I do not own Blindspot or its characters.

It took them nearly a year to find her.

In fact, over an hour passed before they even realized Jane had left the hospital, a fact which bothered all of them but weighed especially heavy on Kurt. Those precious minutes had given her time to hail a cab and return to her safe house, to pack her meager belongings and empty her bank account of what little money they had allotted her, before disappearing without a trace.

But it was Allie's account of what had happened in that warehouse before they'd arrived that really brought him to his knees.

Jane had offered to lay down her weapon, to sacrifice her own life to spare those she thought were most dear to him. Never knowing that while their deaths would devastate him, hers . . . hers would destroy him. She didn't know . . . because he had never bothered to tell her that he had forgiven her completely, that he loved her now as much as he ever had. That she was as essential to him as the air he breathed and he couldn't imagine life without her.

And once again, when she had needed him most, he had failed her utterly. Had stood out in that waiting room and talked and laughed with his friends, all the while she'd been dying inside back in that exam room mourning the death of the only person in the world she thought loved her. He'd thought he was doing the right thing giving her space, when he should have wrapped her up in his embrace and never let go.

He couldn't remember now if he'd even told her he was sorry for her loss.

Kurt rested his head in his hands now as he recalled the rest of that evening. Allie had finally announced that she was tired and ready to call it a night, and he had hailed a nurse to ask her how much longer it was going to be. