I do not own Blindspot or its characters.

A/N: I appreciate all the awesome reviews for the first two stories in this series. Hope you enjoy this one as well. Think there will be one more story to go, and I'll try to get it written and posted soon. Let me know what you think. :)

It felt like all the air was being sucked out of the room.

Jane had known this day might come, had been bracing herself for the possibility ever since she mistakenly sent that email to Patterson, but nothing could have prepared her for the awe on Kurt's face as he slowly walked toward her, keeping his eyes locked on hers, and gently enfolded her in his embrace.

"I've missed you," Kurt choked out as he buried his face in her hair, breathing in the scent of her, hardly able to believe that this was happening. That she was here, in his arms, warm and vibrant and whole.

Well, mostly whole.

He frowned as her reluctantly drew back and caught sight of her battered face once more, bringing his hands up to frame her jaw and gently rubbing his thumb over the bruise on her temple. "What happened?"

"Work-related injury," Jane told him, pulling away as his words recalled her to reality, still stunned by the tenderness in his eyes. It didn't at all fit her narrative of the two of them, and she didn't quite know what to make of it. If it were anyone else, she would think . . .

She shook that thought off and forced her mind back to the reunion at hand as Patterson and Zapata and Reade approached. She could feel Mac grinning at her back and knew there would be hell to pay for this later. If he waited until later. Which knowing him, he probably wouldn't. "You know how it goes. It looks worse than it is."

"She always says that," Mac said as he stepped up beside Jane, eyeing the stubbled man speculatively. He was very much looking forward to getting to know him, whoever he was. And to needling Jane about their relationship. "And it's usually worse than it looks." He held out his hand. "Mac Turner."

"Kurt Weller." Kurt gripped Mac's hand, meeting the man's curious gaze with an interested one of his own, wondering what his relationship was to Jane. There was a definite familiarity between them, and he tamped down a surge of jealousy at the thought that they might be more than coworkers. He had no claim on her, after all, no matter how much he wished it otherwise. Patterson and Zapata and Reade all hugged Jane, and introduced themselves in turn. "How long have you worked with Jane?"

"Since she started here last year," Mac told him, his eyes narrowing as he studied Jane's former boss. Nothing Jane had told him about the man had indicated the level of closeness he had just seen. Then again, she hadn't told him much. Perhaps that should have been a clue, but she was so closed off in general that he had just seen it as the norm for her. "I'd like to say she's told me a lot of good things about you, but to be honest, she really hasn't said much. I have to admit, I'm impressed, though."

"Impressed?" Kurt asked in confusion as Jane stiffened beside him. "By what?"

Mac kept a straight face with an effort, though his eyes danced with amusement. "In the year I've known Tiger here, you're the first man I've seen escape death or serious bodily injury when they laid a hand on her. Other than me, of course, but I'm her sparring partner."

"And the others were criminals or terrorists," Jane said icily. "What did you expect me to do with them, Mac, sit around a campfire singing Kumbaya?"

"Lord, I hope not," Mac said with an exaggerated wince. "You've got many talents, Tiger, but singing isn't one of 'em. Although . . . If you did that, it might persuade them to give up their secrets that much quicker. Be a much more effective interrogation technique."

"Why don't we all take a seat?" Nas suggested as Jane's eyes flashed dangerously. Mac's humor was normally much appreciated, but at the moment it was only exacerbating the stress of the situation for a woman he had aptly nicknamed Tiger, and if he wasn't careful, he was going to feel her teeth.

Kurt turned to Jane, expecting—hoping—that she would sit by him, but she deftly maneuvered it so that she was sandwiched in a chair between Nas and Mac, and he felt his heart sink as he took a seat opposite her on the couch. Nas had been right: despite her initial enthusiasm, she didn't really want to see them. To see him.

And the odds he could talk her into coming back to New York with them were looking bleaker by the minute.

"Give her time," Patterson whispered as she sat down next to Weller, flashing him a reassuring smile. "She's been through a lot, but she'll come around." The look on Jane's face when she had first spotted him was all the confirmation she needed of that. She might still be mad at him—at all of them—but she still loved him. "She chose the name Jane Shaw for a reason. Don't forget that."

Kurt nodded as her words brought him back to reality, and he relaxed slightly. Of course he couldn't expect Jane to be happy to see them right off the bat. Not with the way things had ended between them. The fact that she was even sitting down to talk to them was more than he had any right to expect.

Though now that she was right in front of him, he suddenly realized he had no idea what to say to her. Or rather, there was so much he wanted to say that he had no idea where to begin. Especially not in front of an audience.

Tasha, however, had no such reservations. "So, Jane . . . I have to admit, given your history, I thought sure Patterson had it wrong, that it was a different J. Shaw working for the NSA. Especially since that's not your real name. They don't mind you working here under an alias?"

"It's not an alias," Jane said quietly. "Jane Shaw is my legal name now." Nas had gotten the government to issue her a birth certificate in that name, along with a seven-figure settlement for all they had put her through that ensured her job here was extraneous. Or any job ever again, really.

