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ransomedrogue · 1 year

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hey blindspotters... it’s been awhile! I fell off the writing/fandom wagon for a bit there but then I just checked back in and the rewatch was on 3.20... and I wrote something? It’s a couple of extra scenes (to make the gunshot wound worse than it appeared of course :P). oh and it all came out quick and I didn’t actually watch the episode again so apologies for any inconsistencies.

3.20

Jane ran to Avery as soon as she dropped the weapon, wrapping her arms around her daughter in relief. Watching Avery point the gun at her godmother had been terrifying, especially knowing their shared DNA. Jane was sure that Remi at that age would have fired without remorse, despite the potential consequences.

Avery seemed to be in shock at what had almost happened; what she'd almost done. Her body was stiff in Jane's arms and her breathing started to become frantic so Jane guided her towards the couch, away from the action.

"Here, let's sit down," she said. "You did the right thing, everything's going to be okay."

Avery sat obediently, still shaky as Jane's hand settled between her shoulders.

"Okay great. Now let's breathe together for a bit."

Jane quietly encouraged Avery to inhale deeply before releasing her breath slowly, until a few silent minutes passed and Avery finally spoke.

"I almost killed her," she whispered, sounding almost in awe.

"I'm sorry."

Jane shook her head, fighting back an emotion she couldn't quite identify. It was part pride, part guilt, with a sprinkling of regret. Avery had made the right choice, despite everything she'd been through, all the things a parent should have protected her from.

"You don't have anything to apologize for," Jane replied. "You have every right to be angry, and you still made the right choice. I'm proud of you, and I'm sure your dad would be too."

Avery finally stopped staring blankly at the floor and looked up at Jane, with obvious uncertainty in her eyes.

"I don't know what to believe anymore," she said softly. "Everything's so messed up."

Jane sighed, her heart aching for her daughter. Learning the truth about her own parentage had been hard enough, even without memories of growing up with Shepherd. Avery had thought her family was completely normal until recently, and was still just a kid in so many ways. Of course it was a lot to wrap her mind around, and would involve a lot of mixed emotions.

"I know," Jane replied. "I'm sorry about all of this."

"It's not your fault," Avery said, shaking her head. "You saved my life today."

Of course she had, there hadn't been any other option. It wasn't something she expected her daughter to thank her for though; it was just a given. Avery was her kid, even if she rightfully didn't consider Jane her parent. And no one was going to hurt her kid.

Jane tried to figure out a way to deflect Avery's gratitude but her train of thought was interrupted by Kurt's voice, coming from behind them.

"Yeah, she does that," he commented, placing his hand on Jane's shoulder and squeezing lightly.

Jane looked up over her shoulder and rolled her eyes at him, but her smile belied any annoyance at his statement. Weller was always so proud of her that it was almost over the top. However, considering how broken their relationship had been just recently, it warmed her chest hearing his love for her come through in the tone of his voice.

"Paramedics are here to take you to the hospital," Weller said. "And I'll take Avery to the NYO to get her statement. Reade and Zapata can wrap things up here."

Avery flashed Jane a worried look and a surge of protectiveness washed over her.

"I don't need to go to the hospital, I'll come with you to the NYO," Jane protested. "I can get medical to look at it after Avery's done her statement."

"That tourniquet's been on for two hours now, it needs to be loosened soon," Kurt replied. "Let's go see what the paramedics say first."

"Kurt…"

"No arguing," he said, his voice stern though his thumb continued to rub soothing circles against her skin.

"Yeah. No arguing," Avery added, her tone equally serious.

Jane sighed in defeat, shaking her head as she stood up and let Kurt walk her towards the ambulance.

"Okay, let's get this over with," Jane said, sitting down on the gurney that the EMT pointed her towards.

The paramedic asked all the standard questions about her injury and frowned when she said how long the tourniquet had been on for.

"We need to get you to the hospital and get that off of your arm as soon as possible," he said. "Let's get you strapped onto the gurney and we'll get moving."

Jane immediately got off the stretcher at his words and started to walk away but Weller used his bigger size to press her back into a seated position.

"Kurt, it can wait," she protested.

"No it can't," he retorted. "You know permanent damage can happen if you have that tourniquet on for over two hours."

"Fine, then they can take it off here and bandage it," Jane said. "If that isn't enough to get the bleeding to stop then I'll go to the doctor after you get Avery's statement."

Weller sighed, giving the paramedic an exasperated look.

"Will that work?", he asked.

"We can try," the EMT said. "But it is not what I would recommend."

Jane shot the man a glare and he immediately stopped talking when he saw the daggers in her eyes. Silently, he proceeded to open up his first aid kit and began wrapping a pressure bandage tightly around the wound on Jane's arm.

Jane grunted as the sensation in her arm immediately went from muted ache to pulsing throb. Her eyes closed automatically and she shivered involuntarily as a wave of discomfort shot through her. But then she felt Kurt's hand slip into hers, gripping it firmly as she tried to breathe through the pain.

It took a few moments to gather herself and when Jane opened her eyes again, the bandage was on and the paramedic was beginning to undo the tourniquet. For a second, everything seemed fine after the strap came off. But then, almost immediately, the bandage was soaked in blood and Jane's head began to spin.

"What's happening?!" Avery asked, her voice full of panic.

Jane tried to say something to reassure her daughter but all her thoughts were slipping away with her blood. She could vaguely hear Weller freaking out at the EMT's, demanding to know what was happening. But by the time the answer came, her audio input was becoming spotty, and all she could hear was something about a tear in the artery.

That doesn't sound good, she thought dimly, while everyone began yelling all around her. Then something else was wrapped around her already throbbing arm, again intensifying the pain until darkness swept over her and she slumped forward into Kurt's panicked grip.

###

Normally, Weller would be totally losing his shit.

In the current circumstance, he was still losing his shit, but only internally. At least, Kurt hoped he was maintaining a relatively calm and rational exterior for Avery's sake.

Jane was going to be fine. They had gotten to the hospital in record time, with him leading the ambulance in the FBI SUV, lights blaring all the way. Even though she had regained consciousness almost immediately after passing out in his arms, Weller had driven unreasonably fast, until he realized he was scaring Avery and toned things down a bit.

And now, he was telling himself not to pace as his mind kept going back to the memory of her eyes rolling back as she slumped forward, almost falling off the gurney before he managed to wrap himself around her. Avery kept eyeing him anxiously but Weller had offered all the reassuring words he could muster up in the haze of his own worry.

It felt like an eternity, but in reality the surgeon was out to talk to them barely an hour after Jane had been whisked away into an operating room. She offered Kurt a tired smile as he rushed up to talk to her, clearly seeing his poorly hidden desperation.

"Your wife is fine, Agent Weller," the doctor said. "She was lucky, the bullet was just deep enough to nick the deep brachial artery, but not enough to slice it through. The repair was relatively simple and she should have full function of the arm again shortly. I would still like to keep her overnight for observation, but barring any complications, she should be ready to go home in the morning."

Weller winced internally, recognizing a future battle that both he and the doctor were sure to lose.

"When can we see her?," he asked.

"She's in recovery now and will be in a regular room soon after she's awake," the doctor replied. "I'll make sure someone lets you know as soon as that happens."

Kurt thanked the surgeon and then exhaled a lungful of worry as he turned to face Avery.

"See, I told you she'd be fine," he said.

Avery smirked a little as she shook her head at him.

"You were so freaking out," she replied.

Weller sighed, accepting the obvious fact that he could be irrational when it came to Jane's well-being.

"Yeah, okay. Maybe I was," he admitted. "But I also knew she would be okay. She's been through a lot worse, she's tough as nails. Where do you think you get it from?"

At least that got a grin out of the kid.

"I mean, the same thing basically happened on our first case together and she still came back for more," he continued.

Avery looked confused for a second as she registered his words.

"You mean she got shot on her first day with you?"

"Yup," Weller replied with a grin. "And that was after she beat the crap out of two guys in a knife fight."

Avery grinned, nodding her approval.

"Jane's pretty hardcore," she said.

"She's not going to want to stay overnight, is she?"

Kurt laughed, loosening up for the first time since Jane had passed out that afternoon.

"Nope, she sure isn't."

###

She woke up in a fuzz, with fire blazing in her bicep. Trying to blink away the bleariness, Jane realized she wasn't in the recovery room anymore, even though she didn't remember falling asleep again after waking up post op. But now instead of the recovery room nurse, she was being intently observed by a pair of familiar blue eyes, etched deep with both worry and relief.

"Hey," Kurt breathed, as if full volume might overwhelm her somehow.

"How are you feeling?"

"I'm fine," Jane replied, without really thinking about the question. It was what he needed to hear, and how she needed to be.

Weller smiled, a knowing sparkle in his eye as he looked her over intently.

"How's the arm? Do you need painkillers?"

"I'm fine, Kurt," she sighed. She felt blurry enough without more meds, even if her arm was pulsating. Jane didn't want to be on hospital grade drugs, especially with Avery there. She had already felt bad worrying her daughter earlier that day, and felt rather chagrined at having ended up admitted to the hospital for a graze to her arm.

"Did you guys do Avery's statement yet?"

Weller and Avery exchanged a glance before Kurt looked back at Jane.

"No, he was too busy losing it in the waiting room," Avery said, matter of factly. "I mean, he was pretending he wasn't. But it was pretty obvious."

Weller winced visibly and Jane laughed at the mix of mock and real dismay in his expression. Getting called out by a teenager was something they would both have to get used to.

"Kurt, it was a graze," she sighed.

"A graze doesn't take surgery and a bag of blood," Weller replied. "I should have known it was worse than it looked when you told me things weren't great."

"The doctor wants you to stay overnight," he added. "Just for observation."

Jane sighed, steeling herself for a battle.

"Kurt…"

"I know. You're fine, and you don't want to stay," Weller said, flashing Avery another look.

But his tone more bemused than upset, and when he glanced back at Jane, she could see affection glittering in his eyes.

"Will you at least wait for the doctor to come take a look? Then you can tell him you're leaving and we can all go to the NYO after."

It was an easy compromise, especially since she was still a little groggy from the anaesthetic. Jane grinned at her husband, glad to have avoided an argument.

"And then we'll go get my favourite burritos?," Jane added suddenly inspired by a growl in her stomach.

Kurt laughed, nodding in pretend defeat.

"Yes dear, then we'll go get your favourite burritos."

#blindspot #blindspot fanfic #blindspot rewatch 2023

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thetokentrans · 10 months

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Wrote a little something in like 5 minutes, came up with the idea after I finished the season 1 finale yesterday. So Blindspot spoilers ahoy!

After a particularly nasty mission, Weller had ended up in the hospital with broken ribs and a concussion. The team had taken turns sitting vigil next to him as he slept, hopped up on pain meds and tranquilizers to keep him from potentially breaking his ribs further and potentially puncturing a lung.

Jane sat, magazine in hand, gazing at Weller over the top of it. She'd turn the pages of the magazine, but her eyes never shifted down to read a word. She just locked onto his face, waiting for any sign of life other than the rise and fall of his stomach, timed with every breath he took.

She had no idea how long she'd been staring at him like that when his eyes fluttered open and he groaned. She launched herself to his side, murmuring to him. "Weller? Hey, how are you feeling?"

His eyes opened completely, his piercing blue eyes locking with her hazel ones. They were slightly glassy and unfocused from the pain medicine, but they were his all the same. A rare smile broke across his face as he took her in.

"Y'know, Taylor, you'd think you'd be happier to see me." He reached a hand up to cup Jane's cheek, his smile widening impossibly further, filled with a fondness that made Jane's chest ache.

The name he used hit her like a bus, and Jane pulled away. "I'm going to go tell the team you're awake." She stood stiffly from her chair and walked out of the room.

Weller's face fell, as realization dawned on him and the cloud of pain meds receded as she walked away.

"Jane - wait -" he called out after her but she was gone.

Patterson was the first person Jane came across in the waiting room, and she was annoyingly perceptive as always. "Hey, did he wake up? Is everything OK?" Patterson put a hand on Jane's shoulder, bright blue eyes scanning Jane's face and trying to maintain eye contact with her. "what happened?"

Jane shrugged, "I'm not Taylor. That's what happened. But yes, he's awake and ready for more visitors." Jane shook the hand from her shoulder and continued walking through the waiting room, and then out the door of the hospital, leaving behind a very confused Patterson.

#Blindspot fanfic #Blindspot spoilers #Blindspot #blindspot weller #Blindspot Jane doe

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indelibleevidence · 1 year

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Broken Wings, chapter 1 (Reller, M-rated)

Author's Note: Also on FanFiction.Net and AO3! Updating on Saturdays, because I made sure to actually finish the fic before I started posting it, to ensure I didn't consign it to WIP hell like my other WIPs. XD

Wow, this is going to be a lot of explaining, but here we go! First off, if you haven't read Strikethrough, Crossroads, and the Damaged Goods summaries for the rest of the fics that I haven't written in between Crossroads and this one, go do that first. There's also a one-shot called Stalling that's set a month or two before this fic, but it's not necessary reading to get what's going on here.

This fic contains suicidal ideation, suicidal distress, and a depiction of Remi at rock bottom. If you're in a bad place, it might be better if you don't read this right now. (And I hope you feel less terrible soon.)

