I do not own Blindspot or its characters.
A/N: Wanted to thank everyone for their reviews on this story, and all my stories, and give a special shout-out to the guests who provide the majority of them. I understand that you may choose not to have an account on here if you're not an author yourself, but I respect that choice, and I welcome any and all feedback you choose to give. We are all entitled to our own opinions, and I hope that everyone who reviews here will respect that—and one another. Thank you.
"How . . ." Jane's voice was shaking, and she took a deep breath to steady it as she stared down at the offending piece of paper. "How is this possible? We didn't . . . The minister . . . This isn't . . . This can't . . ."
"Jane." Kurt took the certificate from her and placed it on the desk behind him before gripping her shoulders firmly. "Relax. Breathe." Freaking out wouldn't do either of them any good, though admittedly he had done his share of that since opening that envelope last night. "We need to figure out our next move."
"Right." Jane took another deep breath as the reality of the situation started to sink in. "You've obviously had a little time to think about this. What would you suggest?"
Kurt sighed. He'd done some research early this morning when sleep wouldn't come, but none of it was very encouraging for resolving this quickly and quietly. "As much as I hate to say it, I think the two of us need to pay Rich Dotcom a visit and find out just what the hell is going on." He'd been hoping never to see that man again in this lifetime, but deep down, he'd expected the man would find a way to insert himself into his life again.
He just hadn't expected it to happen so soon—or so memorably.
Jane nodded slowly. "That makes sense." Though she wasn't quite certain how she was going to keep from strangling Rich. As if she hadn't already had enough on her plate—the team had enough on their plate. And speaking of the team . . . She glanced out toward the bullpen where an eagle-eyed Zapata was watching them with undisguised curiosity. "So what do we tell everyone about why we're leaving the office?"
Kurt dropped his hands like he'd been scalded as he followed her gaze. "It's probably best if we stick as close to the truth as we can. We'll tell them Rich wants to see us." A meeting he had no doubt the man was gleefully anticipating, even if he hadn't requested it.
And Rich's smirk as soon as they entered the room confirmed it. "Mr. and Mrs. Weller," he greeted as they took the seats across from them. "It's so nice to see you again. How goes married life?"
His smile widened at Kurt's furious glare. "You look a bit stressed there, Stubbles. If it's the lack of a honeymoon, I'm sure we can work something out. I'd be happy to pay for it in exchange for, oh, I don't know . . . an extra hour of exercise a day? No? Well, we can negotiate."
"Cut the crap, Rich," Kurt growled. "This marriage might technically be legal, but we both know it isn't valid. We were coerced into it."
"Coerced?" Rich didn't even have to feign his injured look this time. "It's not as if I held a gun to your head. In fact, if memory serves me, I was in your custody, Stubbles. I offered you a deal, and you took it. I didn't force you to do anything."
"The deal was that the marriage would be fake," Kurt spat. "You—"
"Actually, if you'll think back, all I promised was that the ceremony itself would be fake," Rich intervened. "I never said a word about the marriage resulting from it. A marriage that the two of you made legal by signing the marriage license. Which you did without a word of encouragement from me, I might add." Though it had taken everything in him to keep quiet until they did so and not to cheer afterwards. "One might almost think the two of you wanted to be married."
"That's ridiculous!" Jane protested. "We were just preoccupied with waiting for Hines to show up, and not thinking clearly." Or at least she hadn't been. She wasn't sure what Kurt's excuse was. "We would never have chosen to get married of our own free will."
"In that case, I did the two of you even more of a favor than I realized," Rich told them. He'd never met two people more perfect for one another—or more stubbornly determined to resist the attraction between them. He didn't know what had happened to cause the rift between them, but it was high time they mended it. A love like theirs didn't come along every day.
"All you've done is force us to waste valuable time—" and no doubt money, "—putting an end to this farce," Jane shot back. "Or did you think you could somehow trick us into staying married as well?"