"And Jane doesn't work for the NSA, per se," Nas informed them. "I employ her as an independent contractor, so she has complete autonomy over which missions she chooses to accept." Though she didn't turn down very many. "She and I have an understanding that I will share as much information as I can with her, so she can make an informed decision on how to proceed. Most of the intel I've shared with you in the past year has come from her, as a matter of fact."

"So these missions . . . they're pretty dangerous, then?" Reade asked. "Based on how you look, and what Mac said when the two of you walked in here." Not to mention the quality of the intel they had received. Intel that had enabled them to stop numerous planned terrorist attacks. Wherever Jane had been in the past year, it had been no walk in the park.

"We don't call her Tiger for nothing," Mac agreed as the tension in the room ratcheted up a notch, his eyes narrowing as Jane's flew to Kurt's and everyone else in the room seemed to fade into the background as the two of them looked at one another. "She's known as Nas's attack dog around here, and trust me, you don't want to get a visit from her." Although he was beginning to suspect Weller would have liked one. A permanent one, from the looks of things. And that Jane wouldn't be adverse to it either.

Maybe he could help make that happen. Mac took a deep breath as he decided how best to proceed. "Essentially, she does her damndest to get herself killed on a regular basis, while I do my damndest to keep that from happening," he continued. "And patch her up when she comes close."

"Your job is to act as a liaison between Nas and me when I'm out in the field," Jane corrected icily as Kurt sucked in a breath, the pain in his eyes tearing at what was left of her heart. "Not to offer commentary on how I choose to do mine."

Mac hid his smile. He'd known that would get a rise out of her. "True," he agreed cheerily, "but since I save your ass on a regular basis, at great risk to my own, I might add, I think I've earned the right to speculate about this. I've always assumed that you did your job so recklessly because you had no one left in the world you cared about—or who cared about you, besides me and Nas, of course—but now I see I couldn't have been more wrong." He waved a hand at her visitors. "So. Why did you leave the FBI?"

"You know why," Jane leaned back in her chair, feigning a casualness she was very far from feeling. Mac was hitting a little too close to home for her liking, knew her a little too well to take anything she said at face value. "I was an asset for the FBI inside Sandstorm. Once we took them down, the job was finished. It was time to move on. Case closed." She shrugged.

"Except it's not," Patterson burst out. "The investigation into what happened to you is closed, but your tattoos are still leading us to bad guys, and you were—you are—an integral part of that, Jane. Why do you think we're here today? Why else do you think we've spent the past year looking for you? Because you're not just an asset to us. You were never just an asset."

She'd heard that before. Right before she wound up in a CIA black site being tortured for three months. Jane glanced away from Kurt, away from the shared remembrance in both their eyes, as she pushed away the memories that evoked. "You don't need me for that, Patterson. From what I've seen, you're doing just fine on your own." Better even, probably. They no longer had to worry about being betrayed by someone who was supposed to be watching their backs.

Of course, in the end, she hadn't been the greatest threat to that.

"You're wrong," Tasha spoke up. "Look, I was probably madder at you than any of us when you rejoined the team, but I'll be the first to admit that nothing's been the same since you left. We don't just need you back, Jane. We want you back. Please . . . come back to New York with us."

"Please, Jane," Kurt echoed when Jane looked down at her hands, shaking her head slightly, clearly on the verge of refusing. He glanced at Nas, imploring her to do something, but she was looking at Mac with a pointed expression, clearly expecting him to intervene.

Were these people idiots? Mac wondered in frustration as they threatened to implode his attempt to help them. Jane had run away from them for a reason; did they honestly think a few emotional pleas and puppy-dog eyes from Weller were going to convince her without dealing with the underlying problem?

One thing was clear: he didn't stand a chance with them in earshot. He couldn't trust them to keep their mouths shut. Nor, he suspected, would she speak honestly in front of them. He rose to his feet and held out a hand. "All right. Come on, Tiger. Let's go for a walk."

"What?" Jane looked up at Mac as though he'd lost his mind.

"A walk," Mac repeated. "You know, that thing people do when they put one foot in front of the other? Let's go."

Jane didn't resist when he grasped her hand and pulled her to her feet, letting him lead her out of the room without protest.

"Don't worry," Nas said once the door had closed behind them, "if anyone can get through to her, it's Mac. Jane refused to work with a team, which is why I assigned him to her. He's had a pretty rough life as well, and I had a feeling the two of them would hit it off."

He hoped so, Kurt thought, even as he wondered just how well the two of them had hit it off. Then chastised himself once again for thinking that way. As if Nas had read his mind, she continued. "They've become good friends. In some ways, I think they've each taken the place of the sibling the other has lost. They've filled a void for one another. Mac got a good read on the situation just now, and he's a pretty persuasive guy. I really think Jane will be going back with you."

And indeed, Nas's words proved to be prophetic. Forty-five agonizing minutes later, Jane reappeared in the doorway, showered and changed and looking much more like her old self, a faint smile on her lips as she glanced from one to the other. She had a knapsack slung over her shoulder, and Kurt felt hope stir inside him just as she announced, "I'm going with you.