Remi is a lot different from the Remi in Crossroads. She's got pretty much all of her memories from her Jane years back now, and is a little bit softer and less sweary, until she's provoked, and then she reverts to 'fuck you' mode. Much like Jane's 4x15/4x16 self in canon, she's overwhelmed by the weight of her past mistakes, as Remi and as Jane. She's definitely not on the 'yay, law enforcement' train, and is still mostly ACAB in nature, but she knows that at least Kurt and his team are well-intentioned, and their eyes are open to the corruption within the system (mainly because of the first set of tattoos). By this point in my timeline, she also has accepted the fact that she's in love with Kurt, but she'd die before she'd ever admit it to him.

Jane is referred to as a third person throughout this fic, because neither Remi nor Kurt are at the 'Jane and Remi are just two time periods sans memories for one person' stage of acceptance. Also because it's easier for me, as a writer, to differentiate between those different time periods and mindsets by just using the names she was going by at the time. I do think that in another year down the Damaged Goods timeline, both Remi and Kurt will stop referring to Jane as a separate entity, but Remi kind of needs it right now, and though Kurt is further down the line as seeing Jane as a part of Remi, he's still getting there too. So things might seem a little bit disassociative identity disordery, and I apologise to anyone who might stumble upon this who actually lives with DID and hates what I did with this. But Remi is compartmentalising a LOT, though interestingly enough, now she's seeing Jane as the better person, whereas before, she loathed Jane with the fire of a thousand suns. The difference a few memories can make...

This fic is complete, so I'll post updates on Saturdays, I guess. This is my first time actually finishing a multi-chaptered fic before starting to post, but I really didn't want to start posting another WIP that was going to hang around in limbo (I'm sorry, Remember to Forgive and Taken for Granted fans! I will get there, I hope!).

Lastly, I really have to thank nachosandcheeze for her enthusiasm for this AU, and her encouragement for me to keep writing for it. She's not the only one who's been lovely about it (and thank you to everyone who cares about my weird little enemies to lovers universe where Jane never quite made it back to her brain - really, you guys are fantastic!), but she's been pretty consistently poking me with metaphorical sticks, and making Remi gifsets, and squeeing over Reller, etc. - to the point where I showed her the half-scene I had written from a fic several fics away from where I'd left off with Crossroads, just to get it out of my brain. And she loved it so much that I wrote a bit more, and a bit more, until over 16k later, I ended up with this. So thank you again, nachos. You're proof that nagging a fic author for more story does actually work, sometimes! :D

Absently tracing the carving on the stone with her finger, Remi glanced over to the small vial of clear liquid on her nightstand. It sat on top of a small, leatherbound booklet—El Libro de la Eternidad—which she’d smuggled out of Peru, along with the stone brick from Machu Picchu. Maybe she should feel guilty that she’d stolen a couple of pieces of Peruvian history from its citizens, even if one of them was a loose brick, but after all the things she’d done in her short fuck-up of a life, her conscience was way past that. And the brick contained a carved message for her: RB 4 RB, Roman Briggs for Remi Briggs, along with binary code that pointed to Roman’s data caches, and a message that had made tears sting her eyes.

Hey, sis.

I got you something. I never solved this one.

I hope you can. I did my best.

May you outlive this… for both of us.

Your brother, always,

Roman

Even during his bitter feud with Jane—Remi still flinched to think of him ZIPped and claustrophobic in his FBI cell, even though she now remembered Jane’s reasons, and her anguish at her brother’s state—Roman had still been looking for a cure for her. He’d had his own, the one she’d stolen from Dr. Roga and used to cure herself—after all, Roman had died before he’d had the chance to benefit from it. But still, he’d hunted down more Stanton cells, which meant that now, Remi had a cure for ZIP poisoning all lined up.

She had everything she needed. If Roman’s cache intel was right, New York billionaire hypochondriac Ken Lee would trade El Libro de la Eternidad for the Stanton cells. Dr. Roga could synthesise a new cure, if Kurt approached her. And Remi would need that cure, because the ZIP on the nightstand would be going into her body, as soon as she laid the plan out for Kurt.

There was just one more thing left to do.

Setting aside Roman’s carving, she accessed the video recording setting on her phone, and held it up so that her face was visible. She’d made a video for her future self once before, to further Phase One of her grand plan by introducing Jane to Oscar, and verifying his trustworthiness.

And you know how that turned out, her internal critic whispered.

Swallowing hard, Remi made herself focus on the task at hand, ignoring the guilt gnawing on the synapses at the back of her mind. How was she going to start this thing? Saying hello seemed redundant.

“I know you’re suffering right now, and I’m sorry for that. You don’t remember your old life, and that’s intentional. Please, trust me when I say you shouldn’t go hunting for the finer details. I’m sparing you a lifetime of pain and futility by taking the ZIP, even though you might not be able to appreciate that.”

She sounded whiny as hell, but how else could she put it? She had to make future Jane understand that this was for the best.

“The only options, as I see them, are suicide or ZIP. I’ve got enough here that I should be able to wipe out any trace of my old memories. You might get a few flashes, but I hope you don’t. You don’t need to go through this again.”

If you weren’t such a coward, you’d just put a shotgun barrel in your mouth and pull the trigger. Maybe Jane would think she was cowardly. But she wasn’t afraid to die. She just didn’t want Kurt to have to suffer, knowing his wife was dead along with Remi.

“I’m doing this, instead of killing myself, because you have good people around you, people I’ve already hurt enough, and don’t want to hurt any more by making them lose you. You have loyal friends. A husband who loves you very much. Things will be hard for you at first, but you’ll build a life again, like you did before. And this time, you’ll know who did this to you, and why, and you won’t have me telling you to disregard your instincts and undermine the people you care about. I was misled, and betrayed, but I made bad choices, too. I was too stubborn to see it for so long, but the first time we were ZIPped, Jane found happiness, and a new purpose, and even though I still don’t think law enforcement is the shining star of morality… If you’re working with Kurt and his team, you’ll be working towards good things. Hold onto that.”

She took a breath, picking up the ancient Peruvian brick again.

“The one thing I want to tell you about is my—our—brother, Roman. Or Ian. That was his birth name, just like yours was Alice. Ian Kruger. Later, Roman Briggs. He wasn’t perfect, as I’m sure Kurt will tell you. But he was a follower his whole life, not a leader. He followed me, and our adopted mother, because he loved us, and didn’t want to be rejected. Jane hurt him too much, and he turned on her, and on Kurt, but deep down, he was a good man. He just wanted a loving family, to belong somewhere.”

She held the brick up in the camera’s sight. “I want you to keep this. Take care of it. This points to his last message from him to me, on his data caches. To Remi, I mean. Not the old version of Jane.” How did things get so confusing? “I have the actual message saved on my phone, so you should be able to see the message itself there. As for the brick, I took it from Peru, along with something to bargain with for a cure for your ZIP poisoning. Roman was looking for a cure for me, even while he knew I—the old Jane—was working to bring him down. He just wanted his sister back, I guess.”

If she kept this up for much longer, she was going to get too damn emotional, and there was no way she was willing to break down and cry on video. She had to cut this short. “Roman and I went through hell together, and that’s one of the things I don’t want you to remember anything about, so I won’t go into it. But we survived our childhood by relying on each other, and then our teenage years were the same, in a different way. We used to pass a South African rand coin our parents gave us back and forth, giving it to each other as a gift. It wasn’t worth much back then—and it’d buy even less now—but its symbolic value for us was priceless. For Roman, it was a comfort object. Jane buried him with it, so I don’t have it now, but I wanted you to know about it.”

She dug her fingernails into her palm, a technique she’d first used at the orphanage to keep outwardly calm, while a torrent of emotions churned within her. The pain centred her, making the grief easier to bear.

“Things went so wrong, but I never stopped loving Roman, even as Jane. And he never stopped loving me.”

She sighed, knowing she should say more, should give Jane more closure, but knowing she’d never be able to get through it on camera. Maybe she’d write Jane a letter, before Kurt ZIPped her.

“I hope you can build a life again, and find happiness. You sure as hell couldn’t do worse than I did. Please, look forward, not back. There’s nothing here but pain. Good luck.”

She threw down the phone and buried her face in her hands, breathing deeply, striving for the numbness that could get her through the final days of this life. Soon she’d fly to New York, and wipe the slate clean.

The end of my memories can’t come soon enough. I can’t do this anymore.

Three days later…

Kurt stared from the vial and hypodermic needle to his wife, a rapidly growing pit in his stomach. What…is happening here? What the hell, Remi?

“It’s okay,” she said, shrugging as though this was a foregone conclusion, a logical end to everything they’d battled through on their way to this moment. “I’ve made my peace with it. There’s nothing left here for me now. This is Jane’s world, and I don’t belong in it. At least…at least this way, you can get her back. Or as close to it as it’s possible to get.”

“It’s okay?” he finally managed to say, his throat choked with an intense mass of emotions that he couldn’t even begin to analyse right now. “Your identity is what makes you you, Remi. You’ve fought to defend it so damn hard, it nearly drove us apart for good. You’ve spent over a year getting so many of your memories back, and now you want a clean slate again? I know you remember how hard it was for you after Times Square, and after Cape Town.”

She wrapped her arms around herself, still not meeting his eyes. “The first time, you didn’t know who Jane was. Nobody knew. This time, everyone will. And she’ll have you, and your friends. It’s…easier that way. Even though I hated you when I found out what had happened to Sandstorm, at least I had…” She shook her head. “Anyway—Jane will adjust quickly. You can get the woman you married back, as she was.”

The words shook him, in so many different ways. He rubbed a hand over his face, floundering to make sense of everything.

To get his Jane back…it was everything he’d dreamed of for so long. During those ten months that Remi had gone off the radar, he’d been desperate to find a way to bring Jane back to the forefront of her mind. Aside from Bethany and work, it had been all he’d thought about, and he’d be lying if he said he didn’t feel a spark of hope for that outcome now.

But it was all wrong. It was a fairytale. Jane had been a product of the situation she’d been in, from the bag in Times Square to not knowing who she was, to thinking she was Taylor Shaw and then discovering she wasn’t, to being tortured by the CIA—and then discovering she used to be Remi Briggs, daughter of the leader of a terrorist organisation. She’d become who she was because of the way things had been back then, the way her new life had unfolded, and there was no way to know how much of that would be replicated in a newly ZIPped Remi.

Remi. God… I… He swallowed hard, something akin to grief seeping into his bones.

“What about you? This is like…like mental suicide for a huge part of you. You really want to kill yourself that badly? Why not shoot yourself in the head? Jump off a building? Overdose on pills?” His voice was harsher than he meant it to come out—demanding, angry.

Terrified. He was goddamn terrified.

Remi flinched at his tone, finally looking into his eyes. “Because you don’t want to live without her. And if I did one of those things, you’d have to face that she’d never come back.”

He rose from the couch abruptly, the twister of conflicted emotions within him too much to handle if he stayed still. Tears filled his eyes as he stalked over to the kitchen, and he rested his palms on the worktop, his back to Remi, as he tried to breathe.

“So you really want to die?” he managed to ask.

“There’s nothing left for me. My mother, my brother, my friends, my cause, my convictions… Everything is gone, Weller. There’s no point in trying to rebuild. I’ve spent the past year not knowing what to do with myself, fucking things up…”

He turned on her, snarling, “There’s nothing left for you? Then what the hell am I? Why do you keep coming back? After everything that’s happened, you don’t care enough to stick around?”

She got to her feet, crossed the room, her eyes sad. “The only thing I care about in this life is you, and I hurt you constantly, just by not being Jane. This way, it kills two birds with one stone. My empty life goes away, and you get Jane back. You get to be happy, and I get to…forget.”

A tear slid down his cheek, and he dashed it away impatiently. “Remi…”

She reached up to brush another tear from the corner of his eye, her fingers gentle. “I don’t want either of us to hurt anymore. We’ve suffered enough.”

Staring down at her, he finally put names to the emotions within him. Fear and pain had been easy to identify on their own, but they were joined by a surge of something else, so strong and fierce and breathtakingly real that he could hardly bear it.

Remi… Fuck, I can’t lose you. I need you.

I love you.

Despite everything she’d done to him, all the mental torment she’d put him through, the bitter arguments they’d had, the misunderstandings and deceit that had shredded their trust in each other…he’d fallen for the whole of her, just as hard as he had for the Jane part of her. Remi was Jane, intensified. She’d called herself damaged goods, and he couldn’t disagree, but so was he. Remi understood him in a way Jane never could have on her own.

And he was suddenly, powerfully certain that she loved him just as much.

Unable to control himself, he pulled her into his arms, giving her a crushing kiss that seemed to shock the breath from her, even as she returned it just as ardently. Part of him wanted to reject this whole conversation, carry her to bed, fuck her until they were both too exhausted to do anything but fall asleep in each other’s arms.

But this was too serious to hide from, even temporarily. He had to make his position clear.

Wrenching away from her, he stalked over to the table, picked up the small bottle of ZIP and brought it to the kitchen sink. Unscrewing the lid, he poured the contents down the drain, then dropped the bottle and turned to Remi, who was staring at him as though he’d gone mad.

“What the hell?” she demanded.

