Sorry it's been so long since I updated! I'll try to do better this summer, since I'm working less hours, but I'm prepping to start college, which is years overdue, so no promises. As always, reviews are much appreciated!
It was all Jane could do to put one foot in front of the other to walk into the NYO the next morning. The place that had become a second home to her now felt as foreign as the first day she had been marched in here with no memories. She swallowed hard as she stepped off the elevator into the bullpen and found Mayfair waiting for her. She had come in early in the hopes that she could get her bearings before the rest of the team arrived, but clearly it hadn't been early enough.
"Good morning, Jane," Mayfair greeted. "I was hoping you'd come in early. I think we need to talk, don't you?"
Jane nodded slightly as Mayfair motioned toward her office. "Ku—Agent Weller's not in yet?" she asked, torn between relief and disappointment when Mayfair shook her head.
"Have a seat," Mayfair ordered as she sat down at the table, and Jane dropped into the chair across from her. "It occurred to me after you'd gone home last night that I had neglected to find out what Oscar asked you to do."
"How do you know he asked me to do anything?" Jane challenged.
Mayfair smiled without humor. "They didn't deliver you to us just so we could follow your tattoos. If that was all they intended to use you for, they could have just sent us drawings of them. I believe they wiped your memory so you would be more susceptible to their version of your past, and it's clear that they want you to think the worst of Weller. Whatever their game plan is, it clearly doesn't include you making nice with your ex—with your brother-in-law."
A shadow passed through Jane's eyes, and Mayfair's gaze softened. She stretched a hand across the table to cover Jane's. "How are you doing with all this? Those revelations can't have been easy, especially given your feelings for Weller."
Jane winced. "It's that obvious?" A stupid question, given that she had all but declared her undying love for him yesterday. I'd have had to been crazy to look twice at anyone else, much less left you for them. God, how was she ever going to be able to look Weller in the eyes again?
"He lo—cares for you too, Jane," Mayfair amended.
"He loves the person he thought I was," Jane corrected. "The best thing I can do for him is to help catch the people who did this to me and get the hell away from him so he can mourn my sister and move on with his life."
"You both lost your sister," Mayfair pointed out. "You don't think there's a chance you could mourn her together, and then—"
"What?" Jane interrupted sharply. "Build a life together on a foundation of shared grief? I'd just be a constant reminder of the woman he loved and lost, and even if Kurt were willing to accept that, I care too much about him to let him. He deserves to start fresh, and I deserve . . ."
"Better," Mayfair finished softly. "You deserve better."
"There is no better," Jane said thickly. "And I'm honestly not sure what I deserve at this point. But I know what I want, and that's to be loved for me." This conversation was getting more emotionally charged than she could handle at the moment, and she quickly changed the subject. "You wanted to know what Oscar asked me to do." She pulled Mayfair's pen from her pocket. "He asked me to swap out your pen for one identical to it—and I did."
"I see," Mayfair said quietly, making no move to take her pen from Jane. "Would you have turned it over to him last night if Weitz hadn't shown up?"
"I'd have turned it over to him if you hadn't told me the truth," Jane returned with brutal honesty. She took a deep breath. "I need answers, Mayfair. I need to know more about my past, what kind of person I was and why I got caught up in . . . whatever this plan is. I need to know who I am."
"That's understandable," Mayfair responded gently, "but Jane . . . no matter what we find, that's who you were. Who you are now is entirely up to you."
"Thank you," Jane choked out as her eyes grew moist.
"That said," Mayfair continued, "I think it's time we read the team in on the truth, but as far as anyone other than us and Weitz know, you'll need to continue pretending to be Taylor Shaw. But I promise you, Jane—I promise you—that we won't stop investigating until we get all of the answers you need."
"That's all I can ask for," Jane said with a weak smile. Her smile quickly turned into a frown as she recalled something Oscar had said. "We might need to brief the team somewhere other than here. I asked Oscar how he knew what your pen looked like, and he implied that they might have someone else on the inside."
"No problem," Mayfair assured her. "I'll talk to Weller when he gets here, and we'll figure out how best to handle it to avoid tipping our hand. In the meantime, we'll continue with business as usual. And speaking of which . . ." She glanced at her watch. "Don't you have an appointment with Dr. Borden in a few minutes?"
"Yeah," Jane said as she reluctantly stood. The last thing she wanted to do when her emotions were in such a jumble was sit down with her shrink, but as Mayfair had said, it had to appear to be business as usual. Her thoughts drifted to Kurt for the umpteenth time this morning as she took the elevator down to Borden's office. As difficult as this situation was for her, she couldn't imagine how he was going to cope, losing the woman he'd loved for a second time and being forced to come face-to-face with her mirror image every day for the foreseeable future.
The one thing she did know was that it was going to be absolute hell on earth to know she was the cause of Weller's suffering and be powerless to do a thing about it.
xxx
Kurt groaned as the pounding in his head drew him back to consciousness, and a firm nudge in the ribs brought him fully awake. He hadn't had a hangover like this since . . . well, since the last time he'd lost Taylor, and the thought of her made him long once more for the oblivion alcohol had provided him last night. He opened his eyes just enough to reach for the mostly empty bottle of scotch on the table above him, but a gentle foot on his arm stopped him.
"Nuh-uh, little brother," Sarah said firmly. "No hair of the dog when you look like something the dog dragged in." Her heart broke as he looked up at her with a bleak expression from his prone position on the floor. It was a look she recognized all too well. "What's going on, Kurt? Is Jane—"
"Taylor's dead," Kurt blurted out. He sat up abruptly, and the pain in his head intensified so much he slumped back against the couch with a groan. "She's dead, Sarah." He glanced down at the floor as his shoulders began to shake with sobs.
