Disclaimer: I do not own Blindspot. I'm just borrowing the fantastic characters so I can play with them a little bit.

A/N: I meant for this to be a one shot... but apparently Jane and Kurt had other plans. :)

Jane sat and stared at the sad little Christmas tree on the counter of her safe house. My house, she corrected herself. She had told herself that she needed to stop calling it a safe house. It implied that she was in hiding, and she didn't like to think of herself that way… even if it might be true.

She didn't even know how long she'd been sitting on the bar stool, pushed to one end of the counter, with her chin in her left hand, propped up by her elbow against the countertop, staring at the miniature version of a Christmas tree that Patterson had brought her the day before. It had been really nice of her, a gesture of friendship and an attempt to brighten up her place. The thought that Patterson was trying to cheer her up seemed ridiculous. Patterson had just lost David only a few weeks ago. How was she doing it, keeping herself together? And why would she choose to comfort Jane, of all people? After all, she was the one who was responsible for David's death.

Everyone had spent the past few weeks telling her that it wasn't true, but it didn't seem to help. She knew it was the truth, and there was nothing anyone could say to convince her otherwise. Without her tattoos, David never would have put himself in danger. Weller had been trying his hardest to get through to her on that particular point, she knew. She'd been on the receiving end of a lot more of his intense looks than usual, which was saying a lot, and he'd made a point to try to keep her company outside of work a lot more often too. Nothing he could say would convince her though, because she knew something that he didn't. She had done this to herself, so it really was her fault that David was dead. She wasn't just feeling guilty. She was guilty.

As much as she would have loved so much of Weller's attention only a few weeks ago, of course, now it only seemed to make things harder. Every time she saw him, or any of them, she had to lie to him. No, she didn't have to, she had chosen to lie to them. Ever since that night – that night when she had felt, for two whole minutes – like she was figuring things out, like something in her life was working – that night when she had decided to kiss Kurt, and had immediately known that her decision had been the right one… in her short collection of memories, nothing had ever felt even close to as right as that kiss had.

And then had come the men who'd taken her in the van, and Carter… waterboarding… Oscar… and that girl… that girl with her face and her voice who was not her. Couldn't be her. Except that she was her. That girl had told her that she had been the one who had done all of this… and her world, the one that she had so carefully built around the empty shell of a woman – a woman who had started from nothing but a collection of tattoos that earned her disgusted stares almost wherever she went – that was when her world had shattered into a million pieces.

Oscar had told her that she couldn't tell them. Everything in her told her that she had to tell them. So why hadn't she? She'd told them some of the truth, yes, only as much as she could without having to divulge the fact that Oscar was the man from her memories, or anything about the video. She wanted desperately to think that they would understand – that he would understand – but she was terrified that he wouldn't. She was a coward, she knew, for thinking this way. After all, in the short life she could remember, she had always tried to do the right thing, to get Weller to do the right thing.

Weller had even commented on this fact when she'd been feeling conflicted about the memories she was having about her past. He'd told her that it didn't matter, because she wasn't that person anymore. So then why was she letting herself become that person again? The person who was lying to the only people – the only person – who truly mattered to her. She didn't know, and it made her feel even worse. She'd been trying to sift through her thoughts, telling herself that she would tell him, but so far she hadn't. It had already been weeks, and she'd said nothing. At this point, she told herself, it was as bad as lying. At this point even if she told him, he would never forgive her. How could he? If she were him, she wouldn't forgive her either. She was a liar and a hypocrite and she didn't deserve his forgiveness. And so she kept the secret in tortured silence.

The problem with that was that it was eating her up inside. Everyone had noticed the way she was acting, she knew. Luckily, the ordeal that she had been through before Oscar had killed Carter was real, and she was legitimately traumatized. She let them believe that that was all of it, and they had no reason to suspect otherwise. She wanted to believe that she could handle it, but in reality the weight of her secret was growing heavier every day, and she didn't know how much longer she could go on.

Her phone buzzed on the counter in front of her, and her eyes flicked down to the screen, but she remained otherwise as still as a statue. It was Kurt, she could see from the display. She made no move to answer it, just stared at his name and listened to the buzz, which reverberated against the countertop, making it much louder than it would have been in her hand. When it finally stopped, her eyes flicked back up to the tree in front of her at the other end of the counter.

It was a pre-lit tree, about two feet tall. She hadn't bothered to plug it in, so it sat sadly, its white bulbs unlit. A bag of ornaments sat on the floor below it. Patterson had brought those over as well, but Jane couldn't bring herself to even look at them. Her friend's attempts to help her just made her feel worse. She was betraying these people, the only people she had in the world, and for what? She didn't even know.

Her phone buzzed just once, a minute later. She had a new voicemail, the box on the screen informed her. She knew that she should answer when he called, because it wouldn't be long before Weller would panic if she didn't. She couldn't blame him, she supposed. After all, she did have a history of sneaking out of her safe house and getting herself into compromising positions… which is how she ended up exactly where she was now. No, she didn't want to go anywhere, she just wanted everyone to leave her alone. And since it was Christmas Eve, short of Mayfair calling them all in, which seemed very unlikely, she was exactly where she was going to stay.

She closed her eyes, wishing that she could be somewhere else… or someone else. Someone who had a "normal" life. A family. A job. A house. All that normal stuff that people were supposed to have. All the stuff that she never would. Stop it, she told herself, but she couldn't.