“Listen to me,” he told her, his eyes locked on hers. “I will never use that stuff on you. Ever. It doesn’t matter to me that there’s a cure for ZIP poisoning all lined up. There’s no going back for us. I can’t just inject you and turn you back into the Jane you used to be. It wouldn’t work like that.”

She sighed, looking down at the splashes of ZIP remaining in the sink. “Better the devil you know than the angel you don’t?”

He cupped her face in both hands, making sure she couldn’t look away from his face. “You’re my devil, and my angel, and everything in between. Remi, the thought of losing you scares the hell out of me. You’re my wife, and you may not be the way you were when we got married, but you’re still the woman I fell in love with, deep down.”

She was frowning, shaking her head, and he rested his forehead against hers, closing his eyes as she drew in a shaky breath.

“I love you, just as much as I did when you were Jane. You didn’t make it easy to get to know you, but every time you let me in a little more, I fell for you even further. I need you to stay you.”

“What?” She breathed the word, and he opened his eyes to find her visibly trembling. Her expression was a study in contradictions. Fear. Hope. Anger. Longing.

Kurt smiled sadly. “It’s too late. I already know you love me, too.”

She tore herself out of his arms, stepped out of his reach. “Stop it. This has gone far enough, Weller.”

“No. It hasn’t gone anywhere near far enough. You’re so scared of making yourself vulnerable, of being hurt again, that you’re hurting yourself so that I’ll never have that power over you.” He took a step closer, and she backed into the living room immediately.

He’d once mentally compared her to a trapped animal, defensively clawing and snarling out of fear. He saw that same distress in her now, and ached to hold her, even though it would only make the situation worse.

“I thought we were over this,” she said, her voice brittle. “I’m not Jane.”

“No, you’re not Jane. You’re Remi. I see you, the whole of you. I know exactly who you are, and I love you.”

She eyed the apartment door, her fists bunched at her sides and her jaw set.

“Don’t run from this. Please.” He took another slow, careful step, and though she backed up again, her eyes were on him once more.

“You never took off your wedding ring, even when you were telling me you hated me. You’ve opened up to me more than once. You’ve trusted me to keep you safe, and you’ve forgiven me for mistakes I’ve made, and I’ve done the same for you.”

She pulled at the ring on her finger, trying to remove it. “You can believe what you want to believe, but it’s not true. It was just about sex and anger, and then we became friends with benefits. That’s it.”

He caught hold of her left hand and held it between his, before she could take off the wedding band. “You didn’t even want to admit you wanted me, back when we first realised we still needed each other. Even when you were halfway to coming. Is it gonna be the same now?”

She snorted, but didn’t try to yank her hand free from his. “What, you think you’re gonna fuck a confession of love out of me? It’s not the same thing, Weller.”

“Is that what it’s gonna take?” He couldn’t pretend he was surprised. They’d resolved so many of their other issues through arguing their way into sex. Why would this be any different?

Her jaw trembled before she firmed it, glaring at him. “No, because it won’t work. It’s not true.”

With anyone else, he’d take that as their final answer. A rejection that he’d have to accept and move on from. But with Remi, things had never been straightforward and simple.

She tested him at every turn, refusing to take anything he said at face value, and this thing with the ZIP was likely a part of it. He wanted to believe that was all it was—a manipulation, a shock tactic designed to scare him into laying all his cards on the table—but his gut told him otherwise.

She would never have risked him saying yes to her offer to ‘become Jane again’ if she hadn’t been prepared to accept the consequences. She was too proud to back down from something she’d said she’d do. And that meant that she really was at a desperate end point, unable to find a way to move forward from the ruins they’d left of her pre-ZIP life.

Kurt needed her to see that he could help her find the path, if she’d only trust herself to walk it. But first, she had to know he wasn’t going anywhere, that he wasn’t just settling for a doppelgänger until he decided to stop clinging to Jane’s memory.

And they both had to be clear where they stood with each other.

“Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t love me.”

Remi stared at him, for a moment seeming completely taken aback. Then her protective bravado and anger kicked in. “You say ‘jump’, I say ‘how high’? No!”

Even as he understood her reasons for refusing—knew she was just trying to protect herself—her words still stung.

“I love you, Remi.” He shrugged, standing straighter as he laid out his challenge. “If you don’t feel the same way, I need to know. So come on—break my heart.”

God, this is going to hurt.

He believed that she loved him. But whether she’d ever admit it to herself, let alone to him, was another story entirely.

#broken wings #damaged goods #reller #blindspot #blindspot fanfic #canon divergence #really hope this posts coherently #the post editor is weird today

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nachosncheeze · 1 year

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Fanfic Writer Ask Game

📚 & 🏷️

📚 Is there a fanfic or fanfic writer you recommend?

Definitely! It depends on what you are looking for, so here's a few of my faves in a couple different categories:

***Edit: I'm adding a cut bc it's just occurred to me to mention, anyone new who's not done the series but is seeing this - I do have a spoiler-safe fics list that Scotti and I were working on at one point, so if there's a specific season you're looking for, but not wanting to know what twists come after (or if you're looking for fic for a specific episode or event), feel free to inbox me and I'll send some links. :)

Below this cut there are descriptions that spoil all sorts of things, so.....***

For Jeller, everything by @indelibleevidence is outstanding. I'm gonna start out saying probably a majority of it has passages that are NSFW so if you're a minor or not into that, tread lightly. I'm currently revisiting Remember to Forgive, which has late-season 3 Weller suffering amnesia that takes him mentally back to early season 2; you know, when he couldn't stand to be in the same room as his wife. The angst! It's a fave and totally my jam, I could probably quote it. Torture Without You is... well. Read it. Amazing. I'm a big Remi fan, and here you will also find one of our two Reller champions: the Damaged Goods series is so dark (also very NSFW) but soooo good.

@idealisticrealism is another that everyone should definitely read, imo. The Fire is basically my favorite one-shot ever, and she's our other Reller champion - as complete AUs go I can not possibly overstate my love for From the Ashes and Into Flames. I could literally quote them both to you.

@gypsyscarfwoman is responsible for my other favorite one-shot, Nothing Can Come Between Us, which is Jeller after season 2, but from Sarah Weller's POV. It's just a tiny bit angsty but fluffy and sweet. I love the way she describes the interactions between Jeller as viewed by a concerned third party. There's also Shelter From Your Storm, which is another season 2 AU except that post compound raid there's legitimate concern Nas might throw Jane under the bus and let the CIA have her, so Weller fake marries her to legitimize and protect her.

@ladyriot recently did a lovely retelling of s2 but as a Jane/Patterson slow burn. The way they low key agonize over each other is tragic, but the ending is so sweet without being completely saccharine, and it's definitely worth a look.

I haven't read much Zapatterson but @narvaldetierra is actively writing them. I read Remembers from September and No Good Deed Goes Unpunished a while ago, and I'm excited to reread them soon and then keep working through this ship 😁

Dylan Cruca is worth checking out if you want a bit of season 2/3 Jeller canon divergence/extra scenes, or Jeller/Reller AUs - I thought their post-season 1 AU ended up being a particularly interesting twist - but they're not for everyone.

I could go on but I'll end with one that's basically the fic equivalent to a playlist of Sad Songs to Sob To: Silence Speaks by lochness20, in which Jane's black site escape attempt fails, and when they find her, she is in a REALLY bad state. Warning that it's pretty dark and brutal and tw for suicidal thoughts and an eventual very graphic murder.

🏷 Is there a tag you like to search for when looking for fanfics to read?

I don't really look for specific tags; it's not a huge fandom so there's not a ton of room to be choosy. I can say that straight whump isn't my thing, nor is pure domestic stuff, and I generally steer clear of pregnancy/kidfic unless there's some other compelling plot alongside the kids. I guess I basically love angst most of all 😍

Thank you for the ask!! :D It's always fun to revisit some faves. 💕

I'm trying to find my mojo and inspiration to start creating again, and I find these memes are a really good exercise to think critically about my ideas and hopefully get the juices flowing. If anyone else is curious, please check here and consider sending me an ask!

I've also recently done a WIP ask meme, which you can find here if you'd like a peek at what I've been working on before the words left me. :)

#blindspot #ask meme #writer ask meme #blindspot fanfic

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dangerousanchorfury · 1 year

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Remi e Oscar blindspot 😍❤️

#oscar is a romantic and remi is crazy in love #remi/oscar #remi blindspot rosca jane e oscar blindspot 😍#blindspot #blindspot fanfic #jaimie alexander #francois arnaud #blindspot gifs #jane doe #oscar blindspot #janexoscar #joscar blindspot

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yesifitswithyou · 2 years

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Chapters: 1/1

Fandom: Blindspot (TV)

Rating: Mature

Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Relationships: Patterson/Tasha Zapata

Characters: Patterson (Blindspot), Tasha Zapata

Additional Tags: Fluff, i'm rating it as M bc there are insinuations but nothing explicit, it's basically them being soft, and a lil' pervy, And Very In Love, don't get used to me posting fluff cuz i don't write it often, also there's mention of Patty's annoying neighbor Doug, it gets a little smutty towards the end, tasha speaks spanish too btw !

Summary:

Patterson and Tasha waking up.

That's basically it, really.

#GUESS WHO WROTE ZAPATTERSON #seriously i've been wanting to write them for ages #this is short af but it's something sweet nevertheless #something more angsty about them is coming btw !! when? idk but it's coming #zapatterson #blindspot #blindspot fanfic #tasha zapata #patterson #blindspot fic

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starlit-mansion · 4 months

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corollary to the post i reblogged about actual porn having a million more examples of body diversity than hollywood, this is why i don't read smutty fanfic anymore. outside of queerness, it just replicates the diversity problems of mainstream media 98.5% of the time. don't get me wrong... i understand the subculture and all the stuff that goes into the hobby, and i know that there are people out there who put effort into it, but it's not really worth it to me

#i'm not at all mad about the years i spent discovering stuff in fanfic but there's a few huge blindspots in that respect #that are also just generally why i refuse to tie my identity into fandoms anymore anyway #why should i reconstitute the extruded results of corporate censorship and subconscious buy-in to beauty standards #and try to shape it into something meaningful when there's fresh clay and beautifully fired handmade pots elsewhere #by this i include indie stuff. there's no reason why so many actual play characters are thin in official art except anti-fat bias #no one was making them do that. it just never occurred to them that they could create fat characters that aren't stereotypes #and like... why spend time headcanoning and 'fixing' it in fanart just to have randoms tell you that the character isn't actually fat #(and also most of the time if there is energy for a character being fanon fat. it's because they 'eat a lot' in canon.)#(and if they're fanon chubby then they're a little bit older or bookish. but of course they aren't FAT then. just Dad Bod tm)

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idanit · 2 years

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Beyond Evil fic recs

I watched Beyond Evil, tripped, learned hangul, and inhaled most of the BE AO3 tag. These are some of the stories I enjoyed, paired with slightly edited excerpts from my private fic reading notes and/or my AO3 comments. Mind the summaries and the tags!

General and Teen

one good movie kiss Han Ju Won/Lee Dong Sik; Lee Dong Sik & Park Jung Je, Yoo Jae Yi, Lee Sang Yeob Wow, I love it? I'm into each and every section of this so far, they’re all good in different ways. (...) Unexpectedly, I really like the Jae Yi scene. I didn't know I needed to see her and Dongsik scrubbing the windows of her shop off insults. She was so in character, too. And I love Dongsik's POV in all of these. (...) I really loved seeing Dongsik struggle with voicing — no, realising — what he wants.

the way home Han Ju Won/Lee Dong Sik Good dialogues. I can picture the scenes and their expressions. (...) This is slow and good and aching (...) It aches with the weight of the twenty years. (...) A recovery-after-hurt fic. (...) Loving someone middle-aged, having so much to learn about them. (...) I read this one in a daze. I hope there are other similarly good get-together fics that explore grief and trauma out there. (...) These characterisations were really good except for a few beats I disgreed with.

see the light is bright as ever Han Ju Won/Lee Dong Sik Bedsharing in a guest house because of phone reception reasons. Gentle talk, tears, tension, anger, guilt, affection, all of it.

call you out on your contrarian shit Han Ju Won/Lee Dong Sik Ohh, I liked this one. The voice is a bit restrained, in a good way. The characterisations are recognizable. Dongsik gets into his head that Joowon should date someone younger, but Joowon's mind is set. Melons are eaten at a lake house. Tea is drunk. A sleepy conversation is had.

rome wasn't built in one day. Han Ju Won/Lee Dong Sik This starts out really dark, wow. Dongsik's POV. It leans into their shared trauma as their bond, into what I would almost call codependence (...). I'm intrigued. (...) It's very tasty to see them so scared of losing the other that they won't talk about ANYTHING even as they start to live together. (...) This is so painful. They're insane, they're the worst. (...) There was something satisfying about this unnecessarily dark take on their get-together.

