Disclaimer: I do not own Jane or Kurt or Blindspot. Writing about them is simply the outlet for my obsession.
A/N: Okay, so this chapter is extremely dense with information (the main reason I separated it from the previous chapter), so if I have some facts wrong, I apologize. I actually took extensive notes while watching the episodes, and used them to write this, so please forgive any discrepancies. I tried my best. But honestly, after writing this chapter and then rereading it to edit it, I feel almost as drained as Jane (just wait… you probably will, too…). And no, this is not the last chapter – though I'm not sure how many more there are.
Taking a deep breath and feeling a renewed sense of determination, she suddenly started talking again, determined not to stop until she was finished.
"After I left Mayfair…" she began, looking back up at him then, "after Oscar had shot her, after she… was already gone, when there was nothing more I could do… I went home and showered. I tried to wash the blood off my hands, but I could still feel it, no matter what I did… I still feel it now," she added, looking down at her hands, which he was holding firmly.
"There's no blood there, Jane," he told her quietly.
She attempted a smile, which disappeared as quickly as it had appeared, and then continued. "I went looking for Oscar. I knew where he lived – I'd followed him there before – and I broke in. He wasn't there. I found the gun he used to kill Mayfair. I found a picture of the two of us, on the floor under his mattress…"
She didn't even know why she told him that. It was the truth, but it seemed so unimportant. That didn't matter, however, because who was she to filter out parts of the story? She'd already shown how poor her judgement was, so she should just let him decide what was important and what wasn't.
"I was looking for something – anything – that would help me make sense of what was going on." For a moment she looked desperate, and he couldn't help thinking that he knew that feeling all too well.
Kurt listened to her quietly, thinking that while that had been happening, he'd been doing almost the same thing at her safe house – looking around and trying to find something that would help him make sense of what was going on. When that hadn't worked, that was when he'd decided to drive back to Clearfield. Focus, he reminded him. Jane was still talking.
"I needed to find Oscar, because that morning I'd started to realize I was being followed. I went back to Ana Montes – that seventeen year old we met last year that you didn't want me befriending, remember?" she asked. The memory of that case stung a little. It had come up while they were trying to work out whether or not they needed professional boundaries, and what they should be. They'd been less that friendly towards each other, and he'd been very critical of her. Jane had been compassionate towards Ana and Kurt had given her a very hard time about it, more than once. He'd treated her compassion as a weakness, which he now knew was not the case.
"I had her track a phone number that I had been given to use 'for emergencies.' I didn't know who else to trust… I mean, it's not that I didn't trust Patterson to do it, I just…" She shook her head, not sure how to explain. "It just seemed safer not to get the FBI involved any more than any of you guys already were. It was all going to hell so fast… I didn't even trust myself... I know Patterson will probably never forgive me for not calling her to do it, but…" Kurt shook his head at her. Even with all the far more serious things that Jane felt she needed forgiveness for, she was still worried about being forgiven for not asking Patterson to be the one to trace a phone number for her.
"I called the number, and Ana traced it. I went to the source of the number, and I waited… the guy who answered the phone when I'd called… well let's just say that when I confronted him, he wasn't exactly happy to see me. While I'd waited for him, I'd heard him saying to someone over the phone that there was an order for fifty pounds of lye under the name 'Donato.' I was pretty sure he was talking to Oscar, and I was trying to find him anyway… and then, you know, what was he doing with fifty pounds of lye…? That sounded like he was getting rid of a body, and I couldn't help but think… well, I'd seen him shoot Mayfair…" She shook her head, as if that would clear the thoughts of all of this away.
