Disclaimer: I do not own Jane or Kurt or Blindspot. Writing about them is simply the outlet for my obsession.
A/N: This chapter may be a bit overly angsty and dramatic, but I feel like it fits with their characters on the show. Still, I may have gone a little overboard, but as you can probably tell, I enjoy angsty and dramatic – which I guess is part of the reason I love Blindspot. :) Also, it's the longest chapter I've ever written for any of my fanfics, I believe, but I couldn't bear to split it up. Enjoy!
JANE AND KURT
Jane felt as though she was moving in slow motion as she forced herself to walk towards the table, closer to Kurt with each tentative step. When she finally got there, she sat down opposite Kurt deliberately, both to have the barrier between them but also because, since they both sat at the long ends of the table, the distance between them was relatively short. Separate, and yet close.
At no point did they take their eyes off of each other. It was as if they were involved in some sort of stand-off in which neither of them would allow themselves to be the first to look away. After what felt like such a long time to her (though it was only really 8 or 9 days), there he was, just across the width of the small metal table from her… and yet, it almost hurt more because now he was so close, and yet so much still stood between them.
They continued to stare at each other, and Jane was afraid to move too quickly for fear of his involuntary response if she did. After all, the last time she'd seen him, he'd pointed a gun at her and spoken to her like the criminal that he'd believed her to be. It was abundantly clear that he no longer trusted her, not even a little bit, and this knowledge hurt more than anything.
No, that wasn't quite true. There were so many reasons why sitting across the table looking at him were hurting her, and she really couldn't make any one of them more important than the others. Suddenly, the task of explaining everything to him seemed too daunting, simply too much for her to manage. She inhaled sharply and looked down at her hands, which were clenched together on the table.
I can't do this, she thought in sudden desperation. She felt the chasm between them growing before her eyes, and watched as he seemed to get farther and farther away from her, even as he remained in the same place across from her at the table. He was physically close enough that if she'd wanted to, she could have reached out and touched him. Well, technically she wanted to, but at that moment it didn't seem like such a wise idea.
You have to do this, she reminded herself. The only other choice is to continue on the way the last 9 days had gone… and to do so indefinitely. That option seemed even more impossible.
Kurt sat and watched Jane, not only as the seasoned FBI agent that he was, but also as the man who was suddenly realizing how firmly his feelings for the woman in front of him had taken root, without his even realizing it. How is this even possible? he wondered. As he sat and stared into her eyes, the anger that still coursed through him – less intense than the last time he had seen her, but not gone completely – was suddenly diluted by a deluge of other emotions. He simply couldn't stare into her eyes and feel only anger – not anymore.
As he studied her, he couldn't help but remember the Jane Doe who had been at his side for so long, the one that he had come to care so deeply about. This woman had saved his life more than once. She still looked like that woman, and it was hard to wrap his brain around the fact that she wasn't who he'd thought she had been, even after more than a week of trying to do just that – even with evidence to back up this idea.
It was hard to remember the time before she had mysteriously been delivered to the FBI by way of a duffle bag in Times Square. He realized that he no longer wanted to remember that time before her… and yet only a few short days before, he had desperately wanted to forget everything about her. His emotions were beginning to give him whiplash.
But it was all just impossible. She had lied, and he knew for certain that she had lied. He had proof, for God's sake! He wanted her to prove him wrong – no, he needed her to prove him wrong. If she couldn't do that, he wouldn't be able to let himself be in the same room with her again… as it was, he felt as if the air was being slowly sucked out of the room, and it was harder and harder to breath the longer he looked at her.
She hadn't said a word yet, and already he was ready to believe everything she said – but hadn't that been what had gotten him into this mess in the first place? His blind trust in her? He had always been an excellent judge of people, of their character. This was the first time that his instincts seemed to have failed him, and they had done so rather spectacularly. At the same time that he was ready to believe her every word, he was also ready to doubt anything and everything she might say, knowing what he now knew. He couldn't be sure which one was worse, that he wanted to trust her implicitly or that he was prepared to tell himself that everything she said was a lie. And how the hell could he be feeling both of those things at once? He scowled slightly at her in frustration.