The Human Heart Is Hungry Still Han Ju Won&/Lee Dong Sik Very slice-of-lifey (...) It was such a slow, gentle story, and I enjoyed its subtle emotional threading a lot. (...) Joowon and Dongsik go to a hardware store together and I am happy about it. (...) It's pre-relationship and it lays the ground for it very well, in a very understated way, in charmingly small things, a touch here, a thought there. (...) And everyone else is here! (...) It was obvious that you gave a lot of thought to what would happen to everyone post-canon, and that you've done your research. Manyang felt like a real, lived-in town and everyone's lives and circumstances interconnected in really satisfying, believable ways.

still there inside my chest Han Ju Won/Lee Dong Sik One of these slow, soft, radiant get-together fics with (...) smooth, transparent writing. Joowon keeps coming to Manyang, they visit Dongsik's mother, there's the butcher shop (...), you know the drill.

grounding Han Ju Won/Lee Dong Sik The only one bed trope. I love that the case that stranded them in the storm-surrounded inn was something that reminded Dongsik of Minjeong and that this is what they kept thinking about and the reason Joowon tried to provide some comfort (handholding!). I like how annoyed they still find each other, I like that this is mid-canon.

Offering Han Ju Won&Lee Dong Sik Oh, an actually good fic? (...) Joowon collapses at the station, his bloody hands and all. Dongsik cleans them for him, then drives him to his apartment. It's still the Hurting Joowon genre, but it was good hurt/comfort, honestly. In character, competent writing. That's all I need — so little, but apparently so much.

if you say it with your hands Han Ju Won/Lee Dong Sik Aching, aching! Good. I walked into it not expecting borderline sexual content, but I got the most beautiful scene of the sex Not Happening that I have in recent memory. Joowon lets go of his need to control bit by bit, but he's not there yet. All is good.

Family Jewels Han Ju Won/Lee Dong Sik, Han Ju Won & Lee Su Yeon There's something poetically satisfying in the idea of making Joo Won's mum be still alive in a canon where so many disappearances turned out to be deaths. A reversal. How will these people deal with it? (…) the writing is pretty good. In an understated sort of way. (...) good descriptions. (...) Radiant! Queer! Joy! (...) I like how Joowon and his mother meet as two people more than as mother and son. Healing. This author truly knows what they would need.

yours to keep Han Ju Won/Lee Dong Sik Going shopping to a posh store together, Dongsik asking Juwon about his childhood, nice. (...) Yep, this section was very satisfying. (...) I kinda like the scene. It's... pulled out a bit. Quite matter-of-fact, very we-don't-talk-about-it. (...) Alright, I like this Dongsik voice. (...) The theme is loving/living in a "normal" way, which I enjoy.

i don’t know much about gentleness, but i will protect you from now on. Han Ju Won/Lee Dong Sik This was about Dongsik going to jail, then to Hokkaido, then back to Manyang, where he reopens Jinmook's store, all the while feeling like he's a ghost, or like he's being haunted by ghosts. Juwon moves in with him for two weeks, which I loved, obviously. Then he stays. (...) it had multiple scenes that brought me a lot of satisfaction.

Mature and Explicit

a safe place to go mad Han Ju Won/Lee Dong Sik What an emotionally excruciating setup. Making Han Joo Won kill a person in a car accident, her shins breaking? (...) This disassociated writing style doesn't feel overdramatic at all. This would, in fact, break Joo Won. (...) Dongsik is literally so perfect here. (...) I loved Joowon comparing himself to his mother and his father as he goes through different stages of traumatic response. This was so good! I love how you write them, I love how in character they are as they're put through trauma, disassociation, arguments and softness (...). It was great to see how Dongsik is a perfect match for a distraught Joowon, since he knows exactly how to take down his emotional outbursts and his half-baked logic, step by step. No one else could have done that for him. And the softness of the last chapter is a balm to the soul.

Resonant Frequency Han Ju Won/Lee Dong Sik Ah, this is so good. (...) I believe in their established relationship here. It's easy to see them like that. (...) This is such good character work. Nuanced and in-depth; can we get more of this in fics. (...) some good imagery (...) This is a GOOD CASE wow (...) I'm actually invested, and it already pulled a few twists on me. (...) Juwon trying to be kind. The case from fourteen years ago, and how it resonated with Dongsik's history and Juwon's guilt. Dongsik under Juwon's skin, hurting so bad and so beautifully. There is a lot to love here. (...) I really enjoyed Chief Moon. I liked how deep you get into the characters, all the surprising little lines that feel extremely right (...) The two of them are so different (the contrast between their reactions to spending some time in a club was excellent), and yet they fit together so, so well.

Hook, Line, and Sinker Han Ju Won/Lee Dong Sik It's quite well-written. (...) I totally believe in a Juwon who, captured, feels mostly resigned. (...) This is really digging into Dongsik and how he would have reacted to yet another important person in his life going missing/dead. (...) I believe in Dongsik getting angry at Juwon who doesn’t seem to care about his own wellbeing, and this leading into a discussion of feelings. This fic really sold me on the „no more time” angle. (...) This is satisfying.

And Each and Every Time, for You Han Ju Won/Lee Dong Sik I like this one (...), it has good dialogue and they feel in character. (...) well-written, funny. (...) Absolutely pitch perfect Dongsik voice so far. (...) It feels so good to be in the hands of a decent storyteller again. I don't have to watch out for bad punctuation and clunky structure. I can just enjoy the ride. (...) The author can write shouty arguments too??? yessss (...) Perfect dialogue. (...) This sex scene was remarkably in character. The best erotic writing is when the characters don't turn into paper figurines, don't stop existing because the author wants to write a sex scene in that moment; it's when their personalities are amplified, not erased by the act (...), and we can see how they're themselves in this different context. I love to see it. (...) The way they talk, what they do, what, how and why they want, it's all gloriously them.

Splinters Han Ju Won/Lee Dong Sik, Min Jeung/Jae Yi/Ji Hun Why is this fic so perfect. It has literally done nothing wrong. (…) I love authors who really think about what they have at their hands and slot things together in unexpected, but inspired ways. This brought me so much joy! Your characterisations are absolutely spot-on. I instantly fell in love with this Min-jeong and her narrative voice, and then adored the dynamic she's had with everyone, particularly Ju-won and Jae-yi. You've made so many inspired little choices here, like having Min-jeong talk about her trauma with Ju-won, of all people (...). It was just a pleasure to read. (...) Your writing is very smooth, funny and poignant in turn. (...) Also, you just went and singlehandedly created the Min-jeong/Ji-hun/Jae-ji ship, which is quite out there, but, to my surprise, I was very into it.

Not Tomorrow Kang Min Jung & Lee Dong Sik This was a pretty good fic and the study of the relationship between Dongsik and Minjung that I wanted to read. (...) So eerie to watch Jinmook interact with Dongsik, way way before he knew. (...) I like seeing Dongsik helping bring her up like this. (...) It really hurts. Dongsik coming to her rescue again and again until the one time where she's really in danger and he’s not able to rescue her in time.

come home soon Han Ju Won/Lee Dong Sik I love this so far. Every sentence is doing something, the writing is quite tight, the tension is very much there. (...) This is like a gift to me, personally. (...) This is exactly what I wanted, show me how Manyang feels about the two of them! (...) great turns of phrase (...) The writing is so no-nonsense that I really have to pay attention to follow it, in a good way. (...) Smooth transitions between memories and the present time, that’s nice. (...) Wow, I want to read this all over again.

the world's great big injustice Han Ju Won/Lee Dong Sik Yes, make the sex scenes all about these weirdos instead of writing boring cookie-cutter General Porn. (...) Oooh the Oh Ji Hwa's scene was very good. (...) Is all of this really in character? Honestly not sure. Perhaps not. But this author's writing is pulling me in so hard that I don't mind either way. It's close enough to a version of them I can imagine. It stands on its own. It's compelling. It's enough. (...) This is the kind of writing that likes to be reread. I read the remix first, but now I want to reread them both and then slot them together like puzzle pieces.

for what it's worth Han Ju Won/Lee Dong Sik This is a remix of the fic above. This was... interesting. There was something there. I liked how the story operated on the unspoken and the unacknowledged (...) I like how this is constructed, the thin threads of stubble - halves - halfhearted connection vs intent - silence and sound. (...) The back-and-forth transitions between the past and the present, quite smooth. (...) sex scenes full of characterisation and theme. (...) Is this all about Juwon's habits? His trauma? The hesitancy seems to come from several things. He disassociates a little, but unwillingly. (...) Ok, this really gained heft on a reread. I really liked how pulled out it is, restrained. It's very appropriate for this Juwon's POV.

r/tifu by being my student's gay awakening Han Ju Won/Kwon Hyuk Such a cracky premise (the title is Kwon Hyuk's POV), but I'm here for it. (...) This is fun so far; clear writing. (...) Why is this good? The characterisations are on point. (...) I really believe in this Hyuk. Climbing up the social ladder and angry when he's still being dismissed, glossed over, unwanted beyond what he can do for people. (...) Satisfying. (...) I do wonder how much Kwon Hyuk tells himself he wants that wife with two point five children just because that's what he's supposed to want. He's clearly not straight in this fic.

Exposure Therapy Han Ju Won/Lee Dong Sik Oh wow, this was so good. A get-together fic, with looking for Bang Hoseok in the reed fields used as a binding/bonding activity/memory. Dongsik is exactly what I've been thinking of him being recently — a bit reluctant about his whole thing with Juwon, but not for the lack of feelings. They're both incredibly in character here. It's in the little gestures. (...) This author Pays Attention and Extrapolates Correctly. (...) I love this Dongsik, he really is himself here. And Juwon too. The way they talk to each other. (...) I didn't expect this to be so good from the start, but then it started to drop these pitch-perfect little elements time and time again — it's honestly impressive given that there really isn't much here. It's not a high-concept fic or anything, it's not constructed. It's quiet and it flows easily, and there isn't a lot that's happening, except emotionally. And it works so well.

#beyond evil #fanfic #fic rec #beyond evil fanfic #fanfiction #idanit reads #turns out i'm quite particular about what i want and don't want to read in this fandom so these are naturally geared towards me #my blindspot is WIPs because I filtered them all out #if there are some excellent WIPs out there feel free to rec them to me

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unorthodox-oblivion · 1 year

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17, 22, 30

17. Have you ever written fanfiction for a show?

Yep. I have. I used to post in... 2012, when I was still an itty bitty baby who was super proud of stuff and didn't care what people thought and was just excited to be part of something. Unfortunately, while I still don't care what other people think, I grew to be way too self critical and, although I still write (for myself), I won't be posting any of it online 😂

22. If you could write your own TV show, what would it be like?

Actually, @guadalajara92 and I worked on a whole pilot during the pandemic. It's sci fi, that's all I'll give ya 🤐 maybe one day it will make it to your screen

30. What's one show you could probably write a 2k word essay on, and what would be your topic?

I actually did this for my final project in film school. We could choose between a practical project (making an actual film/short film/video clip/documentary and what not) or a thesis. I went for a thesis on the representation of women in crime dramas between 2000-2020 and its impact in society and I used Temperance Brennan (Bones), Kate Beckett (Castle) and Jane Doe (Blindspot) as subjects for my analysis. Now that it's over, I can say it was fun, but I nearly shaved my head out of pure stress while writing it all

#fanfiction #fanfic #ask me anything #tv show #script writing #essay #final project #blindspot #jane doe #castle #kate beckett #temperance brennan #bones

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narvaldetierra · 8 months

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@indelibleevidence left it open, so I took the chance to do this.

Rules: make a 24-hour poll with the names of your wips, let it run, then write one sentence for every vote the winner got.

Tagging: anyone who wants to do this.

Disclaimer: Some of the titles are provisional.

Disclaimer 2: This doesn't mean I'll be publishing anytime soon.

I'm not that well animically and I need incentives like this to write.

#wip game #blindspot fanfic #law and order fanfic #barson #zapatterson #law and order svu #blindspot #patterson #tasha zapata #olivia benson #rafael barba

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justjamiehunt · 1 year

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BLINDSPOT

Chapter 1: The Man Called Daredevil

In the streets of New York City, you can find all sorts of trouble. A city that is home to superheroes, villains, and ordinary people just trying to make it by. However, the streets of Hell’s Kitchen are considered the worst in the city due to fighting, gang violence, and other crimes. The neighborhood is rough and declining as people have tried to survive alien attacks, the Blip, and random crimes. Most people try to ignore it just to get by.

A man makes his way through the dark alleys of Hell’s Kitchen. He is carrying a small satchel and darts between trash cans and streetlights to avoid being seen. However, he does not know that he is being followed. He hears a rustle of debris move behind him. As he turns, he sees a black cat slink its way out of a dumpster. The man shrugs and continues his path, but he is blocked by another figure dressed in black. He reaches into his pocket for a knife, but the man in black blocks him and knocks the weapon out of his hand. Nevertheless, the man then tries to make a punch at his attacked. The man in black bends down to avoid the swing and side sweeps the guy’s ankles to get him on the ground. The man becomes disoriented and groans as he tries to get himself up. The dark dressed figure crouches down and places his knee on the fallen man’s chest. Realizing that he cannot move, the man tries to reach into his satchel but is stopped by the man in black.

“Don’t move,” the darkly dressed stranger warns, “Not one inch…Collin Sardonis”

The man is still and terrified at the threatening voice.

“H-how do you know who I am?”

“You’re an explosives expert that’s been causing trouble around here lately. You’re going to sit tight and go to the station with the cops that should be here any minute now.”

The criminal paled as he registered the seriousness in the other man’s voice. “Y-you’re not a cop! Who are you?!”