"There had been a guy named Cade, and he was the guy I'd realized was following me, which was impossible because he was supposed to be dead. He…" She realized that she had just jumped way ahead of herself, and attempted to backtrack. "Cade was another guy in Oscar's organization, one of the founding members. Apparently after I…" she paused, hating to even say the words, "uh, came to the FBI… Cade had started going on about how it was all a mistake, and the plan made their… our organization…" The words left a bitter taste in her mouth, but it was the truth. She'd been a part of the organization, the plan. "Cade said the plan made our organization no better than the people we were trying to stop. Oscar said that Cade had tried to kill me back at the safe house, and that it was Cade who'd killed Marcos there… but it was Oscar who killed Marcos, not Cade."
Her head was beginning to hurt from the dizzying array of details she was throwing at him, and she wondered if it was making sense, but she continued. After all, if she lost him, he could always ask questions. Not that she'd know much more, if anything, than she as saying. The most important thing was just getting it all out.
"I asked Oscar how we could stop Cade – the two of us, because I didn't want to put the team in danger. He said the only way to do it was to kill him. But Cade had disappeared. There was so much else going on since then, he just wasn't the immediate problem... Anyway, I swore that Cade had been following me all that morning – that last day, when..." She broke off mid-sentence, swallowing hard, not wanting to say more about the events of the day than she had to. "Cade was the one who held a gun to my head on that ship when you guys were trapped in that sealed room… He told me that he wanted Oscar to see me die for what he'd done to Marcos… apparently Cade and Marcos had been like brothers. You guys were trapped in there, and Cade came up behind me with a gun… it took me a while to get into a less vulnerable position, but finally I did." She tried to slow down, but it was hard. All she wanted to do was get finished.
"Then before you got out of that room and made it up to the deck… Cade and I were struggling, fighting… and then suddenly Oscar shot him. We could hear you yelling my name, getting closer, and it was essential to Oscar that you not find him there… He ran straight at Cade, full speed, grabbed him and jumped off the side of the boat… I wasn't sure they were going to make it, but at the time I didn't have a chance to find out. After that… I was just supposed to believe that Cade was dead, because when I saw Oscar again, he told me that he was. Except, that became a lot more difficult to do when I saw him following me that day… the day everything happened. That was why I was looking for Oscar."
Every time she said Oscar's name, she swore she saw Kurt flinch slightly. She wondered if he was jealous…
Hmmm, well, you did lead into your confession with the fact that you slept with Oscar, she reminded herself. Despite how completely messed up everything is, and has been, between you, you know that he cares more about you than he can actually express. The same way you do about him. You know those feelings have always been there... He probably is jealous. Even though you both know that Oscar is dead.
She looked down then, remembering one of her next meetings with Oscar after he'd told her that Cade was dead. She'd been trying to focus on talking about Cade, but really, Oscar seemed to pop up everywhere in her stories, just like he had popped up more and more in her reality, and she'd gone from hating him… to sleeping with him… and then…
And then you killed him, she said, forcing herself to finish her sentence. Yes, it was appropriate for Kurt to be jealous, she decided. There is entirely too much Oscar in her life for someone who supposedly doesn't exist. Or only existed in a past life. Or… no, it was just too confusing.
"One of the times I met with him… Oscar… soon after he said Cade was dead, he told me…" she started quietly, suddenly dreading finishing her sentence. Her voice dropped to a whisper, "to get closer to you." She looked up at him, her face tight with apprehension as she watched for his reaction, wondering if it was her imagination, or if his jaw was clenching slightly.
Keep going, she told herself. You can't stop now.
"You were with Allie…" She paused, now feeling her own jaw clenching. Had she added that part as a fact, or as a justification? Because really, it had been her own fault that he was with Allie. He'd been with Allie because she'd pushed him away, because she'd had to choose between him and getting answers from Oscar, and she'd chosen to try to get answers from Oscar. But it was more than that. Getting close to Kurt at that point, despite it being what she had originally wanted, would have meant telling him even more lies, which she couldn't bear to do… So the fact that he had been with Allie, she couldn't blame him for that. That was simply one more thing that she had done to herself. Despite how she'd tried to be happy for him, and she had tried, it had been like tearing out her own heart to watch the two of them together.