She kept her head down, but peered up at him from beneath her eyelashes, only then raising her head gradually. Where can I possibly start? she asked herself.There were so many secrets that she had kept from him, she now realized as she tried to organize her thoughts. It wasn't supposed to be like this…
You should have told him everything all along, she told herself.There was no denying it, the voice in her head was right.She'd been wrong to keep so much from him, from all of them, but of course it was too late to change that now. Her eyes squeezed shut and all of the muscles in her face contorted, and for a few seconds, she thought that a flood of tears was imminent. Holding her face still and breathing deeply, she convinced herself that no, it was too early to cry. You haven't even said a single word yet, she scolded herself. Save the tears until you've at least said something.
Thinking about her behavior objectively, she had the strangest urge to laugh. The situation was so horrible, it struck her as almost comical. I'm being ridiculous, she told herself. I'm losing my mind. Her eyes squeezed closed even tighter for just a second but the corners of her mouth turned up the slightest bit, and then her whole face suddenly relaxed, feeling slightly numb for a second after holding her muscles so tense. She was fairly sure that her behavior was a sign of the toll that all the stress she was under was having on her mind, but again, there was nothing to be done about that now. Maybe it was something to address with Dr. Borden in her next session… if she was allowed to see him again after this… if they didn't toss her down a dark hole somewhere…
Don't be so dramatic, she told herself. Just get on with it.
Weller wasn't sure exactly what was going on in her head, but it was clear that something was. He watched her in fascination, and couldn't help but be reminded of the first days after they'd found her. His anger had blinded him to his memories of her temporarily, but now that he was seeing her in person, in front of him, he had started to remember – albeit against his will. This person, whoever she was, sat before him completely conflicted and at war with herself. How could he possibly have thought that it was all a lie? She looked so vulnerable, as she had so many other times. For a second he flashed back to the first days he'd known her, and the numerous times that she'd looked at him desperately, completely and utterly lost and alone. That could not have been a lie.
Could it?
She opened her eyes and lifted her head, looking at him with a hint of sadness in her eyes. "I know that you think that everything I said was a lie," she began evenly. The sadness she felt was not only in her eyes, but in her voice as well. You did this to yourself, she reminded herself, hoping against hope that she could maintain her composure. Even if she didn't break down, telling him everything was going to take a long, long time, and she had a pretty good idea what his reaction would be in the end. She shook her head and let out a short rueful laugh, focusing her gaze somewhere low on the wall behind him. The end result didn't matter, however. She owed it to him to tell him the truth. All of it.
"And I understand why you would think that. But when I climbed out of that bag, I really didn't remember anything. I really had no idea why your name was on my back, or who you were. Or who I was, for that matter." She looked back up at him reluctantly, noting that while he was still watching her intently, and that the angry blaze in his eyes seemed to have subsided, at least temporarily. For the moment, he appeared to be listening. She took that as a good sign, and continued.
"I… the "me" I've been since I woke up in Times Square… I had no idea what had been done to me, no idea who I was. When I said that, it was not a lie." She watched him, knowing that her words were just that to him – merely words. Her actions had already spoken for her. And yet she didn't know what more she could do to make him believe her. Words were all she had left, after all. Her voice dropped to a whisper as she added, "I have no right to ask you to believe me anymore, but that is the honest truth."
He shifted in his chair, but said nothing, just continued to watch her, his face unreadable. At least he'd stopped scowling at her, though. Baby steps, she told herself.
She looked at him, holding his gaze for as long as she could bear. "The name Taylor Shaw didn't sound familiar when you, and then Patterson, told me that that was who I was," she continued. "Taylor was a stranger to me… but so was everyone else. I was a stranger to me, so I had no way to know one way or the other if I was Taylor, of if I wasn't. The DNA test said I was, so I thought that I was."
Unable to meet his eyes anymore, she glanced nervously around the room, her voice beginning to shake. "I tried to be her, because I thought that that was who I was – who I was supposed to be." She pressed her lips together tightly, needing a moment to compose herself as the memories of that time hit her hard. Her face tensed up again, and she stared at the spot on the wall that she'd found a few minutes before until she was ready to continue.
"I tried to be her, for you," she said in a whisper. "I wanted to believe that I was her, not just because I wanted to know who I was – though of course, I did want that… but mostly, I wanted to be her because she meant so much to you. I wanted you to have found her, so that you could have closure. I… wanted to believe that I was someone who was important to someone. It was so much better than being completely alone in the world." She paused, debating whether or not to articulate the last part of her thought. What's the point in holding back now? she thought. After all, that's what got you were you are now.
