Disclaimer: I do not own Jane or Kurt or Blindspot. Writing about them is simply the outlet for my obsession.

KURT, ZAPATA, READE AND PATTERSON

When Kurt had finally arrived back at headquarters that afternoon, not too long after Zapata had called and demanded his presence, he had looked and smelled like hell. As far as he was concerned, his insides matched his outsides, because he didn't just look like hell, he felt like it, too. He found the rest of the team waiting for him in Patterson's lab, the room ominously quiet. Normally he would have found it strange to find his team just sitting there silently, but at that particular moment he was too thankful for the lack of noise to be suspicious of it – his head was throbbing unforgivingly, despite the Tylenol he'd taken, and the less noise there was, the better.

Stepping through the doorway, the next thing that he noticed was that the lights in the room were far too bright. Have they always been this bright? he wondered, squinting slightly and wishing he could go back to sleep. His head pounded even harder, though he tried his best to ignore it. He didn't say a word as he entered the room, simply stepped through the door and stood there while his eyes adjusted to the florescent lighting – which, of course, had never been a problem before – and just waited for the others to notice him. He was not in the mood for this.

Patterson, Zapata and Reade had been seated silently at the counter, having failed in their attempt to make small talk while they waited for Kurt to arrive. Like him, they were all in shock over everything that had happened in the past 24 hours, and making conversation simply required more energy than any of them had at that particular moment.

Zapata was seated facing the door, so she was the first one to notice him. "Hey, boss," she called, but her voice held none of its usual levity. The other two turned quickly to see Weller standing just inside the doorway, looking lost. Not lost as in he didn't know where he was going, but lost as in he didn't know what to do next.

Really, he didn't know what to do. It took a few seconds for him to process that anyone had spoken to him, and at that point he glanced up and nodded slightly at the group, then took a few more slow steps toward them. It was just too much, however, and he stopped, glancing around distractedly before his gaze focused on the ground. I'm here, he thought, forgetting that no one else could hear him, for all the goddamn good it'll do.

He was in far worse shape than any of his team mates had ever seen him before. In the years that the group had worked together, Kurt had never come to work hung over before, though he was definitely no stranger to the odd night out, or to alcohol in general. Today, however, it was pretty clear that what he'd been doing the previous night – getting shit-faced drunk – had now caught up with him, and that it was hitting him hard.

Fuck, my head hurts, Kurt thought. Why did I… fuck!

His mind had formed the words before he could stop it. Of course he knew why he'd been drinking so heavily the night before. The fact that he'd forgotten for a split second may have seemed like a reprieve, except that it made it worse when the reality that had to crash down around him all over again. He didn't need to finish asking himself why he'd done this to himself, because the fragment of a thought alone had summoned to his mind the one person that he least wanted to think about – Jane.

He saw her before his eyes with startling clarity, her green eyes even brighter than usual. The vision of her was so clear, it was as if she was actually there in front of him. This wasn't helpful, of course, because that meant that not only did he feel like absolute crap physically due to his hangover, but his mind howled in agony as well. I can't do this now, he thought desperately, fighting back against the tempest of feelings that came with Jane's face as he attempted to clear his mind.

As the others sat and watched Kurt, still standing by the door, a change came over his face. For a few seconds, his features appeared to contort in anguish before the look began to fade slowly, as if he was willing himself to ignore whatever it was that had just occurred to him. It wasn't hard to guess what he'd been thinking about – there were only three real possibilities, and one of those was by far the most likely.

After all, with Weller, it was always about Jane. Ever since he'd met her, it had always been about Jane, no matter what other things he might worry about.

Zapata, seeing that Kurt seemed to be stalled in place, got up and walked slowly toward him, watching him carefully and trying to read him. Reade and Patterson looked on sympathetically from where they sat. It was hard to watch Weller, the guy who nothing ever seemed to get to, like this. It made Reade, for one, even angrier with Jane, but he held his tongue. This was not the time.

"You okay, Weller? Cause you look like absolute shit," Zapata said, but not with the same edge that her brutal honesty usually held. This time, despite her tough words, her tone was soft.

But Kurt ignored both the question and Zapata's tone. He wasn't okay, and he figured that she knew it. It was probably pretty obvious, so why lie and say that he was? He needed to know what was so important that Zapata had insisted she couldn't tell him over the phone. "What's going on, Zapata?" he asked her in a raspy voice.