She realized that she'd stopped talking and gotten lost in her own head. Somehow, the thought of him with Allie made her unable to concentrate on anything other than the feeling of… what was that feeling? Heartache. Loss. Falling. And her heart, shattering.
Don't be so dramatic, she told herself. Except that that was really what it felt like.
Suddenly she was conscious of his hands tightening around hers. The squeeze she felt around her heart lessened when she felt his hands squeeze hers, but only a tiny fraction. She didn't look at him – she couldn't , not with what she was about to say. Even without looking at him, she could barely get the words out. "Oscar said 'We need you to be the one person he trusts most.'" This was it, she was sure. This was the thing he wouldn't forgive her for. "But I realized… that I had always wanted that… Not for any ulterior motive, just… because. I just hadn't realized it." She was breathing nervously, looking down at their hands, still joined together. "I told him I couldn't do it, but…" Jane was suddenly sure she was going to be sick, and there were tears in her eyes again. She dreaded his reaction, but figured that whatever it was, she deserved it.
But Kurt surprised her. "That must have been excruciating for him," he said quietly, his thumbs still moving back and forth against her hands. "I can't imagine having to do that." She looked up at him in surprise, and saw him looking into her eyes steadily. "I could never do that… I just wouldn't be able to tell you to be with someone else."
It was about the closest thing either of them had ever said about the state of their relationship, whatever it was, at any point since they'd known each other. Even though it was still very vague and somewhat hypothetical, to Jane it was almost like an epiphany.
"Oh, no?" she asked, almost holding her breath for what he would say next.
He smiled then, breaking the tension and looking down at their joined hands. He moved his thumbs back and forth on the backs of her hands slowly. The look that came over his face reminded Jane of when they'd been dancing at Rich Dotcom's party, and he'd told her he'd never been married because he was 'too choosy.' He shook his head, and slowly looked back up at her. "I don't care how important the mission was, I wouldn't be able to let you go. Not if I had a choice." She felt her face growing hot, and she knew she was blushing as she looked back down. It was a relief that he wasn't upset about what Oscar had said. As for what Kurt had said about her... she was a little dizzy from thinking about it.
I wouldn't be able to tell you to be with someone else…
I don't care how important the mission was, I wouldn't be able to let you go. Not if I had a choice.
She didn't want to go back to thinking about Oscar after what he'd just said, much less talking about him, but she swallowed hard and forced herself to do it. If he could still look at her when it was all said and done, maybe he'd say more nice things to her. Otherwise, it didn't matter anyway.
Swallowing hard, she forced herself to continue. "I went back to Ana, and she found out where Oscar was picking up the lye. I went there and saw him… I was sitting in a car I had hotwired when I heard your voicemail."
He was surprised by her change of subject, that she'd gone back to her confession after what he'd said, but he understood. She had to get it all behind her. Besides that, she looked rather flustered. After all, she wasn't really in a place to be able to believe good things about herself just then, for obvious reasons, and she needed time to digest everything. There would be time for other conversations later.
She closed her eyes and shook her head, remembering. When she opened them again, she looked down. "For a second, I thought I just couldn't go on with what I was doing. Your message… it… physically hurt to listen to it. It reminded me, no matter how completely messed up everything was, how muchyou meant to me… At the same time, the whole reason I hadn't just told Oscar to go to hell, liked I'd wanted to all along, was to protect you, and it just…" Her voice broke and she shook her head, feeling tears pricking at her eyes once again. "But that message was for the Jane you thought you knew, not the one who'd been lying to you all along… I'm not the nameless person I was before, but I'm not that Jane, either. I'm just a liar."