"Not just to someone… I wanted to believe that I was important to you. Because…" She swallowed nervously, but pushed out the remaining words. "…when I looked at you, it always felt like… that was where I was supposed to be. With you. Even when I didn't know who I was. As scared as I was, when you were there, I felt like… it could be okay."
Kurt was speechless. He felt like he'd been stabbed in the heart repeatedly. Maybe Patterson and Zapata had been right, after all. If Jane was telling the truth, and he wanted to believe that she was… Well, he'd never realized how big a role he'd played in making her believe that she was Taylor. Thinking back, he had desperately wanted her to be Taylor. After searching for her for his whole life, maybe he hadn't been able to help it. And there had been evidence, too. It wasn't just that he'd wanted her to be Taylor. There was the scar, the positive DNA test. He had been the first one to tell her his theory, which had been confirmed by Patterson after the DNA test came back positive. He'd conveniently forgotten that part. His mind was still reeling, but she was already talking again.
"There are…" she paused, knowing that what she'd said so far had been probably the easiest part of the entire confession. But she pushed on. "There are a lot of things I didn't tell you along the way. And I should have. Smaller things, at first, and then they slowly became bigger things… I know that you trusted me, when logically you had no reason to. You shouldn't have, just like Reade didn't…" She was staring at her hands now, fidgeting with them on the table. He looked down at her hands as well, and felt a sudden urge to grab them and hold on tightly. He didn't, of course, but even just the urge to do so came as a surprise to him. His control on his emotions, tenuous though it was, was continuing to slip.
Kurt could recognize now that he was anything but objective, and the more he looked at her, the more he realized that nothing was black and white. He'd wanted to believe that it had all been a lie, because that was so much easier, but now that she was in front of him, he knew better. There were most certainly lies between them, but there was also truth. He had the sensation of falling and soaring and crashing all at once, and he realized now that he was possibly not the best person for this interrogation – if it could even be called that. Really, he hadn't said anything except to tell her to sit at the table. But since she had said that she would speak only to him, and the interrogators were fed up with her silence, this unconventional arrangement had been allowed. And it seemed to be working.
"I did tell you about some of my memories, things that came in flashes, like black and white images of someone else's life. I didn't tell you everything I saw, though…" Her mind began leaping ahead, scrolling through all the memories that she'd had and had never told him about. One thing at a time, she told herself. "I should have. I… don't know why, I guess I felt… ashamed, maybe… I didn't understand the things I saw. I saw myself doing… horrible things. Shooting people. Being trained to shoot and to do who knows what else... There were people I didn't remember… There were two main guys that I saw flashes of. And eventually I saw both of them in real life – at different times – and it scared the hell out of me. They knew me, but I didn't know them. They wanted things from me, but neither of them would give me any answers…"
Her words were coming faster now, and she knew that she needed to slow down and do a better job explaining. There was just so much to say… She hadn't looked up at him since she'd started talking about her memories. It seemed to be so much easier to fix her eyes on her hands, and twist and pull them as hard as she needed to, and to try to forget that he was there and she was actually talking to him. She was afraid to look up and face the judgement that she expected to see in his face. However, she took a chance and glanced up at him now, finding his eyes still locked on hers. Try as she might to read his expression, she still couldn't. It was different somehow, though, maybe just a little softer.
Don't give up on me, she found herself thinking, hoping that if she stared at him intently enough, he would be able to understand what she was trying to tell him.
Even while she'd been staring at her fidgeting hands, seeming to prefer to talk without actually looking at him, he'd continued to stare at her face. When the flood of words finally slowed and she looked up at him again for the first time in several minutes, he was taken aback by the look of desperation in her eyes. Again, he felt the urge to take her hand, to stop her from fidgeting. He even found himself feeling like the table between them was suddenly an obstacle… And just what would you do if it wasn't there? he asked himself. He didn't have an answer to that question, however, only the sudden feeling that he was too far away from her.
As he'd been doing since she had sat down at the table, he just continued to watch her, his eyes revealing nothing. After all, even he didn't know how he felt about anything at that moment, so he couldn't possibly communicate it to anyone else.