"You should probably sit down for this one," she told him seriously. Not in the mood to argue, he nodded almost imperceptibly before shuffling forward toward the chairs that the others had occupied only a few minutes before. Zapata sat down as well, facing Weller, then exchanged tired glances with Reade and Patterson. Zapata hated the idea of having to break the news of their boss' death to him, but she knew that of the three of them in the room who knew, it should be her. Patterson already had tears forming in the corners of her eyes, and Reade didn't seem like he was quite himself with everything that had happened. Zapata just felt like it should be her.

Reade looked at her questioningly, silently asking her if she wanted him to deliver the news, but she shook her head slightly. Then, turning back to Kurt, she took a deep breath and told him what they knew about Mayfair. It wasn't much. As they'd feared when Patterson had confirmed the blood residue in the abandoned basement that Zapata and Reade had found belonged to Mayfair, she'd finally been found dead. The details were sketchy – the information was being very tightly controlled, so they didn't know anything else yet.

Patterson and Reade stepped out to get the group some coffee, but Zapata stayed with Kurt, who appeared to be in shock. It made sense. This on top of everything else he'd already been through in the past twenty-four hours, and a massive hangover to boot… She just wished there was something she could do.

Ten minutes later, when Reade came back with the coffees, Kurt was still sitting, dumbfounded, at the counter. The information had gone in, but he was still having trouble processing it. The others just let him sit, knowing that as horrible as it was for them, Kurt was dealing with much more. It crossed the lines between business and personal for him, because really, his job was his life, and because Taylor Shaw had led him to his job. And then Jane had connected the two once again.

Just don't say her name, he told himself. Don't even think it.

He'd gotten good at repressing his emotions over the years, but his was not something that could be repressed, no matter how much he wanted it to be.

Mayfair's dead. Jane is a traitor – and not just a traitor, but she lied and said that she was Taylor Shaw. But no, my father killed Taylor Shaw. So Jane is just… a liar. Everything I thought I knew about her… everything I thought we had… it was all lies.

Zapata was sitting in front of Kurt, watching him worriedly. He certainly hadn't handled the combined news about his father and about Jane very well… She wasn't sure if he would suddenly snap and do something unexpected. She wasn't afraidof him hurting her, but she was afraid of what his grief was doing to him inside.

Reade glanced over at Patterson as she entered the room. She'd been cornered in the hall by one of the higher ups, who had seemed almost glad that Mayfair was gone, on their way back from getting coffee. He made her sick, but they had no choice but to deal with him. He'd been the one to tell them that Weller was taking Mayfair's job. Weller had been so overwhelmed, he hadn't even mentioned it.

Patterson approached the others at the counter, looking shaken. Noticing her distress, Reade waved her over to him. Though it was out of character for him, Patterson was surprised when Reade wrapped his arm around her shoulder for a sort of half hug. She exhaled tiredly and leaned against his shoulder. Both of them, like Zapata, were watching Weller. No one spoke for a long time, simply sipping their coffee and wondering what the hell they were going to do next. Nothing they'd ever been through had prepared them for this, and they were going to have to find a way through it – which at that moment, seemed daunting.

It had been nearly an hour since Weller had arrived, most of which had been spent in silence, when Patterson looked up suddenly, as though she'd suddenly realized something important.

"Guys," she said, glancing at each of them in turn, "we're going to figure out what happened to Mayfair, right? And get to the bottom of—" she stopped, her eyes darting up to Kurt. She had been planning to say And get to the bottom of what happened with Jane, but suddenly it didn't seem like such a good idea. "—of all of it," she finished, compromising with herself. She knew that Weller knew what she meant, which was confirmed when he winced slightly. "We owe it to her," she added, not specifying which her, whether Mayfair or Jane, but then quietly, she said, "to them." She paused, wondering what kind of reaction her next statement would get. "What if it's all related? Mayfair… Jane…" She'd uttered the last word tentatively, but Weller hadn't reacted. "It's too much of a coincidence."

Zapata finally tore her attention away from Weller's face. "Are we up for this?" she asked, looking from one of them to another in turn.

"Absolutely," Reade replied quickly.