The tears started then, silently, and by the time he looked up at her face she had dissolved in tears. He'd been moving his thumbs back and forth across the backs of her hands, but suddenly she pulled her hands back from his. She leaned forward, pushing her elbows into her knees, hard, and buried her face in her hands. Her fair fell forwards around her, mercifully blocking what little part of her view of him that her hands didn't. It was too much. She wasn't the woman she'd been in those memories, and she was also no longer the woman Kurt had thought she was, either. She was… a liar, a mole, a double agent… she was no one who deserved any trust, any favors or any forgiveness.
He looked at her in surprise, remembering that voicemail he'd left her, back before he'd found out the truth. He had been so relieved that he hadn't found Taylor's remains in his father's backyard, and he hadn't yet realized that he was merely looking in the wrong place…
"Jane…" he said, taken aback, not knowing what else he could do if she chose not to believer her. "That message was for you." She looked up at him sadly, her face wet with tears, clasping her hands loosely together in front of her, still hunched over and leaning her elbows against her knees for support. Shaking her head sadly, she opened her mouth to protest, but he was faster. "We've been over this," he said gently. "I know you. We both could've done things better, maybe, but you are the Jane I knew. That I still know."
She smiled sadly, looking away, hearing what he was saying but not allowing it to sink in. It was too dangerous to believe good things about herself, because it hurt too much when she realized, as she inevitably would all over again, that they were all lies. "As much as I wanted to stop then and there… more than I ever had before… There was no choice, I had to keep going. The threat against you was always there…" She looked up at him reluctantly, and he nodded in understanding.
"It's okay," he told her softly.
Instead of arguing with him, she just shook her head sadly, then went on. "I followed Oscar back from Rock Chemical Wholesalers to an abandoned barn," she said, finally able to continue, looking away again. "He was bringing the lye inside… and suddenly I had a memory of sparring with him, of knocking him down. Before, when I'd known him. I'd told him, 'When we meet again, I will come at you… I don't want your feelings clouding your judgement.'"
Jane looked back at him then, and he could see the wheels turning as she stared at him for a few seconds. "We had talked about it, what it would be like when I didn't know him anymore."
Sighing tiredly, she went on. "I followed him into the barn. There was a body bag on the ground… I was guessing that it was Mayfair, but before I could look inside, Oscar had snuck up behind me and shot me with a stun gun. I passed out, and I was still groggy when I woke up. Oscar was fiddling with something… Then before I was fully conscious, I had another memory. I remembered him saying, 'It feels like the end.' And she – I – told him…" she hesitated, biting her lip.
He reached for her hands again, squeezing gently, and she glanced up at him, her expression pained, before looking back down. She couldn't say it, not while looking at Kurt. "I told him that I loved him," she whispered. She swallowed hard, and felt a combination of relief and nausea, but forced herself to continue. "I said, he knew how I'd grown up, that I never thought that any of this – whatever it was – would be possible for me. That someone named Shepherd kept telling me that it would happen one day, but that I hadn't believed it."
Pausing again and taking a breath, she continued without prompting. "I told him that it wasn't the end, that we'd… find each other again, on the other side of… this. A man came to the door then. I could only see the outline of him, because it was so bright outside… I told him we were ready." She looked up at him hesitantly, unsure of what she would see on his face. As difficult as Kurt had found it to listen to the memory of Oscar, he knew that it was something she needed to say. Actually, he was astounded that she seemed to have decided to tell him so much. Besides, listening to what she had to say was nothing compared to having to live through it, and then talk about it. He had to work at it a little, but he smiled encouragingly.
"Then suddenly I came to again, and I was in the barn. He'd tied me to a chair. He… apologized for failing me. He said, he didn't blame me for hating him, and all he could do was promise that he wouldn't make the same mistakes next time."
"Next time?" Kurt asked, unable to help himself. Even knowing that Jane had escaped, and that Oscar was dead, he was still getting chills from the implications of what Oscar was trying to say.
She nodded. "That's what I said. But Oscar said that the mission couldn't continue, that our relationship was too compromised and he was going to start from scratch. He had 4 bottles of ZIP…" Kurt's eyes widened in understanding. "He was going to wipe my memory again." Their eyes met, and for a second, it wasn't clear which of them looked more afraid.