The man in black smiled underneath his dark mask. He had been called many names by residents in this part of the city. Masked Man. Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. The Man in Black.

“Me? Well…last time I checked, I think they called me Daredevil in the newspaper.”

The man on the ground was about to retort something back but was silenced by the sound of police sirens. The red and blue flashing lights lit up the dark alleyway. This masked man-Daredevil-quickly grabbed the satchel from the criminal and leapt onto the nearby dumpster. The officers surrounded Collin Sardonis and dragged him out of the alleyway. Collin looked up towards the tops of the surrounding buildings but could not see where the masked vigilante went.

Author's note: Hey guys! This is the first chapter of my Daredevil fanfiction called Blindspot. I'll admit I'm not much of a writer (I am better at planning out scenes/writing scripts). Action scenes are the worst to write IMO. But, I'm excited to finally post this story and have some fun!

#daredevil oc #daredevil fandom #daredevil fanfiction #daredevil #matt murdock #mcu oc #mcu fanfiction #mcu fandom #mcufam #mcu #blindspot #daredevilblindspot #imfinallywriting #fanfic #fanfic writing #imhappyandscared #foggy nelson #karen page

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thetokentrans · 9 months

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might fuck around and write a super self indulgent fic about a self insert / y/n character coming out as trans masc to the team and the team doing what they can to make him feel accepted and loved and supported.

#blindspot #blindspot jane doe #blindspot weller #blindspot patterson #blindspot rich dotcom #blindspot fanfic #blinspot fic

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indelibleevidence · 1 year

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Broken Wings, chapter 2

Author's Note: Happy Saturday! More Rellery drama. Also on FFN and AO3.

This whole thing had gotten way out of control. Remi had expected him to be glad to get his wife back—sure, maybe he’d feel a little guilty, but she’d thought for sure that she’d be able to talk him into ignoring that.

Instead, Kurt had poured the ZIP down the drain, depriving her of her simple solution to her current dilemma. He’d cried. He’d told her that he loved her.

And she so desperately wanted to believe that—just as she’d wanted to believe that Shepherd had never intentionally destroyed her life, to gain her trust so she’d come back to her family.

Just as she’d wanted to believe Kurt was lying about Shepherd almost making the entire Eastern Seaboard an irradiated graveyard. And just as she’d needed to believe that pretending to be Taylor Shaw was a necessary and justified subterfuge, as she’d sought to infiltrate the FBI.

Remi trusted him—more than she’d ever thought she would. But how the hell could she trust herself anymore?

And how was she supposed to deal with his demand for her to break his heart?

“It’s Jane you love,” she said, making sure her tone was as irritable as she could make it. She had to make him back off this subject.

I can’t deal with this.

“The first night I realised the ZIP had switched your memories, you asked me how I could be so sure of my feelings for Jane, since you’d gotten away with pretending to be her for three months. You were the one who asked me that—and now you want me to separate Remi and Jane out from each other?” He shook his head, his thumb sweeping comfortingly back and forth over the back of her hand. “You know as well as I do that you’re more complicated than that, especially now you have most of your memories back.”

She’d already admitted to herself that she’d changed, become more Jane than she’d ever been before the ZIP. She already knew that she loved him. But actually trusting that he could love her—the whole of her? And telling him how she felt? Those seemed like impossible walls to scale.

“Kurt, I…” Words failed her. She couldn’t tell him she didn’t love him, because it would hurt them both too much. But what if she admitted that she did, allowed herself to believe another pretty lie—then realised, at some point in the future, that he really only loved the Jane part of her after all? It would destroy her.

What was she supposed to do? What was the right way out of this situation?

As though he sensed her turmoil of hope and terror, he sighed and pulled her into a tight hug. Remi caught her breath as he cradled her head against his shoulder, her eyes filling with unwanted tears.

“I don’t want to lose you, Remi. You don’t have to say anything… Just, please, stay you. Keep fighting. Don’t make me live without you.”

I love you, Kurt. I love you so damn much. Fuck, why can’t I just take that leap of faith? Why can’t I tell you?

Fighting panic, she swallowed the lump in her throat and pulled back, unwilling even to put her arms around him. The hurt and desperation in his face stung her in turn, but she was feeling just too claustrophobic to stay.

“I need some air. I need to think.” Escape on her mind—from him, from her confusion and shock, from her own hopes and fears—she turned her back on him and made for the door.

“Don’t disappear on me. Not now. Not after this.” His voice was low and wounded. “Please. Take a few minutes, a few hours, if you need them. But come back. Before midnight.”

She hesitated with her hand on the door. Part of her wanted to rail against the curfew, but she understood his reasons all too well. “Before midnight,” she agreed, without turning to face him.

Then she made her escape.

Yet again, Remi had hurt someone she loved. It hadn’t been intentional—not this time, at least—but she’d still done it, and now she felt like shit, the guilt grasping at her stomach and snaking around her heart, like the tattoos inked onto her skin.

What did you think was gonna happen? That he’d be overjoyed to hear that you wanted out of this life?

She ignored the scathing thought, and sipped her third coffee since she’d fled the apartment—decaf, this time, since she was jumpy enough. She stared out of the diner window, not really registering what her gaze landed upon.

Until she’d set down the ZIP on the coffee table, she really had deluded herself that Kurt would take her up on the offer to eradicate herself, to be reborn as a fresh, new Jane. The second the comprehension—the devastation—had dawned on his face, the numb acceptance she’d been cultivating for weeks had evaporated. She’d been unable to move or breathe for a moment, as the enormity of her mistake had hit home.

All those months of struggling to not let herself be vulnerable around him—yet she’d voluntarily revealed the ultimate shameful secret, without him even having to prise it out of her.

But that almost didn’t even matter now, because he’d seen through her façade, to the truth she’d never meant for him to know. He knew she loved him.

No. He suspects, but he doesn’t know. It’s not too late to lie to him. Somehow, I can convince him he’s wrong. And then I can get away, before this goes too far.

Sure, Remi, twist the knife before you pull it out. Because that won’t hurt him even worse.

She stared into her coffee cup, shaking her head. Could she even believe what he’d said? That he loved her, not just Jane? It didn’t seem possible. But so many of the things in her life had been like that—so far-fetched as to seem laughable, until she’d found proof.

Then again, there could be no tangible evidence that Kurt loved the whole of her. It was the kind of thing she’d either have to trust, or…not.

She trusted him. But she didn’t know if there was some angle she was missing, something that would twist everything and curdle her perception of the truth, like so many of the other things she’d taken for granted.

She’d known home meant safety, until her parents had been murdered, and she and Roman had been abducted from their beds.

She’d known she was doing good with Orion, until the first time their squad had received orders that made it clear that their commanding officers were motivated by politics, not justice.

She’d known Shepherd’s intentions were to minimise collateral damage, until she’d heard Kurt detail the true horrors of what her mother had planned for Phase Two.

She’d known emotions were a weakness, until her memories of Jane’s life had returned, bringing with them new lessons, new perspectives.

Now, Remi didn’t know what she knew.

You know you love this man. You know that he’s flawed, and emotionally scarred, but a good person.

She turned each of those so-called facts over in her mind, circling them and examining them, looking for the threads in each that, if pulled, would cause the whole thing to unravel. She couldn’t find any, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there.

It had been three hours since she’d run out on Kurt. Midnight was still several hours away, but what would she achieve by staying here? Thinking was getting her nowhere, and Kurt wouldn’t be able to relax until she got back. He’d looked terrified that she’d disappear again—he must be counting the seconds until he knew whether or not he’d scared her out of town completely.

Remi paid her bill and walked slowly back in the direction of the apartment, navigating the familiar streets without paying them much mind. When she got to the park, she veered abruptly off course, her nerves failing her once again.

She still didn’t know what she was going to say to Kurt. If she went back without a plan, she’d just be fighting the urge to run within a few seconds, which would mean she’d hurt him even more.

Remi chose a bench overlooking the water, and scowled at the Manhattan skyline in the distance. Kurt’s refusal to implement her plan put her right back where she’d started—she had no idea where to find more ZIP now that it was off the market, and even if she could find some…

I need you to stay you.

Don’t run from this. Please.

After everything he’d done for her—sewing up her wound, agreeing to stay in contact with her after she’d pushed him to breaking point, getting the Mafia off her back, arranging Shepherd’s funeral, comforting her, supporting her, forgiving her—she owed it to him to face this. Even though it freaked her the fuck out.

She still had no idea if she could admit that she loved him back, or resume the life she’d abandoned—Jane’s life. But what was her alternative? More meaningless days of K and R, struggling with her loneliness and grief, choking on self-hatred until she became desperate enough to eat her own gun? She’d already tried to figure out a future that didn’t include Kurt, isolating herself and trying to ignore her pain.

She’d failed. Spectacularly. Repeatedly. Even Roman, cut off from Shepherd and on the run from the FBI and CIA, had managed to build more of a life for himself than she had.

At least if she tried to take what Kurt offered, and the whole thing imploded, she still had the option of oblivion. She wasn’t afraid to die. But a future with the man she loved, who said he loved her… She was almost ashamed of how much she wanted it, even though it seemed too good to be true.

A flutter of optimism—of hope—stirred in her chest, and instead of crushing it, she allowed herself to feel it. Just for a moment.

I know exactly who you are, and I love you.

She remembered their conversations about their childhoods, the fear and uncertainty of growing up as older siblings in unstable environments. How Kurt had told her—haltingly, as though he felt like he was betraying his missing wife in some way—that Jane had listened and sympathised when he’d talked about those days, but the gaps in her memories meant that she didn’t quite understand, not the way Remi did.

She couldn’t help but smile wryly, remembering the way he’d called her out on her bullshit in Venice, pointing out that she used verbal attacks against him as a defence mechanism against her own pain and insecurity. She’d given him more examples of that just a few hours ago, when she’d insisted that he only loved Jane, that he was deluding himself, that their relationship was based on sex and anger.

And yet again, he’d called her on it.

You’re so scared of making yourself vulnerable, of being hurt again, that you’re hurting yourself so I’ll never have that power over you.

He really did know the way her mind worked. But if that was true, if he loved her so much that he could forgive everything she’d put him through, the question wasn’t whether she could love him back. She already did, no matter how much she’d tried to deny it. Sometime between Venice and now, she’d surrendered her heart, leaving it in no man’s land for him to collect if he wanted it. Even though she’d been sure he wouldn’t. Even though she’d buried it where she’d been sure he’d never find it.

You don’t have to do this alone, Kurt had told her more than once. Yet here she was again, shutting him out. Hiding from him. Hurting him. Repeating the same old mistakes as though that would help anything.

Kurt was offering her what she desperately wanted, what she’d never expected to earn—his unconditional love and trust. But in order to take it, she had to drop the defences she’d been building since the night of her parents’ murder, decades before. She had to let him love her, and stop hiding the depth of her feelings for him.

Could she? That was the real question, the one she didn’t know how to answer. Because if she was wrong…

She took a deep breath, trying to release the painful tension in her shoulders.

She’d fucked up so many times before. She’d fuck this up, too. She was already fucking it up, and she hadn’t even decided to do it yet.

But that small, fragile ember of hope still glowed in her chest, giving her the courage to stand, to turn towards the apartment building where her husband waited. She was still conflicted as hell, but at the very least, she owed Kurt an apology.

I handled it badly.

Since the door had shut behind Remi, Kurt had been dissecting the conversation that had caused her to flee—trying not to dwell on the ZIP or the reason she’d brought it into his apartment, or the sickening fear that she’d disappear again, but to focus on their tones and their words, looking for any possible miscommunication between them.

Every time the dread crept in, he kept circling back around to that one thought. He’d screwed up, been too confrontational.

Despite the situation, he laughed under his breath. Confrontation was the cornerstone of his relationship with Remi. He should hardly be surprised that when he’d told her he loved her, it had been in the eye of a storm—his demanding, fearful words behind them, and her furious rejection and borderline panic about to sweep over them both, gathering them up in the same painful tempest.

But in those brief, still moments when he’d realised he loved her, the whole of her… He shook his head, staring at the hypodermic needle that still lay on the table, waiting to draw up the poison that he’d already poured down the drain.

Remi. Come home, so I can hold you again. That’s all I want right now.

Strange, how he’d pointed out to her just a few weeks ago how far they’d come since Venice, when they’d almost parted for good. When he’d challenged her to tell him she didn’t love him, she’d reacted just like she had in his hotel room, when he’d given her a five-minute time limit to explain what the hell she wanted from him. She’d been on the verge of panic.

Instead of backing off the way he had back then, he’d doubled down, even though he should have known it would make her run.

Not that he could think of anything he could have said to make her stay put, instead. Except for ‘sure, I’ll inject you with the drug that will wipe out our entire relationship again’.

He fought a wave of betrayal, knowing the knee-jerk reaction had helped to drive Remi away. This isn’t about you. It’s about her. She wants to die.

No. She wants the pain to stop. That’s not the same thing.

Except that when it came down to the reality of it, it was exactly the same thing. He couldn’t just shut off her pain like a faucet, any more than she could do it herself. And she’d already been through so much.

How could he convince her to lean on him, to let him help? It had been so much easier with Jane, and yet, not easy at all. Even as she’d confessed some of her fears and confusion, Jane had kept so many secrets, too stubborn and protective to completely trust him until circumstances—Oscar, and Mayfair—forced her hand.