"Oh, yeah," Patterson told her, looking and sounding more like her old self than she had since they'd found out about Jane's arrest. Leaving Reade's side, she approached Weller cautiously. It wasn't that she thought he'd hurt her, but she didn't want to set him off. She knew all too well about how easily that could happen when someone was in as much pain as Kurt was at that moment.

"Weller… what can I do?" Patterson asked softly.

He shook his head at her slowly. "There's nothing you can do, Patterson, but thanks." She closed the rest of the distance between them and hugged him tightly for a long few seconds before letting him go again, then stood back.

Zapata gave up on trying to find a subtle way to bring up what she was thinking. "Weller, maybe you should—"

But he didn't even let her finish. "Zapata, you're not getting rid of me than easily. I'm not going home, and that's final."

The sudden force behind his voice surprised her. It was as if he'd just suddenly woken up and joined the conversation. She looked at him skeptically, but he shook his head.

"Not gonna happen. If there's one place I need to be, it's here," he told them, looking at each of them in turn so that they would know how serious he was. A headache is not going to stop me from doing something this important, he thought, suddenly feeling much more clear headed than he had when he'd arrived. Whatever had happened to Mayfair, he was going to find out what it was. As far as Jane went… well, he wasn't really interested in helping her out. The team could work that part out on their own as far as he was concerned. He already knew all he needed to know.

Zapata glanced from Reade to Patterson. "OK, so we're doing this? Because I get the feeling that our friend," she glanced towards the hallway, in the direction of the man who'd cornered Patterson in the hallway – the same man who's told them repeatedly to shut down the Jane Doe project – "isn't going to like us taking this on. Anyone concerned?"

Reade was already shaking his head emphatically. "Hell, no. This is way too important." His tone changed slightly, and suddenly he sounded more like the Reade that she knew and loved. "Way too much for you to handle without me." He looked at her seriously, though she could see that he was joking, and she reached over and pretended to punch him. He jumped back out of range just in time, and she just shook her head at him.

Looking back at the blonde, Zapata wasn't quite sure Patterson was up for this new assignment, despite what she'd said. "You sure, Patterson?"

"I told you," Patterson replied without hesitation, "We're gonna get to the bottom of all of it. After all, they would do it for us." Patterson glanced at Kurt for a split second, but he didn't react. Zapata couldn't help but smile at the determined look on her friend's face.

Kurt watched Zapata rally the team one by one, and despite feeling numb with the shock and grief that had continued to assault his senses, he couldn't help but be impressed with how Zapata had morphed into a kind of pseudo team leader all of a sudden. Despite the shock that all of them felt, there she was, keeping them focused. He was proud of her.

Zapata leaned forward, prompting the others to do the same. When she spoke, her voice was barely a whisper. "We need to meet somewhere else to do this. Away from the prying eyes." She glanced back at the hallway again, then back to her team. They all nodded, thinking of the room from which they'd unofficially coordinated their last case, after having been told to shut down the Jane Doe project – which they hadn't done. They agreed to meet there shortly, but to take different routes to get there and to stagger their departures to attract less suspicion.

Twenty minutes later, they stood in front of a white board much like the one they'd used in the past on which to collect the information they had about a case, so that they could begin this investigation the same methodical way they did on every case they worked. At one end, Zapata wrote "Mayfair" inside a circle. At the other end, she did the same thing for "Jane." Then they noted the few details that they knew for sure about each one.

Kurt wasn't sure how much help he would be, or how he would manage to keep his composure in the face of so many things weighing so heavily on him. But he was here, and figured that even on a bad day, he'd be of some help. Never mind the fact that Mayfair would've sent him home, and he knew it. Officially, he was Mayfair now, and unless someone could force him to leave, he wasn't leaving.

"Okay," said Zapata, holding the dry erase marker at the ready, "what else?"

XXX

JANE

She knew that she'd been in that room for less than a day, but it felt like years. She'd pushed herself up against the wall and tried her hardest to block out everything by curling herself into a ball and pressing her head down into her knees. She'd tried her hardest to cease to exist, to simply disappear in the hopes that the pain would disappear with her… but alas, it didn't work that way. When she finally lifted her head, hours later, to stretch the soreness out of her neck, she was disappointed to see that everything was exactly as it had been the last time she'd looked.