"I found out a lot of things much later – it took a long time to get any information out of either of them – that their names were Oscar and Marcos. We'd been part of a team – before my memory was wiped – with an… agenda of some kind. A plan. I still don't really know what they – we," she shook her head at her confusion over the correct pronoun to use. It was hard to keep talking about it all as if she'd been a part of it. She knew that physically she'd been there, but she knew nothing about it. "…were trying to do… but I don't want to change the subject."
Pausing, she looked back up into his eyes. "Do you remember when we were dancing at Rich Dotcom's party? When I told you that I had a memory of being engaged?"
Just the thought of that day was a temporary reprieve from the hell she was in just then, and even though coming back to reality afterwards would hurt even more, she let herself bask in that day for a few precious seconds. It had been one of the best days of her life – at least the part of her life that she remembered – if not theverybest day. The whole experience should have been terrifying, and she had been nervous on the helicopter on the way there - though that had been more because she was afraid of flying, and because to her knowledge, she'd never tried to go undercover. But from the minute Kurt had helped her out of the helicopter and they had slipped into the roles of husband and wife, it had just felt right.
Somehow, even knowing that every minute they were there, they was putting their lives in danger, the day had been perfect. Obviously, she had an insane idea of a "perfect" day, but so be it. Everything about it had been perfect: dancing with Kurt as if they were simply guests at a fancy party, being allowed to ask him personal questions that he could have refused to answer, but that he did answer, all the while staring at her with a look that made her feel like they were the only two people in the room. All day long she'd gotten to stand so close to him, to hold his hand or his arm. She still remembered the feeling of his breath on her neck when, after unclasping the necklace from behind her, he'd leaned forward, into her back, to hand it to Dotcom, instead of leaning around her. It still took her breath away.
She had pretended that she didn't see what was happening between them, didn't feel it, and he pretended right along with her… but she had known what was going on, and there was no way he had looked at her that way and not felt it too. Even her limited experience told her that much. Hell, even killing Rich Dotcom's body guards with Kurt had just been another part of a perfect day. The end of the mission had been almost… disappointing. They had been successful in their mission and were flown to safety, and she knew that she should have been relieved… But it had meant a return to reality, and in their reality, there was a distance between them that hadn't been there for that one day.
Remember? How could I forget? he wanted to say. That day stood out so vividly in his memory, it was almost as though he'd lived that one day viewed through some sort of enhanced filter that had made everything look more vibrant than the rest of his life up until then. He hadn't understood at the time why he'd thought back to that day so many times in the months since then. It was a mission, after all, and he'd been on plenty of other missions – including more than a few undercover missions, some of which had also required black tie attire. The thing that had been different about that one, he now realized, had been Jane's presence.
Somehow he hadn't seen it then, but he did now… why that day stood out so boldly in his memory, and at that moment, he wanted to kick himself for not realizing it sooner. Pretending to be married to her, having a reason to be that close to her… it hadn't felt like undercover work. It had felt like an excuse to do what he had wanted to do anyway, but couldn't let himself because he was a professional, and there was a line he wouldn't let himself cross. Besides, even if he had been willing to cross that line, the walls he'd built around himself, the ones that Allie didn't think he'd heard her refer to when she'd talked to Jane earlier that day in the office, had been stronger back then.
And so, after trying to ignore the pull he felt towards Jane for so long, on this mission it was suddenly as if he'd been told to give in to that pull. Of course, that was not what he was actually told, but it was an excuse to do it, if only for a day. Judging from the way she'd acted as well, he wasn't alone in feeling the way he did. It was no wonder, then, that they'd made such a convincing pair. So the question was, how in the world had he not understood his feelings then?
She watched him while she waited for his answer. Having shaken herself out of the reverie that that day provided, she noticed that Kurt was lost in thoughts of his own. The chance that those thoughts mirrored her own memories of that day seemed like too much to hope for. And yet… she swore that he was smiling slightly at whatever he was thinking about.
He realized that he'd been lost in thought, and when he focused on her again she was watching him, more than a few seconds having ticked by. She was waiting for an answer from him, of course. It was impossible to be sure, but he could have sworn that he saw the hint of a smile on her face at having caught him lost in thought about that day, and for a split second he worried that she had read his mind. Don't be ridiculous, he told himself. Not trusting his voice just then, he simply nodded. Yes, he thought, I remember.