Rich chuckled. "As delightful a challenge as that would be, my dear Janie, the state of New York has that pretty well taken care of for me." And he was counting on her concern for Kurt to take care of the one loophole left open to them.
Jane's brow furrowed as she got a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. "What . . . what do you mean by that?"
Rich glanced at Weller. "Do you want to tell her, Stubbles, or should I?"
"Kurt?" Jane asked softly when he looked away, running a frustrated hand through his hair. "What is he talking about?"
Kurt sighed as he reluctantly met her gaze. "I did a little research last night," he admitted. "In order to get a divorce, we have to be separated for at least six months. An annulment makes more sense, but there are very specific criteria we have to meet to qualify for one, and . . ."
"What Stubbles is trying to say," Rich interposed when Weller faltered, "is that in order for your marriage to be automatically void, you would have to have been married by someone not licensed to perform the ceremony in this state, which I can assure you is not the case. A court can declare a marriage void if one spouse is under the age of consent, mentally deficient, or, er . . . incapable of performing in the bedroom. Also, if one or both parties consented to the marriage due to force, duress, or fraud."
"Well, there you go," Jane said as she leaned back, feeling herself breathe a little freer for the first time since this all began. "That last one fits us to a tee."
"True," Rich nodded, doing his best to look appropriately solemn. "But court proceedings are public record, and in order to have your marriage voided on those grounds, you would have to go before a judge and announce to the whole world that the assistant director of the New York office of the FBI was not only completely hoodwinked by a criminal he'd had dealings with before, but he unwittingly allowed said criminal to pay for his wedding. Call me crazy, but I don't think the public would have too much confidence in Weller's ability to keep them safe after that, do you?"
"You son of a bitch!" Jane exploded, lunging across the table toward Rich. How dare he impugn the integrity of a man who was worth a hundred of him? And then sit there calmly smirking at them as if he hadn't a care in the world?
"Jane!" Kurt said firmly, catching her around the waist and pulling her back. He shared her outrage, but lashing out at the man responsible for their predicament wouldn't help the situation at this point.
"That's the way, Stubbles," Rich approved. "Show the little missus who's boss."
"One more word out of you, and I'll let her show you exactly who's boss," Kurt told him coldly. Rich's eyes gleamed, and for a moment he thought the man was going to press the issue, but then he apparently thought better of it and fell silent. Kurt sighed. "What do you want, Rich?" He didn't believe for a moment that Dotcom had gone to all this trouble and expense simply for the hell of it; he had to have an objective—one that hopefully offered a solution that they weren't seeing yet.
There was nothing they could give him that would induce him to offer them a way out of this, but Rich pursed his lips, pretending to consider the question. "You could start by returning all of my assets that you froze. And chartering me and Boston a jet to a nice, non-extradition country."
"Let's go," Kurt said to Jane, shoving his chair back with such force that it nearly tipped over. Jane cast Rich one last loathing glance as she followed him from the room.
"Don't be strangers!" Rich called just as the door started to slam shut behind them. He leaned back in his chair and laughed maniacally as he waited for the guards to come in and return him to his cell. He couldn't wait to tell Boston about this. The two of them had spent countless hours since becoming cellmates anticipating Jane and Weller's discomfort, but the reality far exceeded all of their expectations. And the best was yet to come.
Kurt's footsteps didn't slow until they were outside the prison walls, Jane scurrying to keep up with him. "Hey, wait up! Kurt!" She jogged in front of him, forcing him to stop and look at her. "Talk to me," she pleaded. She understood his frustration, but the two of them were going to have to start working together to solve this. He had pulled her back from the brink in there, and she was determined to do the same for him now.
"What is there to talk about?" Kurt asked bitterly. "What can we do, except wait six months and quietly get a divorce?" He'd known that was the likely outcome, but he'd been hoping against hope that Rich had had a purpose for this little con he'd perpetrated, that he would offer them a way out.