At various points in the day, she would suddenly feel as though she was being watched, even without looking up from her cocoon, and she figured that she probably was being watched. At one point during the afternoon, they'd sent Dr. Borden in to try to talk to her. He'd gone so far as to crouch down in front of her on the floor and asked her to talk to him, to say something, anything she wanted to tell him. He'd almost begged. She'd desperately wanted to tell him everything, every bit of it, just to get it off of her chest. But she knew that it wouldn't solve anything, it would only make it worse.

And so she said nothing. What was there to say? She was guilty, and she knew it. Of course, she hadn't done the things that she'd done with the intent of harming anyone, but sadly that didn't make much difference, and it certainly didn't make her innocent. Not that they would have believed her anyway. No, she'd been complicit. She hadn't wanted to betray anyone – least of all Kurt, or even Oscar, but that was exactly what she'd ended up doing. It was hard to decide which one she'd betrayed in the worse way – the one she'd killed physically, or the one she'd killed emotionally.

Yes, at least Weller was still alive, she kept reminding herself, but it was hard to find much solace in having done the right thing – if what she had done could be considered the right thing – when all she could think of was the look on Kurt's face, the look of betrayal just before he'd told her to turn around, before he'd arrested her. Arrested her. At gunpoint. All she'd ever wanted was to be near him, for literally almost as long as she could remember, and now he would never look at her again. As if that wasn't bad enough, she'd gotten Mayfair killed, or at least that was what it looked like from her perspective. And Oscar? The guy she had apparently loved? She'd killed him herself. She'd brought everything crashing down around her and now she would have to live in the ashes.

You did this to yourself.

Her own voice, and yet not her own voice, from the video still haunted her. She had no answers, only questions, and now that was all she would ever have. Not only could Oscar no longer tell her what had happened before, but the FBI sure wouldn't be giving her access to any of the information they had, either. If they ever figured out what had happened to her. But then, they weren't trying to find that out anymore, were they? No, the "Jane Doe project" was over with.

She felt completely numb from the constant assault of her thoughts, hour after hour. When she grew tired of putting her head down on her knees, she simply stared straight ahead at the opposite wall. The windowed door which they'd entered through was to her left, and once in a while she would sense movement there, but she ignored it. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered. No one could help her. No one would want to help her. She didn't even want to help herself, after all, so she couldn't blame the others.

Toward what must have been late afternoon – judging the fact that she'd been arrested in the middle of the night and that they'd given her two meals since she'd been in that interrogation room – two meals that she had failed to touch – a man came to see her.

He looked like so many other men in the halls of the FBI – sickly pale skin, a dark suit, a short haircut, and a vacant look on his face. He sat at the table and attempted to lure Jane to the other chair, tried to get her to talk to him, but as she had with Dr. Borden, she refused. Don't bother, she thought instead of telling him aloud, I'm not worth the energy. Everyone knows I'm guilty. It wasn't even solely that she didn't want to talk to him, though that was part of it. In addition, even the thought of sitting in that chair in that interrogation room was too much for her.

After all, the last time she'd sat in that chair, she'd sat face to face with Kurt.

He'd been so concerned about her, so desperate to know why his name was on her back. Though he'd clearly been uncomfortable, he'd let her put her hand to his face in an attempt to retrieve a memory of him – a memory that she hadn't been able to make herself remember, and now she understood why. Because I'd never had memories of him to start with. At least not childhood memories. Because I'm not Taylor Shaw. Her eyelids squeezed closed of their own accord and she felt tears on her cheeks. No, she couldn't do it, couldn't sit at that table with a stranger. She couldn't. Not even if she'd wanted to… which she didn't.

You are not a criminal, she tried to remind herself. You were forced to do what you did.

Though it sounded impossible, she was both right and wrong at the same time, and she knew it. There was no getting around it. She was guilty, and that was that. She didn't deserve anyone's help. But she had also been coerced. It was impossible.

And yet, at the same time, it was so simple. As she stared numbly at the wall, she couldn't help but wish for what she'd had, for Kurt and rest of his team to be on her side, and that they would somehow be able to solve this, like they always solved impossible cases. That they would help get her out of this mess. She knew that such a thing would never happen, but that's the thing about wishes... they don't have to be based in reality.

She didn't wish for her life before the memory wipe or before the tattoos back, didn't wish for Oscar, despite the fact that he'd been her fiancé… She felt horribly guilty about what she'd done to him, but she could live with him being gone. She didn't want to go back to that person, that stranger, that she'd been. The one who'd so carefully plotted against the FBI, who'd given up her whole life – but for what?