"I begged him not to do it. He told me that I had no idea who I was… I said that," she swallowed hard, looking away from him again, "I knew I was Taylor Shaw, that this was all my idea, and that… we were in love. Before," she added for emphasis. "He'd set up an IV bag near me. He said that yes, we were in love, and that it had all been my idea… but that it was Shepherd's mission and always would be." He looked at her in confusion, and she glanced at him again. "I still don't know what the mission was, not exactly," at which he nodded, and then she looked away, feeling anxious at the thought of what came next.
"And then he told me that no…" She'd been looking off over his shoulder again, but she forced her eyes back to his. Her voice came out only in a whisper. "I was never Taylor Shaw." Chills ran through her whole body, and she shivered involuntarily. Keep going, she told herself. Don't stop now. Just get it over with.
"They – we – had broken into the evidence locker in Clearfield over a year ago. They replaced Taylor's DNA samples with mine. He called me Taylor because she – I – figured that it would be easier… As he was talking, he was preparing the first ZIP injection. I was tied to the chair, and all I knew was that I… I couldn't let him do it. I didn't want to forget again. I'd agreed to it the first time, not knowing what it would be like, and thinking that no matter how bad it was, it was worth it for the mission. But I… that was her, and I'm not her… I've been through it, now, and I… there was no way I would give up what little I have – had, now... This wasn't my mission, after all. It was theirs, hers. But I wasn't her anymore, and I wasn't going to let him do it. I couldn't stand the thought of losing everything, all over again. I couldn't stand the thought of losing—" she looked at him and stopped, a terrified look on her face. "You," she whispered.
He took her hands, which he'd been slowly holding more and more tightly, and pressed them together between his. Then, leaning forward in his chair, he pulled their joined hands towards him, resting them against his face, his head down, almost as if in prayer. For a minute, he had trouble breathing normally. He'd come so close to losing her repeatedly since she'd shown up in Times Square, but this time may have been the closest call. Never mind that he now knew that she had never been Taylor. No, Taylor was gone, and had been for many years… but Jane, Jane was here. She was here, and in the short time, relatively speaking, that he'd known her, he'd almost lost her over and over. If Oscar had erased her memory… She wouldn't have been dead, but she would no longer have been Jane… He would've lost her for good… And she would've had to start over from nothing… Again.
But Oscar failed, Kurt had to remind himself, looking up at her, suddenly needing additional confirmation that she was there in front of her. He slowly lowered their hands from his face, keeping them intertwined together in one large knot. Leaning his forearms against his legs, he let their hands dangle between them.
He looked back at her, taking a deep breath. "Sorry," he said, and couldn't think of anything else to say.
Why are you sorry? he asked himself.
For all of it, he thought. Not for the things that he'd done, necessarily, just that any of it had had to happen at all. It was more empathy than sympathy, really.
She shook her head, smiling sadly at him. "I asked Oscar why me, and why Taylor? He said it was because of you…" When he looked confused, she continued, "He said that in phase one they wanted Mayfair out, but didn't want her replaced by someone worse. So the tattoos," she glanced down at herself, then back up at him, "would take down their – our – enemies and give you so many wins, you'd be the obvious successor…" she added, bitterness seeping into her voice.
"They figured that they could control you. That I could control you. Apparently I was never supposed to have flashbacks. Oscar blamed Marcos, and said that Marcos was too conservative with the dose of ZIP he had given me. But Oscar promised not to make that mistake again." Her breath caught as she though yet again how close she had come to being erased again. It was terrifying to think about what might have happened, had things gone just a little bit differently.
"Sitting there, I remembered Marcos telling me, just before he dosed me, just before I stopped being her, that everything I had been would cease to exist." I hadn't known his name until then, until Oscar told me that, and I put it together. Oscar had wanted me to think that Cade had killed Marcos, but that was when I realized that Oscar had killed him, that night in my first safe house, which was why Cade was after Oscar. He said that Marcos was handling Chao, who was supposed to die. When he didn't, it was up to Marcos."