"Later, I learned that the man I had been engaged to… his name was Oscar," she said, forcing herself to hold eye contact with him despite her sudden extreme discomfort. Why would this be any harder to say than anything else? she wondered.
Because you're telling someone you have feelings for about being engaged to another man, stupid, her inner voice replied. Shouldn't that be obvious?
Trying to ignore the voice's biting sarcasm, she continued her confession. "Later, he told me that I had volunteered for the… mission… that I had insisted that it had to be me, even." She paused for a second, seeing the look of betrayal reappear in his eyes once more. It was because she'd referred to her presence at the FBI as a mission, she knew, and she hated to have to cause him any more pain than she already had… but there was no sense beating around the bush. However she sugarcoated it, it wouldn't change the reality of what had happened… Even though she wasn't the person who had done it – well, she was, but… - a mix of guilt and frustration flooded through her because of the whole thing once again.
I refuse to feel guilty about something that wasn't me! she wanted to scream. But it had been her. But it hadn't… And try as she might to stop herself, she felt very guilty about all of it.
"The mission… I still don't quite understand it, since I never got Oscar to explain it to me before everything else started happening..." Slow down, she told herself, attempting to calm down. Her pulse was suddenly racing with anxiety. "But that's… something else… Anyway, so I broke off our engagement…" The word engagement had come out slowly and carefully, as if she was trying not to give it any more weight than she had to, as if she regretted that she had to say it at all – which she realized that she did.
It suddenly felt very important for her to let him know that she didn't remember being in love with Oscar. There was very little – nothing really – that she could do about all the ways that he felt betrayed by her, but for some reason she needed him to know that she didn't remember the feelings that her former self had had for him.
"…because I knew that my memory was going to be wiped and if all went as planned, I wouldn't remember him. I don't remember this, it's what he told me. And I didn't remember him when I woke up. In the flashes I started having, I saw myself give him the ring back, and I looked sad, but it didn't make me feel sad to see myself do it. I didn't remember – and I still don't… the way I felt about him. Before. I didn't remember who he was. My only clue was the ring, at first. It looked like we were in love, but… it was like watching someone else's memories, or watching a movie. And even after I'd seen him in person, and he'd told me, I didn't feel it." She paused, and then added sadly, for whatever it was worth. "It wasn't me who was in love with him."
Even though it was, her mind replied.
Stop it! she screamed in her head. I'm not her!
He saw her wince slightly, as if something or someone had said something that had hurt her. She knows that it was her, but she knows that it wasn't, he thought. He could only imagine how confusing that must be. Still, even though he understood logically that she both was and wasn't that person, he didn't like the feeling he got in the pit of his stomach hearing about this Oscar guy, and he had a feeling that it was only going to get worse.
"I do remember giving him back the… ring he'd given me." This time, she couldn't bring herself to say the word "engagement." At that point, she paused to assess the impact of her words on Kurt. The feeling of dread that she was getting from talking about Oscar had been growing with every word, and she just wanted it all to stop. When she looked back at Kurt, she saw something that she hadn't been expecting.
No, it was impossible.
As she looked into Kurt's eyes, she saw sparks of jealousy. She wanted to smile then, at the irony that it had taken all of this – this horrible mess that she'd made of this "new life" of hers – to get her to sit down and tell him the truth. You could have seen that look a long time ago if you'd have just told him the truth from the beginning, she told herself sadly.
Looking back down at the table, her eyes moved from her hands – still fidgeting – to his, which were clamped together with what looked like an iron grip, and sat on the table where they'd been since he'd sat down. There was only about twelve inches separating their respective hands, and yet… it couldn't have felt farther if he'd been on the other side of the world.
"It wasn't just you and Patterson who told me I was Taylor," Jane continued, bringing the conversation back around to the topic of her identity. There would be much more to say about Oscar, but the first thing she'd wanted to clear up was the issue of her being Taylor, since she was fairly sure that that was what had killed his trust of her. "Looking back, I guess I asked Oscar if my name was Taylor Shaw, and he went along with it. He said later that it was easier that way, or something, since I already thought that that was who I was. He even called me Taylor… even though I hated it."