But Jane had been downright dependent, compared to Remi. If she shut him out now…

The sound of the key in the door—the key he’d had to trick her into taking back, as though she didn’t legally own half of the apartment—made his pulse spike. She was home, hours earlier than he’d expected, and he had no idea if he should be bracing for a battle.

He approached as Remi closed the door behind her, waited for her to turn and look at him, so he could work out his approach.

She lifted her gaze to his, and seemed to flinch a little at whatever she saw in his face. “I shouldn’t have left the apartment. I’m sorry.”

At least that was one aspect of vulnerability she’d gotten better at since Venice. “I get why you did.”

More than anything, he longed to pull her into his arms, to hold her the way he had at Shepherd’s storage locker, comforting her as she cried everything out against his chest. But if she hadn’t already been in tears when he’d found her back then, she never would have allowed herself that. He didn’t think she’d fall apart now, so what were his options to comfort her?

He was paralysed by indecision when she sighed irritably, shook her head, and stepped wearily into his arms.

Kurt’s breath shook with relief as he embraced her, too tightly at first, then slackening his hold a little. “Remi…”

She didn’t cry, not this time, but held onto him as though he was the only thing keeping her from slipping. Like she had the first night he’d ‘met’ Remi, when they’d been at the FBI evidence storage warehouse, as they’d waited to see if they’d be blown to pieces by the suicide vests they’d tampered with. She held him as though she was braced for an explosion that would destroy her—but she was here, in his arms, voluntarily.

Kurt closed his eyes, pressed his nose into her hair, inhaled her scent. Things he’d done so many times before, yet had feared he might never do again.

“You deserve better,” she said quietly, without lifting her head from his shoulder.

She refused to let go when he tried to pull back to look at her. Avoiding his scrutiny through an embrace—not for the first time.

“Better than the woman I love?”

Remi sighed again, and finally let him go. “Let’s just…sit down.”

Kurt resumed his seat, glad to note that while she wasn’t sitting as close as she had been earlier, at least she chose to join him on the couch. She didn’t say anything or look at him directly, so he took charge of the conversation.

“I’m sorry, too. I wasn’t expecting the ZIP, and I shouldn’t have been so hard on you. You scared me.”

Remi swallowed hard. “That wasn’t my intention. Now that I think about it, it was stupid of me to even bring it up.”

“Hey—no.” He took her hand, shifting over a little so he could hold it between his. “I’m glad you did. At least now I know you’re…”

“Weak?” The word was cleaver-sharp, but Kurt knew the blade was turned inward, not aimed at him.

He tried to keep his voice level, despite the lump in his throat. “This might make you pissed as hell at me, but I’m just gonna say it anyway.”

She glanced up, sensing his trepidation.

He was far from sure this was a good idea, but at least if she got angry, she’d still be fighting.”Back before I knew your memories had reset—when you were dying—I said some things. I was talking to Jane, but that doesn’t make them apply any less to you.”

Remi tensed a little further.

“You are the strongest person I’ve ever met. Most people couldn’t deal with even half of what you’ve been through, and you’ve carried on through all of it. Of course you want to stop. Of course you want to rest. You can’t judge yourself for that.”

Remi got up, wrapping her arms around herself as she turned and walked to the window. Hiding again. He let her do it, because in her place, he’d need the same thing.

“You don’t always make the right choices,” he said. “But think of all the lives you’ve saved, with your K and R work, the FBI, the military.”

She shook her head, and he knew she was thinking of the lives she’d taken, the darkness of some of her military missions, the pain she’d caused him by pretending to be Taylor. He ached to reassure her.

“I still believe that I know your heart. You want to make the world better, less corrupt. You want to protect the people you care about. You always have.”

Remi turned on him with a rage he knew wasn’t aimed at him. “I have ruined lives, Kurt. At the orphanage, I murdered innocent people to keep my captors from hurting Roman. Since then, I’ve carried out assassinations for the military, aided and abetted terrorism, infiltrated a federal agency. A whole village in Afghanistan was wiped off the map, because of me. And the vigilante killings, the bank robbing, the—”

“And for that, you think you deserve to die?”

“Or go to prison. Now the ZIP is gone, maybe I should just turn myself in.”

Alarm shot through him. “No. You’ve been manipulated and lied to for most of your life, by people you should have been able to trust. But you’ve done as much good as you could with what you thought you knew. And maybe you’re right—maybe I am just a corrupt Fed, after all. But I love you too much to lose you to a black site now.”

She froze for a second at the mention of the black site, the haunted look Jane used to get returning to her face. He’d never dared to ask if Remi remembered before, and now he didn’t have to. Remorse swept over him.

She closed her eyes, her words almost a whisper. “I don’t understand.”

Kurt got up and approached her. “Understand what?”

Hearing his footsteps, she fixed him with a glare that was too exhausted to be furious. As though her expressions were going through the motions, even as the emotions were muted and numbed. “Why you don’t want me gone, and Jane back. You’re supposed to hate me for what I did to you, what I took from you. It’d be so much easier if you did.”

Even as his heart ached for her, he couldn’t help but be amused, remembering all the times he’d wished he could do just that. “Yeah. It would. But you made me love you instead.”

“Stop saying that.” Her voice was quiet, devoid of anger, but the words hurt as much as a slap.

If she didn’t even want to hear it, much less believe it, there was nothing more he could say. An old accusation of Allie’s sprang into his mind, from an argument way back before Jane had come into his life. You won’t let me love you. Kurt, why can’t you just let me in, for once?

It had taken him until now, standing before the woman he loved, to fully understand what she meant. Remi was right in front of him, but between them was an invisible wall. She was defending herself, he knew that. But unless she stopped, he’d never reach her heart.

He began to turn away, still stinging from the rejection, but she reached out to stop him, guiding his gaze to hers with a gentle hand on his cheek.

“I just keep screwing this up.” The apology in her eyes was genuine.

No one had ever hurt him the way she had—but no one had ever healed him as much, either. As Remi, as Jane, then as she was today, a combination of the two. He tried to smile, but it barely reached his lips. “You’ve had a lot to figure out. We both have.”

She hadn’t drawn her hand back from his face, and was watching him in a way she never had—at least, not since the night they’d met. In that interrogation room, Jane had searched her memory, her gaze so intense that he’d been profoundly uncomfortable at the intimacy with a stranger.

She wasn’t a stranger now—far from it. She knew him better than anyone. And he’d let her look forever, if that was what she needed. Whatever she was seeking in his expression, he just hoped she could find it.

#broken wings #damaged goods #blindspot #blindspot fanfic #reller #canon divergence

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nachosncheeze · 2 years

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Nothing Else To Think About (Blindspot 3x12 fic/extra scenes)

Also on AO3.

I want love back in my life. So do I.

Jane owes her husband an apology, and they're gonna have to work on it. Beginning with the final Jeller scene of 3x12, this post-ep is the third and final part of my mid-season 3 Jeller stories following on from my 3x11 fics "The Company You Were Keeping" and "A Pretty Good Reason", but it can also be read as a stand-alone. It's an attempt to fill in some of the blanks that canon left behind, in a manner that hopefully makes the growing strength of their bond through the rest of the season feel a little more natural. Contains mild spoilers through most of the rest of season 3, but nothing that'll ruin any big twists.

A note on timelines can be found below the cut for the curious, before the story.

Thank you once again to the lovely @lurkingwhump for encouraging me to explore and write out my take on Jeller's midseason drama. Hopefully this addresses some of the gaps in canon in a way that feels honest, and I hope everyone enjoys it. Let me know what you think. :)

Content warning for mentions of infidelity.

~~~~~

A note on the timeline: This story can generally be taken as fitting within canon, with the caveat that the canon timeline of events for when Jane was on the run is muddy at best, with a lot implied or open to interpretation and very little shown with certainty. In order to make this story happen I had to get pretty specific about developing a workable headcanon/interpretation built from the breadcrumbs provided on-screen.

I expect the most unusual aspect of this version of events for many will be that for my purposes Jane and Clem's association lasted only 3 to 4 months after Paris, and ended shortly before her close call in Switzerland and subsequent trip to Berlin. The money on the bed was all Clem's in this interpretation; some of it earned before he learned her name in Paris, making his "6 months" comment part of a sales pitch to convince her to form a more permanent partnership. That also places their tryst right around the lonely milestone that is the one-year mark since Jane left home, though you won't catch her explicitly saying so or using it as an excuse. Hopefully everything else will come through well enough in the story, but if anyone wants to know the details or where I got any of it, I can make a separate post.

Everything I've used does all technically fit into the spaces that canon left behind, but I realize it will differ greatly from some headcanons, so if it doesn't work for you please feel free to treat this as "canon divergent" instead.

~~~~~

Jane stood outside the door to the apartment she shared with her husband. Or… had shared with him, until she had walked away from him and out of this same door, furious and sad to the point of numbness, leaving her wedding ring behind. She stared at the numbers on its surface, breathing deep, trying to stave off a rising wave of panic. She had left the hotel, packed her few things and checked out, planning not to return there. She knew it was the right call to deprive herself of an out, but now that she stood outside what had been her home, her mind was a silent cacophony of anxieties and discordant thoughts. Her head said ‘just open the damn door,’ her heart said ‘you need to see him,’ but her feet and her stomach said ‘run,’ so she simply stood, trying to quell the noise inside her.

It had been one hell of a day that had brought her here. She thought listening to Kurt jumping out of a plane not that long ago had been hard, but he’d had a chute. She knew he did, he had to. He’d known what he was doing. And she was still angry, Avery was still dead; it was a near miss but it was a miss, so there was no need at the time to make haste in processing what she was feeling. It had turned out Avery was alive though, and she was safe now under the watchful eyes of Jane’s FBI colleagues. So when Reade revealed the significance of the location the militia was taking Kurt and his undercover partner to, suddenly all she could think about was her husband trapped in a bunker, underground, outnumbered and overwhelmed. She’d nearly panicked then, too, fighting to push away a rush of mental images of that bunker becoming a tomb. Her heels and knees had bounced as she sat, twisting her hands in her lap, chewing her lip throughout the brief helicopter ride to be his rescue.

When they landed and grabbed their gear, she took the grenade launcher. If those assholes managed to take him down, there would be no arrests; she was going to make sure every single one of them went down with him.

And now, standing before nothing more than a wooden door, that resolve was nowhere to be found. She was absolutely terrified.

She took a last deep breath to steel herself and knocked, then fitted her key into the lock without waiting. She knew that if his mood was anything like hers had been lately, he wouldn’t answer, hoping that whoever was there would just go away.

She stepped over the threshold and bumped the door shut behind her. He was on his feet at the sight of her, a glass of scotch in his right hand and the other hidden in his pocket. “Hey,” was all he offered.

“I’m not letting Roman win,” she responded without preamble.

He looked to the side, shuffled his feet, then leaned his shoulder against the door frame from the lounge. He’d been wishing for this, to see her back in this place where she belonged. But then he’d learned about Clem, and now that the moment had arrived, he didn’t know what to say. Somehow it felt like neither of them belonged there. You have to try, he reminded himself unnecessarily. “What happened? Everything alright?”

It was her turn to look away, again grasping for the courage that always seemed automatic when looking down the barrel of a gun but was shredded to straws under his guarded expression. “No, uh… and it might not be for a while.” She walked further into the apartment, giving a helpless shrug. “Look, I know that you have a history of being let down by the people you love.” He shifted again, half turning from her as though he wanted to leave and escape the conversation. But he stayed. “Your father, your old partner… me. But knowing why you lied about Avery doesn’t make me feel any less betrayed. And that… hurt… may never go away.” He looked at the floor, nodding his resignation. She didn’t stop. “But all of this has just made me feel so… lonely. Afraid to trust the people I should believe in the most.”

He met her eyes then and straightened from the door frame, Allie’s words echoing in his ears. She was out there alone for a long time, but that doesn’t sound like the Jane I know. Trust had been at the heart of them from the beginning. She'd given it to him, unwaveringly, from almost the first moment they met, and he had returned it from the moment Chao's blade met his skin at the top of the Statue of Liberty. They'd bruised and broken and mended their trust more than once since, but… even at its lowest, he had always loved her. And she'd always loved him. It wasn't easy. It was absolutely worth it. That, at least, was something he knew. He started moving toward her.

“And that is exactly what Roman wants,” she was continuing, “I’m not gonna give it to him. Because I wanna trust Avery. I wanna work this out with you. I want love back in my life.”

He finally found his voice. “So do I.”

She blew out the breath she’d been holding and nodded, her chin quivering slightly, and they both stood staring, glassy-eyed, at one another.

It was Kurt who broke the silence, stepping a little closer and extracting his left hand from his pocket. Things weren’t right between them, and she was right, they wouldn’t be for a while. But she had come home, and maybe that was enough of a starting point for the minute. “Come on,” he said, tilting his head back toward the lounge. For a moment, she didn’t move.

It could be all too easy. She had no idea what he was thinking or what he wanted now, but he at least seemed willing to let her back into their home. She could feel the tension in him, and his pain matching her own, but also his relief at her presence and her intention to stay. Maybe he meant to leave their sleeping dogs to lie, just for tonight, and spend the rest of the evening simply easing back into the idea of sharing space. He was reaching for her hand, and she gave it to him, feeling his fingers gently closing around her own.