The man in the hospital, Kurt thought. The doctor that no one could identify.
"Shepherd was apparently the one who said that Marcos had to go. Oscar said that instead of 'facing it like a man,' Marcos had tried to turn me against them. That was why he was in my safe house." She looked at him, thinking back to Marcos telling her not to trust them. "The them that I wasn't supposed to trust was Oscar and his team. Marcos and Cade had been like brothers, so Cade wanted to punish Oscar by killing me, so Oscar would be as devastated as he was. As far as Shepherd, he only ever told me that he was their leader."
She paused again, and thought fleetingly that her mouth was dry from talking so steadily for so long… but she didn't want to stop. Not now. She just wanted it all over with. "I asked him about phase two – since Mayfair was phase one. He was cryptic about it, but it didn't sound good. He said something about how the government was corrupt and didn't care about the people, that it was too broken. Their plan was to 'burn it to the ground so we can start again.' And knowing what else they'd done, what they were capable of, that scared me."
Again, she stopped and took a deep breath, obviously shaken. "He told me that I'd said, that I'd promised, that I'd 'love him no matter what.' And he said he was sorry that that was what it would take." She looked down at where his thumbs were moving back and forth along her hands.
"We can stop, Jane. Do you need a break?" he asked her. He could see that she was approaching her breaking point. But she only shook her head.
"No," she replied emphatically, gathering her strength to continue. At that point, she was running on determination alone, because she was emotionally drained. She knew what was coming, after all. "I told him that he'd left a trace," she told Kurt. "That Mayfair had found him, after all, so there was obviously a trace somewhere… I asked him what would Shepherd say about that, or if he even knew…" She closed her eyes and shook her head, not wanting to remember, but knowing that she had to. She felt the now familiar sensation of his thumbs against her hands, and she allowed herself a few seconds to focus only on that, then opened her eyes again and continued.
"He told me that he loved me, and that he'd see me in a little while, 'on the other side of all this.' He had that tiny needle, ready to inject me with it. I was still tied to the chair, and not really in any position to defend myself… so I head butted him, hard, which threw him backwards. The lantern on the table fell over, the glass broke, and a fire started on the floor."
"And you were still tied to the chair?" Kurt asked, looking worried despite the fact that she had obviously survived. He'd barely asked any questions as she'd been talking, but he was trying to keep track of what was going on, and this seemed like a crucial piece of information.
"Yeah, I… I got up and flipped myself over and landed on my back, which broke the chair in pieces…" she admitted, blushing slightly, and smiling just a little for the first time in what felt like a very long time.
He chuckled, shaking his head, glad for a moment of levity. "Of course you did," he said with a smile. She was incredible, and that was all there was to it. "I probably should have expected that."
She smiled along with him, but it lasted only a few seconds before her face clouded over again. "I was now free from the chair, and Oscar hadn't moved on me again yet. I told him I was bringing him in, that there weren't going to be any more secrets or lies. He insisted that I wasn't the FBI, that I hated the FBI, that the entire government had betrayed me, but of course, he didn't tell me what he was talking about…" Sighing, she took a breath. Getting the words out was getting increasingly difficult – as was breathing, for that matter
"He got his hands on a big metal pole, and then I guess all that training we'd done before he wiped my memory came in handy, because we were really fighting. He said he didn't want to hurt me, that it didn't have to be this way… And of course while we were fighting, that fire on the floor had been getting bigger and bigger. By that point the whole barn was on fire around us, but neither of us was going to give up. Giving up meant he was going to wipe my memory."
She bit her lip, hard, and closed her eyes, desperately not wanting to remember… but she had no choice. "We both just kept swinging and kicking at each other. The stakes were too high for either of us to stop. I picked up the only thing I saw, which… was an axe…" She trailed off, momentarily unable to continue.