She noticed the faintest hint of a smile on his face at the comment that she'd hated being called Taylor. Even he, the guy who'd so wanted her to be Taylor, had figured out pretty fast that she didn't want to be called by that name. He couldn't help the feeling of smug satisfaction he got from knowing something so basic about Jane that the guy who was allegedly her ex-fiancé – or, the ex-fiancé of the woman Jane had been before, anyway – hadn't known.
I called her 'Taylor,' too, the last time I left her a voicemail. He didn't know why that thought suddenly popped into his head with such clarity. When I called her, after digging up dad's backyard and not finding anything or anyone, and before I realized…
It was a little thing, and stupid really, but after everything else, it was like pouring salt on an open wound. Looking back now with the benefit of hindsight, it had been one of the last moments that he had thought that she was Taylor, before everything had fallen apart.
Why would I do that? he wondered. He hadn't called her Taylor in a very long time, after all. He supposed that after being so distraught over the thought of finding Taylor buried in his backyard, and the resulting relief that had flooded him when he'd been wrong, he'd simply slipped. Normally, when he thought of his childhood friend, she was Taylor, and when he thought of the woman he now knew, she was Jane – even though he knew them to be the same person. Somehow, it had always made sense in his head.
Still, he couldn't focus on what he had called this woman whose name he no longer knew, because his insides burned even more angrily at the thought of a ring on her finger from another man, despite the fact that he knew very well that that other woman hadn't been the Jane that he knew. He had a feeling that the person she had been would not have been someone he would have gotten along with very well. Still, he didn't like the way it made him feel to think about such a scene.
"I had no reason to think that I wasn't Taylor. Until… the same night that you found out. Oscar… too many things had gone wrong with what he'd wanted me to – what he'd been forcing me to do…" She was confused for a second when his face clouded with what looked very much like rage, until she realized that he had misunderstood what she meant when she'd said what he'd been forcing me to do. She'd been vague for a reason – she wasn't ready to talk about the dishonest things that she'd done and the way Oscar had coerced her into doing them – but he'd taken her vagueness in an understandably more common direction in his mind.
She bit back a smile, as completely inappropriate as the timing was for such a thing just then, but couldn't help but feel the smile through her entire body. His was such an endearing reaction because it was clear what he was imagining, and it let her know that his feelings for her weren't gone – at least on a basic human level anyway. He was imagining her body being taken advantage of, and it made him angry. Don't read too much into that, she reminded herself, Kurt's a good guy, he'd be upset about that happening to anyone. Still, she wasn't so sure that it meant nothing. But she pushed that hope aside for the time being.
Shaking her head quickly at the horrified expression on his face, she replied, "No, no, no, nothing like that. We—he—I—" she broke off, realizing she was venturing dangerously close to a topic that she dreaded telling him more than almost anything else. You know exactly why you don't want to tell him what you did with Oscar… and you're going to have to tell him – but not right now. She needed to stay focused on what she was trying to tell him first. First was the question of her identity. The rest had to wait.
"So he said that our relationship was too 'compromised,' and that he was going to wipe my memory again—"
Again? Kurt's mind jerked to attention. So it was her ex-fiancé that wiped her memory the first time, too? His mind was swimming with a million questions, but he knew that he needed to let Jane finish what she was trying to say. He also knew that he would undoubtedly have many, many more questions before he got the chance to ask any of them.
"Obviously, he didn't quite succeed…" She bit her lip and looked back at her hands once again, remembering the fight in the barn and accidentally stabbing Oscar, then watching the barn burn down… Her eyes closed of their own accord and she had to force herself to come back to the present time, opening them to see Kurt still staring at her, and obviously more confused than ever. "Anyway, just before I… escaped from the barn where he'd had me tied up, he told me that…" her head remained down but her eyes found his as she paused, then continued in a whisper. "He finally admitted that I was never Taylor Shaw."
There was silence in the room, as her words sunk in. Kurt had made so many assumptions, he saw that now… but there was still the nagging question of why she had lied about remembering being Taylor.
"Kurt, I swear that I didn't know before that. And when I finally escaped, I came back home, and I called you… I…" Her words died on her lips, and she sat and tried to regroup. Suddenly, the look on his face was making it hard for her to think. The seconds turned to minutes as the silence hung heavily in the air between them. Seeing that he wasn't ready to reply, she finally continued.