It's not as though she didn't know what she was doing – sitting here and feeling sorry for herself – and she knew that it wasn't helping. She knew that she needed to get up and do something – anything – but she just couldn't make herself budge. Suddenly, she heard the sound of keys jingling and the front door rattling slightly, then she heard it creak open. She wasn't afraid, not really, because she knew that no one would so brazenly get by her security detail in broad daylight. Not without her hearing a commotion outside, anyway. What does it matter, anyway? she thought sadly. She couldn't bring herself to care who was just letting themselves into her house without even knocking. Besides, it wasn't really hers, after all. Like everything else she had, it belonged to the FBI. Like she did herself, in many ways.

There was no noise of approaching footsteps, however, and she waited. "Ma'am?" came the voice of Sam, one of the agents on her detail that evening. "Everything alright?" She shook her head. Of course Weller called them to check on me. This is what I get for sneaking out before, and for not answering my phone.

"I'm fine," she called, still not moving from the stool, her eyes still closed. "Tell Agent Weller I just didn't hear my phone when he called."

"Alright, sorry to bother you, ma'am," Sam replied. She heard the door close and the lock turn again, and she let out a sigh. She understood the reason for Kurt's concern, she really did, but it annoyed her to no end. Why can't he just leave me alone already? she wondered once again. She knew that it wasn't going to happen, and yet, she just didn't want to face him. She knew that he knew that she was doing just that, so it was silly, really, because it was only a matter of time before everything came out…

Except that it couldn't. She couldn't tell any of them. Not yet, at least. Oscar had said that she'd have the answers in time, but that she couldn't trust the FBI.

That's not true and you know it, the voice in her head replied immediately. Now you're trusting Oscar, who you know nothing about, over Weller?

She'd had this conversation with herself a million times, and it ended the same way every time. Every single time she tried to convince herself that she was being stupid for betraying the one person she never wanted to hurt, she ended with the same conclusion: it's my own fault. He'll never forgive me, even if I don't even know what I've done. I knew it before I did it, and I did it, for whatever reason.

She knew that it made her a coward, but she simply could not bear the thought of the look in his eyes when he realized that it had been her all along. The betrayal that she would see there was simply too much. She already saw it every time she looked at herself in the mirror. She couldn't take that look from the team, after working so hard to win their trust. From Kurt, the one who… that was it, really. That's what he was. The one. She didn't need to know many people to know that much. And that was what made this a thousand times worse.

If she could have run away, simply disappeared from it all, she would have. But since that wasn't an option, she was pushing him away as hard as she could, just stalling and wishing for something to happen, something that would either fix the situation or take the control out of her hands and blow it all to hell, because she couldn't stand to be the one to do it, even though the waiting was pure agony.

She didn't know how long she'd been sitting on that stool, her eyes closed. The familiar pain in her chest was back. The more she sat and let her thoughts go like this, the more it made her chest hurt. She opened her eyes and faced the empty Christmas tree, wishing that all of this was different. That she was different.

…

Kurt pulled the SUV up in front of Jane's safe house. She'd been avoiding him for weeks now, he knew, but in the past few days it had been far worse. She'd said that she wanted space after what had happened with Carter, and he wanted to respect that. It stung a little because it had come immediately after the kiss… the kiss that had been like none other he had ever experienced.

He had not been lying when he'd told Jane, when they'd been undercover as husband and wife, that he was choosy. He'd dated here and there, he'd been with different women. Allison had been his most serious relationship, lasting about a year, and even that should have ended long before it had. He could never have explained it, but none of them had ever been the right one. It scared Kurt, but he had realized a while ago, even before Jane had showed up that night and kissed him, that with her… it just felt right. The thing that he'd never felt with anyone else, it was there. It had been a slow realization, jump started, he supposed, by Zapata that day in the woods of Michigan. By the time they were undercover as husband and wife, well, it was hard – no, impossible – to deny it.

Of course, he wasn't about to go screaming it from the rooftops. And their situation was far from ideal. On the contrary, it was extremely complicated. But if there was one thing he had learned in his life, it was how to wait when he had no choice. He'd spent twenty five years looking for Taylor without giving up, after all. If there was meant to be something between himself and Jane, it was not going to take twenty five years. Still, the state of things between them now was agonizing. Whatever was going on now, he was going to find a way to make it better somehow, that much he was sure of. Anyone who knew him knew that when he got something in his head, you did NOT want to be the one standing in his way.

He climbed out of the SUV, determination surging through him along with just a touch of anxiety. There was no way to know how she would take his arrival, of course. There had been so many times when he'd been the only one who'd been able to comfort her, but lately she'd seemed to want nothing to do with him. Still, he trusted his instincts. The voice in his head had reminded him that the last time she'd asked for "room to breathe," it had been what she thought she'd wanted, but she'd been desperately lonely. What she had actually needed was for him not to be objective. She'd needed him to be there.

Jane could take care of herself pretty darn well, he knew, but he couldn't help but feel like he knew her better than she knew herself most times. This was one of those times, and he was going to get to the bottom of whatever it was that was going on.

In a few short steps he was at her front door, nodding to her security detail. They'd relayed her message to him, though they'd assured him that they hadn't mentioned him by name or that he'd asked them to check on her, that they'd only asked if she was alright. It didn't matter, he'd been planning to come over anyway. He knocked on the door loudly, stepped back half a step, and waited.