"But," she cautioned as Patterson leaped to her feet and rushed over to embrace her, "that doesn't mean I'm going to be rejoining the team permanently." That needed to be said up front. "I can promise I won't leave again without telling you guys though. And I'll make sure I stay in touch if I go." If they wanted her to.

"That's all we can ask for," Patterson said with a smile as she hugged Jane again.

It wasn't all he could ask for, but it was better than what he'd had for the past year. And it was most definitely a new starting point. He could work with that. Kurt hung back until Zapata and Reade had hugged Jane as well before doing what he had should have done a year ago: he wrapped her up in his embrace and held onto her as long as she allowed him, sharing a wordless conversation with Mac over her head as he did so, silently promising to take care of her now and thanking the man for doing so for the past year. Wondering what it was he had said to her to convince her to give him another chance.

He asked her that once the plane was in the air. He had taken up residence beside Jane on the couch and the others had congregated around the table to give them space. He had tugged her close, thrilled when she didn't resist, though she didn't exactly snuggle up to him either, and watched her until she asked him what was on his mind. "I'm very glad you decided to come back—" he began.

"—but you're wondering what made me decide to do so," Jane finished for him. It was a fair question, but not one she had a ready answer to. Her eyes took on a faraway look as she thought back to her conversation with Mac.

"What the hell was that?" Jane demanded as soon as they paused in a deserted corridor, well out of earshot of anyone. "You just ambushed me in front of my team. You—"

"Your team?" Mac interrupted mildly. "Don't you mean former team? Oh, wait. That wouldn't apply either, since according to you, you were nothing more than an asset to them."

Jane was not to be deterred. "Don't try to change the subject. You practically insinuated that I have a death wish in front of them, for god's sake, and—"

"Don't worry, Tiger," Mac said sympathetically. "I know you don't have a death wish, even if you haven't quite figured that out yet. If you had, you'd already be dead. And I'm sure your team is smart enough to figure that out as well." If not, he was sure Nas would enlighten them. "No, it's not dying that scares you; it's living."

Jane glared at him. "You do know I put a bullet through the last man that psychoanalyzed me, right?" Though to be fair, that had more to do with Borden's status as a mole for Sandstorm than the advice he'd given. The advice had been good.

She still found herself missing it on occasion.

Mac chuckled. "If you were going to shoot me, Tiger, you'd have done it a long time ago. You're just mad because you know I'm right."

"So what do you suggest I do then?" Jane asked coldly. "Since you seem to have me all figured out."

Mac grinned. "I would never presume to tell any woman that I had them all figured out, Tiger. Much less you." His amusement faded. "Besides, the way I see it, I'm not the one that needs to do the figuring," he told her gently. "This is your life. Don't you think it's time you decided for yourself what you want to do with it?"

"This is all I've ever known," Jane protested, understanding even as she said it that was his point. She had fought so hard to be free of the FBI, of Sandstorm, only to fall back into the same old patterns. Same job, different master. Even if she was nominally working for herself. And it would just be more of the same if she went back to the FBI. She slid down the wall and rested her head on her knees. "What am I supposed to do, Mac? I just feel . . ." She shook her head. "I don't know what I want anymore."

He suspected the opposite was true. She knew exactly what she wanted—and that was the problem. She viewed it as unattainable, herself as unworthy, when it was anything but. When she was anything but. But it wasn't his place to tell her that. And he suspected doing so might spook her anyway. "Which is all the more reason to get on that plane and go with them and figure it out.

"I'm not suggesting you make the move permanent," he added quickly when she started to protest. "But you obviously have unresolved feelings for these people, and they clearly love you. Friendships like that are not something you throw away lightly, Tiger. Whether you stay or go, that can be a good starting point for you. And trust me, even if you leave, it will be a great comfort to you to be able to pick up the phone and call them when you're going through a tough time."

She already knew that. How many times this past year had she wanted to do exactly that? Had she had to physically restrain herself to keep from using a burner cell to call Kurt just to hear the sound of his voice? But . . . "It's not really a good time right now, Mac," she pointed out. "The threat level—"

"Is probably always going to be elevated," Mac interrupted. "That's the world we live in now, Tiger. No matter how many dragons you slay, there will always be another one out there ready to take its place. You can't use that as an excuse to avoid living your life."

She hesitated, and he pressed his advantage. "You've been fighting for others in one way or another your entire life, Jane; there's no shame in fighting for yourself now. In laying down your weapons if that's what you decide you want to do. But no matter what you decide your future holds, I think it's time you stepped out of the darkness that has always surrounded you, that you've surrounded yourself with, and reached for the light."

Reach for the light . . .

Kurt cleared his throat, and Jane belatedly realized he was still waiting for an answer. And suddenly she knew what hers would be. "I decided to reach for the light," she told him. She could see by his face that he didn't really understand, but that was okay. She would explain it to him one day.

Just as soon as she found that light she was looking for.