Sarah's heart stopped for a moment at the shock of the news, and then she dropped to the floor beside her brother, wrapping her arms around him as tears began to stream down her own face. Kurt turned toward her, clinging to her desperately, and she stroked his hair as they grieved in silence.
Eventually Kurt's sobs slowed, and his grip loosened enough that Sarah could pull back to see his face. "What happened?" she asked him gently. "I didn't see anything about this on the news last night." And Reade hadn't mentioned it, or she would have hightailed it back over here instead of spending the night in his bed. It must have happened after they'd become engrossed in one another, although she hadn't heard his phone ring. God, she hoped Taylor hadn't died because she'd distracted Reade from providing needed backup. She would never be able to forgive herself. "Did the people who did this to Jane come after her?"
"No." Kurt drew a shuddering breath. "No, Jane isn't Taylor, Sarah. Taylor . . . Taylor's been dead for six years."
"What?" Sarah stared at her brother in disbelief, struggling to wrap her head around that revelation. "So . . . so Jane is what, just a lookalike?"
"Not just a lookalike," Kurt said thickly. "Jane is Taylor's long-lost twin sister. Her real name is—but I shouldn't be telling you this." Mayfair would have his hide if he compromised the investigation, but he couldn't have kept this from his sister.
But he wasn't about to put her in any further danger either.
"Come on. You've told me this much. What harm can knowing her real name do?" Sarah asked impatiently.
"It doesn't matter." And might well even be classified. Kurt glanced over at the clock on the wall and rose unsteadily to his feet. "I need to get a shower and get to work, and you . . . you need to forget I told you about this for now. Until this investigation is complete, Jane has to remain Taylor Shaw."
"Understood," Sarah said reluctantly. "Just promise me one thing." Kurt turned back to face her, and she wrapped her arms around her big brother. "When all this is over, don't push me away and drown your sorrows in alcohol this time. I loved Taylor too, and I love you, and we should grieve her together."
Kurt's arms tightened around Sarah. "I'll do my best, sis." He held onto her for several moments longer before reluctantly loosening his grip and stepping back. For the first time he could remember, he wanted to go not to work, but as far from it as he could get. He wanted to get on a plane with Sarah and Sawyer and jet somewhere sunny and tropical, somewhere far from the stress and pain and risk of his job here.
But he knew from painful experience that running wouldn't lessen his heartbreak. He might not have been able to save Taylor, but he damn well could get justice for her sister. She would have expected no less from him, and it was the last thing he would ever be able to do for her. Given all that she had sacrificed to save Brianne, she deserved that. Jane deserved that.
The team was gathered in the conference room when he arrived, and Kurt's eyes instantly went to Jane as he slid into the seat across from her. Her shoulders were slumped slightly, and she refused to meet his gaze, apparently engrossed in the paper on the table in front of her.
"Okay," Mayfair said briskly once Kurt was seated. "I called you all in here this morning because there have been some new . . . developments in the case overnight, and some facts I ordered Agent Weller to withhold that have become relevant. First off, Taylor Shaw wasn't just Weller's childhood friend; she was his wife."
The group exchanged shocked glances. "Jane was your wife?" Zapata asked in wounded disbelief. "I mean, it was obvious to all of us from the get-go that the two of you had been romantically involved, but after all the time we've worked together, how could you have never told us that you were married?"
Kurt winced. This was exactly why he had always made a point to keep his personal and professional lives separate. "Well, I . . ."
"You don't look surprised," Reade said to Patterson before Kurt could formulate a response. "Did you know about this?"
"No!" Patterson said hastily. "I mean . . . not until this morning. As you know, I've been trying to crack the code in Emma Shaw's journal, and I came in early to work on a page in the back that appeared to be in a different handwriting that I thought might be easier to decipher. It turned out to be a letter from Taylor to Kurt, and . . . well . . ."
"We get it," Zapata said. She turned to Jane. "So you just found out last night that you were married to Kurt? That must have been quite a shock."
"Actually . . ." Jane took a deep breath. "I'm not Taylor. She was my twin sister. My . . . my real name is Brianne."
A deafening silence followed her pronouncement. "You said Taylor was your sister," Patterson ventured eventually. "Does that mean . . .?"
"Taylor's dead," Kurt said harshly. "Carter recruited her to take down her arms dealer father and then blew her up with a drone strike when she didn't get the job done quick enough."
"A little over simplistic, but that's Orion in a nutshell," Mayfair spoke up. "The CIA read the FBI—me—into that operation because they believed the weapons Andrew Hunter was selling posed a credible threat to this country. Unfortunately, the CIA isn't as careful as we are to vet the info they receive, and they played right into the hands of a rival arms dealer wanting to take out his competition."
"And Taylor paid the price for that," Reade surmised.
Mayfair nodded. "As far as we knew, everyone in Hunter's compound died that day. It wasn't until Jane showed up and Casey Robek mentioned Orion that I began to question that narrative. That's why I dug into Emma Shaw's past," she said to Kurt. "And what I found, coupled with Carter's behavior, convinced me that I was on the right track." She looked at Jane. "That's why I had agents tailing you even after I agreed to suspend your detail. But you slipped them, and Carter got a hold of you and tortured you."
"What?" the remaining members of the team chorused in horrified disbelief.
Mayfair quickly filled them in on the rest of the events that had transpired recently. "According to the video Jane gave Weitz, the group she was a part of is conspiring to overthrow the government. Weitz is on his way to discuss the particulars of how we're going to stop them, but you're all going to need to be at the top of your game. So take a break to process this information, discuss it amongst yourselves, whatever you need to do, and then get back in here, and let's get to work. The clock's ticking, people."