Instead, it appeared to have been nothing more than a sick joke to him.
"What if we talk to a lawyer?" Jane suggested. "There must be some loophole, some way to . . ."
"Short of going before a judge and claiming fraud . . ." Kurt drew a deep breath as he looked away, shaking his head slightly. "There's not."
"That is not even an option," Jane reassured him fiercely. "You're my friend, Kurt, and we're in this mess together; I'm not about to let it destroy your reputation. Besides, I'm not seeing anyone at the moment, and six months isn't that long. If I meet someone and they're not willing to wait, they're not worth my time anyway."
"So we just . . ." Kurt hesitated, trying to ignore the primal surge of jealousy that flooded him at the thought of his wife seeing another man. "We just go on with business as usual, and in six months . . ."
"We get a divorce," Jane agreed, feeling a pang in her heart as she spoke the words. She knew it was too much to expect after everything that had happened between them, that they were lucky to be getting back to a friendly footing, but some part of her had been hoping to hear him say that he didn't want the divorce, that he'd like to give them a chance and see where it went.
But of course, that was crazy.
The drive back to the office was silent, each of them lost in their own thoughts—thoughts they would have been startled to know were eerily similar, eerily longing—but their hastily conceived plan suffered a setback the moment they stepped out of the car.
"Mr. and Mrs. Weller?" a well-dressed man asked as he approached them. Kurt and Jane exchanged cautious glances and then nodded, both of them going for their weapons as the man reached into his pocket. "Easy! Rich Dotcom asked me to return these to you. He said you would be needing them." He shoved the two small black boxes into their hands and fled before the stunned pair could think to argue.
"I thought these were put into evidence," Jane said in disbelief as she opened hers to reveal the diamond-encrusted bridal set that had featured in her dreams since Kurt slid them on her finger. She didn't know why her subconscious persisted in imagining a future for them where there clearly could be none. Kurt might be hers legally—for the moment—but he would never belong to her physically or emotionally, never be her boyfriend or husband in truth.
"They, ah . . . they came up missing before they could be logged in," Kurt told her as he opened his box to reveal his own wedding band, similarly affected. "We figured Rich had had someone filch them somehow."
"So why go to all that trouble and then turn around and give them right back to us?" Jane asked in puzzlement. Rich had to know that they would just go straight into evidence now. "He has to know we have no intention of staying married, or announcing it to the world. What do you think he meant by us needing them?"
Kurt simply shook his head, but a prickle of foreboding snaked its way down his spine. He did his best to shrug it off, but it was an instinct he would have done well to heed.
The entire team was waiting for them when they stepped off the elevator. Patterson looked upset, Reade uneasy, Zapata a mixture of both with some amusement thrown in as well, and Nas . . . Nas was always difficult to read, but Kurt could have sworn there was fury in the dark depths of her eyes beneath the controlled mask she wore so well. "What's going on?"
"Funny, we were just about to ask you that," Tasha spoke up. "A reporter from the Times showed up about an hour ago. She said she's here to do an interview about your journey to love. Something you want to tell us, boss?"
Goddamn you, Rich, Kurt thought, glancing over at Jane as she sucked in a shaky breath. He'd had a feeling that bastard was just a little too amused all throughout their visit, but given the con he'd just pulled on them, he'd dismissed that impression.
It was a mistake he bitterly regretted now. Of course Rich wouldn't have left them with such an easy out. What the hell had he been thinking?
"I, uh . . ." Kurt wrapped his arm around Jane's waist as she crossed her arms, recognizing her unease beneath the defensive posture, relieved to feel her lean into him slightly. They were clearly going to have to rethink their plan, but just as she had said earlier, they were in this together. They were going to have to be here for one another now more than ever. "So, it turns out that wedding wasn't quite as fake as we thought." He gave Jane a slight smile of reassurance before meeting the others' stunned eyes once more. "We're married."