"In a way I was horrified, because it was one of the only things I knew about myself, and suddenly it was a lie. I didn't understand how it was possible that I wasn't her, because that DNA test… Maybe… I guess it was a weight off my shoulders in a way, because being someone you can't remember is like trying to be someone you can never live up to… but the biggest thing was… I was scared of what that would mean… for us. Because if I wasn't Taylor, then I didn't know what that made me… to you. After everything, I was afraid to be… just a case, after all."
The look in her eyes was heartbreaking, but he closed his eyes to clear it from his mind, shaking his head to dislodge it. Then he spoke for the first time since asking her to come to the table when he'd walked in. His eyes opened and to her surprise, the look of betrayal had returned. In a voice that was low and raspy, he said simply, "But you said… you said that you remembered. Being Taylor."
She closed her eyes and felt the tears that she hadn't even realized were gathering there slipping onto her cheeks. Nodding her head, she spoke without reopening them. "I know. Oscar… gave me pictures from that time, told me to study them, and to talk about those times and places so that it would seem like I remembered."
Now absolutely floored, Kurt uttered the only word that was thundering in his head. It came out in a desperate whisper. "Why?"
Jane's eyes were still closed, but she didn't need to see him to know how her words had just hurt him. It was in his voice.
What in the world could possess her to do something like that? How could someone who was basically – even though not actually – a stranger convince her to lie to me about something that she knew had haunted me for my entire life? How could she? He was beyond anger. Instead, he felt himself in the process of shattering to pieces, like he was ten years old all over again.
Her voice was shaking now, the tears still flowing. "Oscar said… that if I didn't make you believe that I remembered being Taylor, and if I didn't do a bunch of… other things for him…" She shook her head hard at the memory. Her eyes were still closed, her head pointed down toward her hands. "…that your life was in danger. They said they would kill you.The things they were making me do were that important to them, and they knew that you had become important to me… I just couldn't take the chance. The other man I remembered, the one who broke into my safe house? Remember?" She opened her eyes and glanced up for just a second to see him nod, not bothering to wipe the tears from her face, then nodded back at him, looked down and continued.
"I found out later that his name was Marcos. He had come to warn me not to trust Oscar and the others… but they had a sniper kill him before he could tell me anything. All he said before they shot him was not to trust them… but at the time I didn't know who 'them' was, whether it was Oscar, or the FBI, or someone else…" Her voice was rising, and she could feel herself losing control of her emotions completely. "That was what made me keep those memories to myself in the beginning, and it got me into so much trouble later… But having seen them do that to him so easily, I couldn't take the chance that they would do that to you." Her words, along with her tears, were coming faster now, and she didn't know how much longer she could do this. However, now that she'd started, she had to get it out.
"I couldn't let anything happen to you because of me. I figured that it was better if you hated me but that you were alive, than for you to end up dead… even though… I would lose you either way. At least you'd still be alive."
She did all this because they threatened me? he stared at her in shock, unable to process the words as fast as she was saying them. So she had lied, but she had been coerced… and she'd gone through all of it alone. At that moment, he had the intense urge to put his arms around her, but he stayed where he was. After all, she was still talking. As much as she'd already said, it seemed that this was just the tip of the iceberg.
"I should've trusted you with all of it, I see that now. By the time I realized my place in all of it, how they – I mean, I –" she smiled bitterly at the irony of blaming someone else for something that in a way, she had done to herself. "…had set me up… it was too late. I was in so deep, I'd done so many things without realizing how those little things fit into the bigger picture… and it's all my fault. All of it!" She was struggling to breathe, taking quick gulps of air and gripping the side of the table for support.
She'd stopped making sense by now, as far as he was concerned, but all he did know was that he had been wrong. So very wrong. He felt sick sitting there and watching her suffer. He needed to do something, anything, to get her to calm down, because her being hysterical wasn't helping anyone. So he did the first thing that popped into his head, which was to reach his hand across the table and cover one of hers where it still clutched the side of the table.
"It's gonna be okay, Jane," he said, trying to bring her back from the brink of the panic attack she appeared to be having.
When she looked up at him, her eyes were wild and tormented at the same time. She shook her head, looking at him with… was it pity?