No, she didn't wish to be that stranger again, especially not now that she knew a little about her. That person – whoever that was – didn't seem like someone she wanted to spend much time getting to know. If only she could make herself understand what her own plan had been… and what the right thing to do about it was.

But mostly, logical or not, she just wished for him, which only made everything hurt more.

She stayed in the same spot on the floor, against the wall, until they finally came to take her to a cell for the night. It was a relief to finally leave that room where the memories haunted her, even if the cell was tiny by comparison, like being kept in a box. Though she'd thought that sleep would claim her quickly, as exhausted as she was from the very long and draining day, instead she lay awake on the hard mattress in the cramped, square cell, aware of every creak and groan from anywhere in the building. Finally, mercifully, when she was afraid that the night would never end, sleep finally claimed her.

XXX

KURT

He'd thought that he didn't want to ever see her again, and he didn't. His emotions were so jumbled and confused that he couldn't have articulated them if he'd tried. And yet, after several hours with the team, going over what they knew about what happened to Mayfair and trying to reconstruct details that they didn't have, he'd excused himself to get yet more coffee and somehow ended up in the hallway that led to the interrogation rooms. It was the last place he wanted to be, but there he was. The closer he got to the where he knew Jane was being held, the more his pace slowed and his pulse quickened.

What the hell am I doing? he asked himself. He didn't have an answer, and yet he continued on, albeit slowly. It was as if something, some outside force, was drawing him there against his will. He wanted nothing more than to turn back around, but he pressed forward, dreading the moment that he would have to see her – and yet unable to stop himself.

The lights were on in only one of the interrogation rooms, he could see from a distance. He stopped about ten feet from the door and peered in, not seeing Jane seated at the table where he'd expected her to be. Had she escaped? Somehow he doubted it. She'd allowed herself to be brought in without a fight, after all. He took small, tentative steps forward, peering around inside the room until finally he saw her, curled into herself on the floor, sitting against the wall.

Once again, the emotions were too many and too tangled up together for him to be able to understand what he felt. A surge of anger shook through him violently, but at the same time there was so much sadness, which was hard for him to understand. She betrayed me, he thought angrily, I refuse to feel sorry for her! The problem was, however, that he couldn't stop himself. He had wanted to protect her, despite the fact that she could probably have kicked his ass if she'd tried hard enough. There had been something between them that he'd thought was real – it had to have been be real… except that it hadn't been. It had all been… what? A game? A con? A mission? He had no answers, and it was already eating at him.

His hands were squeezed into fists before he realized it, and thankfully he resisted the momentary urge to charge into the room and confront her. And say what, exactly? he asked himself.

At that, he felt himself deflating. No, there was nothing he wanted to say to her. What was left to say? He knew enough to know that she wasn't who he'd thought she was. And in the end, that was the only thing he needed to know.

XXX

KURT, ZAPATA, READE AND PATTERSON

Zapata looked up when Weller re-joined the group. He had his coffee, which was what he'd said he was going after. However, he'd been gone a long time, much longer than just getting coffee required. "There you are," she told him. "We thought you'd gotten lost."

Kurt just shrugged, taking another drink from his cup and looking away from Zapata. It wouldn't surprise him if she knew what he'd been doing. At that point he didn't care, as long as she kept her mouth shut about it.

In truth, each of them had been down to look in on Jane in the interrogation room at some point that day. None of them had gone in, or even made their presence known, but none of them, even Reade, could resist the pull they felt – no matter the emotions that pulled them there – in her direction. Patterson and Zapata had both been tearful to see Jane look so pathetic, hurting for their friend while wondering how much of what Weller had said about her could possibly be true. Weller and Reade had both been angry and betrayed, albeit in different ways.

They knew that at some point soon, Jane would be questioned, and that they probably wouldn't be there when it happened. They weren't exactly impartial. However, her case seemed to have been moved a few rungs down the priority list at the moment. It seemed that the murder of a high ranking FBI official took priority over other pending cases, even one as important as hers.

Zapata looked at Weller knowingly, but said nothing, turning back to the group. It seemed that there were nothing but long, hard days in their immediate future, but that didn't matter. Somehow she knew that they would figure this out, just like they always did.

For Weller's sake, and Jane's, she hoped so.