He turned and began leading her toward where he had been sitting, and she watched his back, his feet, their hands as she followed in numb silence. And suddenly all she could see was his wedding ring; the way it dully reflected the dim light feeling like a blinding glare.

She’d been hiding behind the icy wall she’d put up between them, scrawling messages to herself on its surfaces, assuring herself that his transgressions were the greater, his lies the more dire, her injury the more grievous. Even as she had stepped through the door to their home, having rehearsed precisely what she wanted to say, she braced for disaster by telling herself over and over that between the two of them, she had nothing more to apologize for. She had to believe it, because if he threw her out - and she had half-believed he would - she didn’t know how else she could survive it. But now that he hadn’t, she realized that what she was left with was less a wall or a shield and more a cold, hard brick of shame lodged somewhere behind her navel.

She stopped and pulled her hand from his, looking at the floor so that she didn’t have to see the hurt and confusion on his face as he turned to look back at her. Not talking about things was what had brought them here, and maybe this wasn't the best time, maybe neither felt ready for this conversation, but she didn’t want to repeat that mistake. She didn’t want any more misunderstandings, didn’t want him thinking for even one more moment that her foolish indiscretion had been a rejection or any other kind of comment on him. He was worth so much more than that; he deserved to know the truth. And she knew that they could never be ready for something like this. Whatever either of them intended, she owed it to him to do it now, if he would hear it, rather than risk that morning light and the crazy realities of their days might bury it all under other people's crises again.

“We… we should talk,” she stuttered. She saw his expression crumble, the relief seeming to abandon him, and suddenly she realized that in that moment, he was afraid of her. Afraid of what she might say, or maybe of how much more she might ask of him. “I mean… I should talk. I mean, I owe you… an explanation.”

His jaw flexed, and he glanced back and forth between her and nothing in particular a few times as he considered her offer. At last he nodded and turned his back on her, stepping back through the double doors into the lounge. She was frozen, wondering if the reminder of what she’d done had been too much for tonight after all, if he was going to keep right on walking, close a bedroom door behind himself and leave her there. Instead, he pushed aside the footstool with his knee and dropped back into his chair with an exhausted sigh, then gestured vaguely to the room in front of him.

“Okay,” he said, “then explain.”

She moved tentatively toward him and settled gingerly on a spot on the floor, in front of him, but not too close. “I’m not… even sure where to begin,” she confessed. She had known since that heated moment on the plane that this had to happen sometime, but she was so scared that he’d never give her the chance that she had doubled down on her anger, never allowing herself to consider what she would actually say. After several long moments of watching her mouth work soundlessly to no avail, he finally put her out of their misery, clearing his throat as he leaned forward. He rested his elbows on his knees, his hands hanging limply between them, one still loosely holding his glass of scotch.

“You knew I wanted to go with you, but you took off without me. I’m thankful that you put Bethany first. But you took off your ring.” He stopped short and swallowed down hard on the bile that suddenly seemed to be rising in his throat. She reached out gently as if to touch him, but withdrew her hand when he flinched. The action seemed to give him the push necessary to say what he needed to next. “I don’t want to know. I really, really don’t. But I think… I need to. We were happy, Jane. So… what happened?”

“I thought…” she hesitated. “No,” she corrected, then started again, stronger. “I left my ring for a reason. Part of it was about blending in, hiding the things I love. I left to keep you both safe, and if someone made me, if they saw that ring and saw that I was still…” still in love with you - she swallowed the words, “I had to keep you safe. I thought I’d be able to finish it, and come home.

“But… I knew there was a chance that it wouldn’t work. I didn’t want to hide that from you. I left it where I knew you’d find it, so you wouldn’t have to wonder what I’d done. And if I couldn’t make it back, for whatever reason… I didn’t want you stuck with me. My past just keeps coming back to haunt you, and that's not fair. I don't want that for you. I wanted you to know that… even if I wasn’t there, even if it wasn’t with me, more than anything… I wanted you to be happy.”

“I made a vow, Jane,” he said quietly. “And I meant it. There was no ‘happy’ for me without you.”

She glanced away, trying not to let her entire world crumble at the word 'was'; past tense. “I made that vow too,” she offered weakly, unthinkingly. And I broke it, she admonished herself silently. She heard him give a single, humorless little snort. He no longer had the energy to say it aloud, and she didn’t have the strength to, terrified that if she did, the sober reality of it would be the death of them. The silence hung heavy between them.

“I fucked up, Kurt,” she said finally, her trembling voice little more than a whisper. He glanced at her in surprise - she almost never swore, especially since Bethany had come into their lives - but he looked away just as quickly, knowing that if he continued looking his tears would spill over and never stop. Or worse, he might reach out to hold her and tell her it was okay.

It wasn’t okay.

“I fucked up,” she said again, louder but no less broken, “so badly. There’s no excusing it. I can’t undo it. I’d say I don’t know what I was thinking, but really, I just can’t believe how foolish I was.” She went quiet again.

He didn’t want to know what she had been thinking, leaving him behind and getting that close with another man; couldn’t imagine any line of thought that wouldn’t cut him to the bone. He halfway wished he could stop this and pretend the whole thing was just some terrible dream. But he understood what she was trying to do; trying to come to account so that whatever way things resolved, they could walk forward and away from this nightmare with something of their senses of selves intact. It was the same thing he’d done the night he’d finally told her the truth about Berlin. He knew there would never really be any going forward for them, not as individuals and definitely not together, if he didn’t ask. Allie was right. His imagination was running wild, and even if he didn’t want to hear it, it was information. Information he needed.

Finally, he gently cleared his throat. “So what were you thinking?” he asked, the subdued sound breaking her heart with the vulnerability it showed. For all his gruffness and all his walls, Kurt had always been strong, and had always worn his heart on his sleeve for her, even if he sometimes liked to pretend it wasn’t there. This quiet reservation, a man hidden back behind walls she couldn't scale… she didn’t know how to deal with it. She wished he would meet her eyes, but knew she didn’t deserve to ask that of him. She didn’t know where to start, or where to finish, or what to put in between. So she just let the words flow, throwing her crimes out on the carpet along with their fate. It wasn’t up to her anymore. Maybe it wasn’t up to either one of them.

“It wasn’t… a relationship. At least, not like you were implying, on the plane. We worked together. When I started doing K&R, I did it alone. We crossed paths a couple of times on jobs. On one job, we got to the hostage at the same time. There was no one I could trust out there, and I sure as hell didn’t trust him. But he didn’t fight me; he agreed to split the reward. Unfortunately he was still using Dwire for backup then, so you can imagine how that went. That ass knocked us both out and stole our pay.

“Clem…” she paused, almost choking on the name. “We backed each other up on a few jobs after that. After those first few, he admitted that he knew about the bounty, and he'd known for a while. He'd kept working with me in spite of it. It seemed like I could at least trust that he wouldn't sell me out for that, so I kept working with him. He became... a friend.” She paused, trying to gather herself again, trying to find her voice for the confession they both knew was next.

“It had been a few months since we started calling each other for backup, and after one really tough rescue I stayed to celebrate instead of just taking my cut and leaving. I thought it would be like our team does after we close a tough case. It would just be… nice, to be around another person for a while. But then he made a pass, and I thought…” she closed her eyes and took a big breath, “I thought about all that time. About how long I’d been gone, and how I’d wanted you to be happy, how I left my ring so that you could be in case... in case I didn’t come back. And for a minute, I fooled myself into thinking you were. It had been so long, you must be. You must have moved on.”

She saw him very subtly shaking his head.

“I know,” she said sadly, answering his unvoiced protest. Kurt Weller was loyal to a fault; he would have been right to scoff at her, to scream it in her face. But he didn’t. “I know,” she repeated, “…and I knew it right away then, too. I’ve made a lot of mistakes since we met. So many. But that…” she trailed off, shaking her head as the tears that had been gathering in her eyes thickened, blurring him from her sight. She couldn’t say it was the worst of her mistakes. Her mistakes had gotten Mayfair killed; they’d nearly robbed her brother of his whole life and condemned him to the CIA. Instead, she’d let him go and gotten her team, her husband, even the daughter she hadn't known she had, all ensnared in this mess of revenge or whatever the hell else Roman was playing at. They were all terrible mistakes. But Clem was by far her most foolish. She’d given up her faith in the person she should have believed in the most. That wasn’t Roman’s doing. She’d done it all on her own.

“There’s no excusing it,” she stated again. “I was lonely, but it just made me feel even lonelier. It was a mistake, and I felt so foolish. I think some part of me knew that you were still out there, somewhere, waiting for me. Keeping your vows. And I failed.”

She could have stopped there and let her ownership of that failure stand on its own, but she knew there would always be unanswered questions and doubts if he didn’t have the full story. She needed him to believe, to understand, that it had started and ended in a single, stupid night. She pressed on.

"I didn’t wait; I left that night. I never spoke to him again, not until I called him about Avery. That was before you told me about Berlin. Finding people is his job, and he’s good at it… he can do things the FBI can’t, things you and I couldn’t do without risking our jobs and our future. I just wanted to know she was safe.” She realized she was starting to spiral into trying to justify herself again, so she closed her eyes again to breathe through it. “I never expected that he would come to New York.”

“But once he was here, you thought you’d get back in touch,” he said flatly. Given the short notice on which Clem had arrived at the airstrip for their rescue mission to Berlin, he had already suspected the man had come stateside before Patterson found Avery, and he had a hunch that meeting up on the plane wasn’t their only recent encounter.

“Well…” she said awkwardly, knowing that she had to be completely honest, “no. Before Patterson found Avery, he got in touch. It was the day we rescued those Camp Iko refugees. I told him that Avery had died, and he wanted to come see me that morning, at the NYO. I hung up on him. But… I was so confused. I went to see him after work; I don't know what I was thinking. I guess I just… wanted someone to talk to, someone who wouldn’t feel caught in the middle between you and me. Nothing happened, but it wasn’t right. He doesn’t want to be friends. I’m not sure he ever really did.”

No fucking kidding, Weller found himself thinking, but he stopped himself from voicing it out loud. He tried to put it in context again - the Jane I know, as Allie had said. Jane, who was brave, and fierce, and boundlessly empathetic towards those in pain, but had very little clue about romance and almost no experience to build on. She had dated precisely one normal guy, for a long and rewarding few weeks, before choosing her husband. Zapata and Patterson had taken her out sometimes for drinks back in the early days, but he didn't know if she'd ever gotten a date out of it. Had she ever even really spoken to any guys before Oliver? Apart from him… and Oscar.

He needed to refocus on the subject at hand, make sure there was nothing else he was missing. “You said you left him that night, in Europe. What happened?”

She sighed, rubbing a hand over her face in frustration. “I fucked that up, too,” she admitted. “I guess by working with one crew, turning up with the same partner on multiple jobs, I made myself predictable, too easy to find. Until that day, I mitigated the risk by not sticking around a moment more than was absolutely necessary. When I realized how badly I'd messed up, I left him in a hurry, but I was distracted. The bounty hunters must have been watching, waiting for me to be alone. When I bolted, I played right into their hands. I didn’t get very far before they caught up with me, and I barely made it out. That was how I ended up in Berlin, like I told you; I lost my go-bag.” She chewed on her lip for a minute, looking somehow frustrated and lost at the same time.

“I knew I had to leave Europe, so I picked up my stash, bought new papers from Max, and ran. I didn't really know where I was going, but I had more than enough to get by, so staying off the radar and getting as much distance as I could was more important than anything else. I headed east, alone, as quickly and quietly as I could. Then there was an accident. When I woke up, over a week later, I was far away from where I had been... and somehow, the money was still there. It made no sense at the time, but I guess that was when Roman tattooed me, and he must have been the one to leave me with the monks. They were kind, it seemed safe, and things there were simple, so once I recovered I just… stayed."

He thought about pointing out that she could have come home, but it didn't seem like a useful time to rehash that argument. It wouldn't change anything, anyway. What was done was done and all they could control was what they each chose next.

“I needed to be alone. Somewhere I could leave my mistakes behind, but still keep you and Bethany safe,” she explained, as if she could read his thoughts. “And even if I could somehow keep the bounty hunters off my tail, I felt like… I’d lost the right to come home. I don't know if it was guilt or grief or just… fear, that drove me up the mountain. But once I was there, I stayed because it was so far off-grid that no one would find me, and if I couldn't be with you… at least I could live a life that wouldn't have hurt you more.

"And then when I saw you there, still wearing your ring… I was so overwhelmed. I didn't deserve that; you don't deserve what I did. And I shouldn't have kept it from you."

He nodded solemnly, staring into his drink as he processed everything she’d just told him. “Would you ever have told me?” he asked.

She glanced to the side, drawing a deep breath. “Honestly? I don’t know,” she answered. “I regret it; of course I do. I'd like to say there's not a day that goes by that I haven't been eaten alive by my guilt, but the truth is… after a while, I sort of started to forget about it.” She shuffled closer to him on the floor, trying to catch his eyes, silently begging him to see her sincerity. “You, Kurt… here, in front of me, beside me… there's nothing else to think about. You're… everything." He sniffled at that, and she saw him quickly swipe a single tear from his cheek with his thumb, but he still wouldn’t look at her. She feared he never would again.