"You don't understand…" she said slowly, shaking her head. "I still don't know why, but this was my idea." She saw the inevitable confusion cloud his face and knew that this was it. This was where it would be too much for even him, where she would lose him for good, if she hadn't already. She removed her hands from the table, making his hand fall away, clutching her own hands together tightly once again and pushing them into her lap, out of his reach. As much as she had desperately longed for that form of comfort from him, she had to deny it to herself. After all, in another thirty seconds he'd wish he'd never touched her in the first place, and probably drop her hand in disgust. That would only hurt more.
"Your idea? What are you talking about?" he asked, stunned. Surely there was an explanation for all this that made sense.
"I still only remember bits and pieces of it from before, and Oscar wouldn't tell me very much, but… it was my idea. He had a video that he showed me… of me from before, that I'd obviously made for myself after the memory wipe, knowing that I wouldn't remember. Kurt…" she looked at him in desperation, fighting to get the words out."I did this to myself. And that's not even the worst of it…"
That's not the worst of it? he repeated in his head. What could possibly be worse?
She swallowed hard, preparing herself to rip off the band aid, so to speak. As long as she was confessing, she might as well go out with a bang. Here goes nothing, she thought.
"It was my plan. The memory wipe, the tattoos... I don't remember it, but I did it. Not only that, but because of me, Carter is dead. And Marcos. And Mayfair. And Oscar. I killed Oscar myself." She choked on the last word, and struggled to catch her breath.
To say that he was stunned would have been a fairly large understatement. He stared at her, repeating the words that she'd said in his head, trying to process them. Surely, she was being dramatic, or she was leaving out important details. He could see that she'd worked herself up into a frenzy, after all. But how could she… his mind simply couldn't digest the things she'd said. How could four people be dead because of her. And Mayfair? Mayfair?
What have you done, Jane?
She didn't know exactly what she was expecting, but when she finally looked up again, Kurt was still sitting across the table from her, apparently in shock. He said nothing, just sat and looked at her in confusion and disbelief. If she wasn't mistaken, there was disgust now mixed in with the rest of the emotions on his face. She had known that it was coming, but it didn't make it any easier to see him look at her that way. She kept waiting for him to say something, but he just kept staring back at her in silence. Not able to make herself keep looking at him because she was so ashamed of her part in all of it, she stared down at her hands. She had run out of tears, and run of words – at least for the time being. Now she simply felt empty. She silently begged him to say something. Anything… but she couldn't make herself look at him until he did.
It was a crushing disappointment, therefore, when she heard the sound of his chair scraping against the floor. When she finally looked up, she saw his back as he headed for the door, without a word or a backward glance. It was just as she'd feared… she had tried, but she had failed. There was apparently nothing that she could say that would change anything. And there was still so much more that he deserved to know…
The realization dawned on her that she was watching him walk away without knowing if he would be back. She wouldn't blame him if it was the last time she saw him. And yet… while she knew that it was her fault, she could not imagine any punishment that could possibly hurt her more than the way she felt at that moment. With her last glimmer of hope now extinguished, she laid her head down on her arm against the table and sobbed harder than she ever had before. She was fairly sure that her heart was literally breaking in pieces, because it felt as though her chest was going to split open then and there. Nothing else mattered now. She had her answer.
A/N: There is obviously a LOT more that Jane hasn't told him yet, but this seemed like a logical chunk of information to start with. I've started brainstorming the other things that she'll tell him (if he's willing to listen again, of course), including a bunch of things that were touched on but not explained in this chapter. However, I have a feeling that my running list is not exhaustive, because, well, Martin Gero and company are geniuses and have made this show pretty impossible to unravel without a lot more time than I currently have to devote to that sort of project.
Therefore, if there's anything in particular that you think is worth her confessing, please send me a PM and let me know – and if you know the episode that tidbit comes from off the top of your head, then even better, so I can go back and find the tiny details I need. I don't promise to use every one, but I'm just too impatient to keep writing (as you can probably tell from this relatively speedy update, despite how crazy long it is) to go back and rewatch all of the episodes in their entirety (as much fun as that would be) to find all the details.
Thanks in advance for your help, and as always thank you for reading and for all of the lovely reviews you've all left on this story. I write fanfic for the fun of it, of course, but it's even more fun to know that other people love it as much as I do. :)