Oh my God, he thought. He saw where this was going, and it was pretty horrible. He tried to imagine being in her place. Squeezing her hands tightly now, he stared at her, trying to get her to look at him, but without success.
"I didn't even have time to think about how I was holding it… We were both moving so fast, and… I swung it at him… I was holding the handle, and…. the… the blade was down and facing away from me…" She squeezed her eyes closed, tears escaping and rolling down her cheeks, before she forced them open again. "The blade hit him in the stomach as I turned around towards him quickly. I don't know which of us was more surprised… For a few seconds we just looked at each other… and then…" she sighed raggedly, and he tried in vain to think of something, anything, he could do for her.
"He fell to the ground right there in front of me… The barn was almost completely on fire now, and there was nothing I could do for him…" She was shaking her head, trying not to remember, even though she had no choice. Her voice was only a whisper as she gasped, "I cut him open with an axe, and then I ran out and left him there to be burned alive," she choked out, now sobbing. "And then I got back to my safe house…"
"And I was there," he said in a low voice, only now putting the pieces together. "And I…" Kurt suddenly found that he couldn't go on either. He leaned all the way forward in his chair, dropping his head and lifting their joined hands until his forehead was pressed against them. He stayed that way for a full minute, before he realized that his reaction wasn't helping her as much as it was him. While he felt like the Earth had just tilted under his feet, this really wasn't about him at all, and however badly he felt, she was feeling a hundred times worse. He looked up at her, the realization of exactly what he'd done crashing down over him yet again.
Before he knew it, Jane had pulled her hands away from him and stood up, walking quickly to the far corner of the room and folding her arms tightly around herself, leaning her forehead into the corner and shaking with sobs. She'd never had time to really process what had happened, since, as Kurt had just realized, he'd arrested her pretty much immediately after she'd accidentally killed Oscar. Never mind that she hadn't been in love with him, in her current life, it had still been horrible and traumatic to experience. She'd been numb that night, but right now… now she was making up for it, feeling everything, magnified what felt like a thousand fold.
She couldn't think, couldn't move, could barely breathe, only sob into the corner of the FBI interrogation room as if her heart was breaking. She deserved this, all this and so much more, and once the FBI was finished with her, she would undoubtedly be put away in the deepest, darkest hole, worse even than the one that Carter had had planned for her. It would serve her right, too. All the things that she had done, all the people that she had hurt… it was past the point of forgiveness, no matter how understanding anyone might be.
When she'd pulled her hands away from him, he'd been startled at first. He'd been stunned by the end of her story, and his mind was still reeling from the realization that he'd assumed the worst about her, and treated her horribly, immediately after she'd just accidentally killed her ex-fiancé and narrowly avoided being burned alive, barely escaping with her life. That was a lot to swallow, after all.
When he looked up, she had already positioned herself in the far corner of the room, crying harder than anyone he'd ever witnessed before. He stood up and quickly followed her, stopping just behind her and slowly putting his hand on her shoulder. "Jane," he said, hoping to be heard over her sobs. "I'm sorry…"
He's sorry? She thought frantically, What is he even still doing here? How in the world can he be sorry? She hunched her shoulders further forward, attempting to get away from him – not that she had anywhere to go, since she'd trapped herself in a corner. He stepped up closer behind her, leaning his face beside the left side of head so that she couldn't help but hear him, his body against the wall to her left but stretching his right arm out behind her, so that his right hand touched the wall on her right, giving her no way to avoid him. "I wasn't kidding when I said you weren't getting rid of me that easily, Jane." When she didn't answer, he continued, "Jane… I'm sorry." But that only seemed to make her cry harder. She unclenched her arms from around the front of her and put her forearms up against the wall in front of her, burrowing them into the corner, burying her face in them.