“Life has given me so many reasons to doubt myself,” she said, and that was the crux of it all, wasn’t it? She doubted that she was worth it; had always doubted that she was enough for him, enough to deserve or keep him. For a brief, crazy moment, she’d let her self-doubt expand and fill her until she’d doubted him. But right now this wasn’t about her – or at least, not about her pain and insecurities. He’d been trying to apologize, trying to reach for her while she’d been keeping a secret of her own, only to throw it in his face the moment he was within arm’s reach. This was her turn for coming clean. “But ever since we finally got together, you never gave me a reason to doubt you.”

“And now we’ve both given each other reasons,” he said.

She nodded sadly. “I was wrong,” she said simply.

“So was I.”

“And Kurt… I’m–” her breath caught in her throat as he finally lifted his head to meet her eyes – “I’m sorry.”

“I know,” he whispered, “me too.”

They sat staring at each other for a long, long moment, remorse and pain so thick in the air that time seemed to stop.

“So what happens now?” she asked.

He leaned back in his chair, looking lost in his grim thoughts. "We’ve both made terrible mistakes," he started slowly. "This is going to take time. We have to learn how to stop… protecting each other, with little lies and half-truths. I think the betrayal of keeping those secrets has hurt us even more than the secrets themselves ever would have."

She nodded agreement at that.

"But… I want to work on it, with you," he finally said. "As much as it all hurts right now… you're it for me, too."

She pursed her lips to the side in what could have been a ghost of a smile, if she hadn’t been working so hard to blink back tears. She wanted to reach for him, but didn’t quite know how. She wasn’t sure he would welcome her touch just then. Truth be told, despite what he’d said, she feared that the image of another man’s hands on her would drive his touch away forever.

But despite the chasm between them, it still seemed as if he could almost read her mind. Or maybe they just wanted the same things. Her eyes were drawn to his lap as his hand slid forward to rest on his knee, as if he, too, wanted to reach for her but couldn’t quite find the courage. She tentatively lifted her own hand, silently asking for permission as she slowly bridged the gap. It was a stuttering dance between them, an old engine shuddering to life - his fingers alone lifted from the denim of his jeans, her hand moved a little closer through the empty air, and they both watched as her fingers finally found the spaces between his. They laced together, his palm at last leaving his knee to press into hers. It wasn’t quite like the opening of a floodgate, but her motion was smoother and less hesitant when a moment later the rest of her followed, just a little closer, to rest her head lightly on his knee. The back of his thumb found her cheek and she exhaled, feeling him exhale with her. A moment later he set down his glass and placed his newly freed hand on the side of her head, stroking her hair.

Then she went very still. That gentle touch was the final straw. He felt her tears on his thumb, one, then another, and she heard his sharply indrawn breath as he tugged lightly on her hair, coaxing her to look at him so she could see his tears start to fall, too. Not leaving her alone; showing her that he was right there with her, even in their pain.

She raised up on her knees between his feet, tugging his hand towards her heart. As soon as she was sure it would stay there she moved her own hand to his, and the two sandwiched those hands between them as they finally embraced. His body shook with a single, heavy sob, and he turned his face into her neck. She held him there, murmuring again and again how much she loved him as they both let the pain flow from their bodies to soak each other’s shirts.

After a while their sobs subsided to shaky, hitched breaths, and gradually to quieter sniffles. Kurt turned his palm from her chest, curling his fingers around the back of her hand to keep it over his heart while his other hand eased her back a bit so he could look at her. “Can I buy you a drink?” he asked with a fragile, watery half-smile.

She regarded him intensely and brushed her fingertips down his cheek, wiping away a lingering tear. “Yeah,” she nodded after a few heartbeats, sniffling with a fragile half-grin of her own.

“You’re gonna have to reach the glass, though,” he motioned to the other side of the small room. “Someone’s got me pinned.”

She rewarded his attempt at teasing with a look before she extracted herself and reached out on her hands and knees to pull a second glass off the low shelf and pass it to him. He poured and handed it back to her, then picked up his own glass and raised it a little. “To truth?” he suggested, then added, “Whole truths.”

“No matter how painful,” she agreed.

“And never, ever giving up,” he finished, and she smiled a little more genuinely as she clinked her glass with his and took a sip. After a moment, she turned, settling again on the floor and leaning back against the chair between his knees. He set the record player going, soft music filling the air, and he brushed his hand just once through her hair. She leaned into the touch, then reached up to take his hand over her shoulder, and they sat quietly sipping their drinks, sharing the air with each other and their own battered thoughts.

After a while, he found something more to say. Her fingertips were idly stroking the back of his hand, lingering from time to time to toy with his wedding band. “It’s where you left it,” he murmured, knowing without a doubt that she was thinking about her own ring. He was, too. “I… couldn’t touch it.”

“What do I have to do? To earn it back.” She knew that there was more to do, and after the hurt she'd caused him, she wanted to give him the choice. She held still while she waited for his answer.

“It’s your ring Jane, you can do what you want with it.” She frowned. They’d made a little progress, but he still sounded so fragile. She turned her body halfway toward him, looking up at him with an earnest expression.

“But it’s more than a ring. It was a promise, and I broke that trust. It’s not in your pocket this time. You haven’t been waiting to give it back.” There was no judgment or accusation in her voice, only truth.

“I wasn’t sure I could.”

“And now?”

“Now… it belongs with you. At least, I want it to. I kept wearing mine because… I still want to belong to you.” He hesitated, knowing that despite the progress they’d just made, they were both incredibly raw. He’d hurt her, badly, but she’d hurt him, too. The sight of her hand without the silver jeweled band he’d put there made his chest feel hollow any time he stopped to think about it. He didn’t like the contrast of her pale skin and dark ink without its crowning sparkle. His wishes and feelings weren’t the only things that mattered, though. This one had to come from her. “It doesn’t have to be tonight. We’ll keep working on it. But… I need you to be sure you want it, too. I just… can’t watch you leave it behind a third time. I can’t. So what do you want?”

She nodded thoughtfully, sadly; her expression was not unlike the one she had worn in Nepal, the last time she found him still wearing his ring while her finger was bare. “I'm not sure I deserve to even say it, but it’s never felt right, being without it,” she said. “I was angry, so angry I felt numb… but underneath all of that it just hurt, and taking it off just made it worse. So much worse.” She caught his eye, hoped he could see the truth - the whole truth; her sadness and regret for having left it behind again. “I don’t think I could do it again. It felt all wrong. I don’t ever want to feel that again; I don’t want you to feel that. I don't want that kind of pain in our lives ever again.”

“We’re still gonna have pain in our lives, sometimes. No one gets through life without that.”

She turned to face him more fully. She had come home looking hard yet frightened, and throughout her confession looked so sad and ashamed, but now he could see that Jane, his Jane, was beginning to return. Her face was pink and puffy from crying and he was sure his own face matched, but her expression was determined and her voice was growing stronger. “But I can’t be the cause. I can’t be the reason you look like that again. I couldn’t bear it.”

He still looked reserved, and took a swig of his drink in lieu of speaking. She abandoned her drink on the floor and reached up to stroke her hand down his stubbled jaw, then stood and made her way to the breakfast bar. She returned a minute later and knelt in front of him, holding up her ring between her thumb and index finger. “It’s not going to get better overnight. I know it’s not. But I know that I want to belong to you. No more secrets, and no more lies. No more running. We’re better together. I want to be in this, together with you.” He stared at the ring then looked into her eyes, long and hard, searching for any trace of uncertainty. She gazed back at him with absolute conviction. At last he put down his glass again, leaning forward, and took the ring from her.

“Then we do it together,” he said.

She nodded her relief, the certainty in her expression never wavering. “I’m yours, Kurt,” she told him, more softly but no less firmly. He glanced at her in acknowledgement before he slipped the ring back on her finger and joined their left hands together, their twin rings finally reunited and exactly where they belonged. He stared at them as if in a trance, his posture relieved, but a shadow of apprehension remained on his face.

“Kurt,” she said softly, trying to draw his attention. She paused and waited for him to meet her eyes again, and when he did, she smiled gently. “We’re gonna be okay.” A heartbeat later, he squeezed her hand, and smiled softly back.

That night they slept on their own sides of their bed, facing away from one another. When he woke in the middle of the night, her feet were together, her toes lightly pressed against the backs of his calves. When she woke in the morning, he had rolled over and stretched his arm toward her, his fingers ever so faintly brushing her ribs, just below her shoulder blade, each time she inhaled. A handful of days passed with an awkward sort of friendship, stilted hugs or chaste kisses, and the occasional joining of hands. And nights passed just like that first one, with each tentatively reaching out for the other in their sleep.

The way Jane looked at him, up and down, unabashedly checking him out after she recovered the Nergal device from Sho Ahktar became something of a turning point for matters at home. He looked great in that suit, and she knew exactly what working undercover together did to him - what seeing each other pretending to be someone else and yet still so unmistakably them did to them both - and she was done playing slow and safe. She was pretty sure he was, too. She hit pause on those thoughts as they changed and debriefed and she went to meet up with Avery, but in spite of the nerves she felt about an unstructured visit with her estranged daughter, the wink her husband gave her when she left the office had her grinning most of the way to the coffee shop.

She was tired when she got home, emotionally drained and ready to shelf anything else for another day. When she saw him stand from the sofa though, looking adorably apprehensive, so ready to be lovingly supportive no matter how her visit had gone, her fatigue went out the window. Seeing Nas had brought up some things; Jane liked the woman well enough as a workplace colleague, and appreciated all she’d done for the team, but Nas had always been just a little bit too patronizing toward Jane and was still just a little too comfortable in her husband’s presence for someone who had in times past threatened to return her to a dark, dark hole. Never mind that the woman had been sharing Kurt's bed while holding those things over her, or the easy way she’d walked back into what was long since Jane’s home.

It started with a slow, lingering kiss that was as much a question as a greeting, and which quickly evolved into an answer. Their reunion was a little rough at first - possessive - and soon they were breathing words like 'yours' and 'mine' into each other's skin. They didn’t quite make it to the bed, but that suited them just fine. Their last reunion had taken place on the floor too, and while this time there was an aggressive edge to the way they reclaimed each other, it ended similarly, with gentle smiles, interlaced fingers, and murmured affirmations of love.

Things weren't better overnight, even after they climbed under the covers to finally sleep curled around each other for the first time in weeks - and woke each other in the dark hours of morning to confirm those things they'd already worked out on the floor. The now-crumbling walls they’d erected around their hearts still made reading each other outside the office more challenging than they were accustomed to, interrupted by hiccups of insecurity and niggling fears. It helped, though, that now they were calling them fears, not anger or blame; and so too did the fact that they spoke about them regularly rather than suffering them in silence.

Some of the lingering hurt was smoothed by the discovery that with the bulk of their anger released, they still functioned as an unstoppable team at work. They read each other as well as ever in the field, and in the office they still looked to each other first, asking questions and giving answers, or sharing thoughts and opinions, all through silent exchanges that they would only occasionally voice to the team. Those daily reminders that they were still better together than they were apart became a salve against any doubts they might feel about whether they could get through it.

Jane was surprised but pleased to find that Kurt was relaxing a little more into his tactile nature throughout the day, deliberately instigating casual little displays of affection that he had been more restrained about before. It was subtle, not at all like the desperate way they had always grasped each other after a close call, and nothing so overt as to make their colleagues regularly uncomfortable. His hand was simply finding her own, or the small of her back more often, and sometimes he would step up behind her to embrace her for no reason other than she was sitting by herself at a workstation and he felt like it. She knew how much those little check-ins meant to him, and with each little touch, she felt surer. Weller was similarly surprised when Jane caught him in the hallway outside the lab one morning to ask what he thought about inviting Avery to live with them. The prospect itself delighted him, but the fact she had come to him about something so important as soon as she decided she wanted it, even though they were busy and at work, filled him with a warm sort of certainty.

They were both practicing not waiting, because they were keenly aware - especially after the date Rich had sent them on was cut short by assassins - that 'the right time' wasn't something they could necessarily count on in their line of work. They also practiced opening themselves, volunteering more of their inner worlds than either was used to, and no longer taking for granted that their comfortable place on each others' wavelength would be enough on its own to keep all misunderstandings at bay.

It was taxing at times. The days at work flew by while their evenings were slow and deliberate, but gradually, with each spontaneously voiced thought, each unsolicited touch, each difficult conversation that turned out simpler than expected, they built something; something unlike what they had before. They had always believed their bond to be unshakeable, but now it was being reforged in the certainty that came with a proven commitment to work at it no matter how hard or painful; to accept that they would sometimes mess up or let each other down, but safe in the knowledge that they would never stop reaching for each other and they would never, ever give up. Because they were in love, they were everything, and they decided again, every single day, that that mattered. More than anything.

#fun fact! this is *by far* the longest story I've published to date #clocking in at 7210 words #when most have been in the ballpark of 1.5-3k words #blindspot #blindspot 3x12 #blindspot fanfic #blindspot fanfiction #blindspot rewatch 2022 #blindspot s3 spoilers #jeller 💔#but also ending with a lil plain ole hopeful #jeller #nachos blindspot oc #nachos blindspot fics

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