exactly where she wanted to go – an empty office in the south wing that had nothing much except for a desk and three chairs. Going there had become her escape plan for moments like this, when everything got too much and she had to get away from the people in this office, and she had even told Kurt about it so he wouldn't worry.

He probably still did but that couldn't be helped.

Finally she reached the right door and as soon as she had stepped inside and closed the door, she felt her put-on casualness crumble as well as her body and she barely got to the chair in time to let herself plop down on it before her breathing started picking up and it was all she could do to keep herself from hyperventilating.

In. Out. In. Out.

She could hear Patterson's voice in her mind.

In. Out. Murderer.

The eyes that had fallen close were suddenly pulled open again when she heard her own voice instead.

Imposter.. In. Out. In. Traitor. Out.

In an attempt to stop the voices altogether Jane pressed her hands to her hears, leaning forward until her head was laying on her knees and she tried rocking herself back in forth. They wouldn't stop. They would go on forever.

AH.

She clenched her hands and dug her nails into her temple.

STOP. Why wouldn't it stop?

InOutInOutInOutInOutInOutInOutInOut.

Even Patterson's voice in her head started hyperventilating. She had to stop this somehow.

When the first tear fell she felt her whole body spasm but it was enough of an outlet so she could take a deep breath again and with the strength she gained from it she pulled the MP4 Player out of pocket of her hoodie and put the headphones on, pressing play.

The song started out so quietly it was barely audible. Soft piano sounds reached her ear and slowly grew louder as the intro went on. When the first line of the song started she had gotten her current seizure under control – at least enough so she could slowly unclench her fists and instead hugged her knees with her arms.

Gradually she managed to regulate her breathing until it was only slightly faster than it normally was and she felt a weird sort of quiet take over her body as it usually did when she listened to this song. Inch by inch she pulled herself together – physically and mentally – and sat up in the chair again, leaning back against the backrest with her eyes closed.

Did you find it hard to breathe?

Did you cry so much that you could barely see?

You're in the darkness all alone

And no one cares, there's no one th–

She hit pause the second she felt the door open and whirled around but relaxed immediately when she saw who it was.

"Relax, it's just me." Jane returned the smile he shot her weakly. "Can I sit?"

Nodding she pushed her own chair a little further to the right to let Reade take a seat in the other chair.

"I brought tea" he said with an awkward nod to the two cups he was still holding up, giving her one of them "I thought we could use the break."

"You don't have to-" she started.

"I know" Reade send her a smile and took a sip from his tea "I want to. I know it's a lot. All of it."

She nodded again and held the warm cup closer to her face, softly blowing at it and enjoying the warmth in her hands and on her nose. For a while they simply sat like that in companionable silence, taking a sip from their tea from time to time, until Reade pulled her out of her thoughts again, pointing to the player she had put on the table when she had reached for the cup.

"What are you listening to?" he asked curiously.

"I-uh" looking down on the device she cleared her throat "Patterson gave it to me and she put some songs on it because she didn't know what I liked and yeah it's-" she tried to think of words to describe the song she had just been listening to but came up blank. Instead she put her tea down on the table and took the player into her hands, fiddling with it "Uh- do you want to listen?"

At that his smile widened and she felt some of her uncertainty ease when he put on the headphones and she pressed play, playing the song in her mind as well.

But did you see the flares in the sky?

Were you blinded by the light?

Did you feel the smoke in your eyes?

Did you, did you?

Did you see the sparks filled with hope?

You are not alone

'Cause someone's out there, sending out flares

"It's beautiful" Reade said when the chorus was over and he took the headphones off again, handing them back to her. "It sounds hopeful."

Jane shrugged, putting the player back on the table and going back to concentrating on the cup in her hands.

"It's gonna be okay, you know that, right?" she looked up when she felt him lean towards her and their eyes locked. His brown ones full of compassion and hope, her green ones scared and tired. She wanted to be as certain as he was that everything would be okay again, it was tempting and yet… Observing how he put his hand on her lower arm, giving it a gentle squeeze, she couldn't grasp how this person – and Kurt and Tasha and Patterson – could still care for her.

Suddenly the door was being pulled open and the reply she was just trying to contrive was gone in an instance when Patterson's head poked around the corner.

"Guys! He's here!" The blonde exclaimed excitedly – and was there a little nervousness as well? "The lobby just called, he's coming up now any second."

A/N: Song is Flares by The Script.