Reasoning with her wasn't working, obviously, so she had to try something more dramatic. Carefully putting his arms around her waist, he attempted to pull her away from the corner. He knew that on a normal day, she could probably knock him down easily, especially since he wasn't exactly in a defensive stance… but as despondent as she was at that moment, he hoped that what he was doing wasn't risking his life. He tugged her backward toward him, then attempted to turn her around to face him. However, after moving her back slightly, he didn't have any luck with turning her around, so instead he stepped around her, squeezing himself into the corner that she'd been fighting so hard to push herself into just a minute before. She attempted to turn away from him, but he managed to catch her, holding on tight before she could turn away, pulling her into him tightly.
"I'm sorry," he whispered loudly again, "But Jane, it's going to be okay." He leaned back into the corner, now glad for the support it gave him, and pulled her as close as he could. She'd worked herself up about as much as she could take and then some, and now it was going to be a while before she could calm down. He sincerely hoped that he'd now heard everything, if for no other reason than for her sanity's sake. He just wasn't sure she could take any more of this. Definitely not any time soon.
It took what felt like a long time, but her breathing slowly evened out. At some point, when she opened her eyes and became conscious of her surroundings again, she realized that she was standing at the opposite end of the interrogation room from the table where she'd spent more of her time the past few days, that her head was on Kurt's shoulder, and that his arms were wrapped around her securely. He glanced down at her, seeing that her eyes were now open again, and smiled at her. There had been so much talk – mostly hers – between them, and it just didn't seem necessary to say anything just then. She raised her head only slightly to look at him, then smiled weakly back at him, replacing her head on his shoulder. To say that she was exhausted would have been a major understatement.
One look at her face told him that even holding on to him, that more than anything, she needed to rest. "Hey," he said to the side of her head, which he had the best view of, "let's sit down." She mumbled some sort of noise in protest, but he suspected that it was based mainly on the fact that she didn't want to go back to that table, or even the chairs, where she'd already spent so much time. He couldn't really blame her. "No, right here," he told her. "Just sit down, you're exhausted." After all, he'd seen her sit on the interrogation room floor plenty of times… though he hoped those weren't the times she'd remember just then.
Being in the corner, he slid easily to the floor, and she lowered herself immediately afterwards. She looked at him unsurely before simply scooting towards him, leaning her left side against him and her head back on his shoulder, her legs curled up beside her. He pulled her closer, leaving his arms around her loosely. There they sat, quietly, and he had absolutely no intention of moving any time soon. Of course they couldn't stay there forever, but for the time being, sitting there quietly, relaxed against each other, beat the hell out of everything but the way they had woken up that morning. He listened to her breathing, bringing his right hand up to smooth out her hair, and allowing his mind to drift. He couldn't be sure, but he was fairly sure that she'd fallen asleep. That didn't sound like a bad idea, actually, but his mind was still spinning, and he doubted he'd be sleeping any time soon.
It was a surprise then, when he found himself waking up in that same corner, Jane still curled against him. The clock told him that it was almost two hours later. There was a tray of food from the cafeteria sitting on the table, no doubt delivered from one of their team members. Even though it was well into mid-afternoon and they hadn't eaten since the donuts they'd each had at breakfast, he couldn't think about food – not only because he had Jane was snuggled against him – though he had to admit, that was a good reason to stay where he was. No, it was hard to think about food when his stomach was in knots over everything that had happened.
Sighing, all he could do was be thankful that at that exact moment, there was a break from the torment of the past twenty four hours… longer than that, really. It had been nearly two weeks since everything had spiraled so quickly out of control, inflicting various forms and degrees of torment on each of them. Would there be more? He didn't know. But just then, in this unexpected moment of stillness, he was still processing what he had already learned.
So many things still hung over them, not least of all what Jane's fate would be after everything was said and done. Still, at least she wasn't currently torturing herself, as she continued to sleep, curled into the side of him.
For that small mercy, after she had endured so many hours – no, days – of continuous pain, he was grateful.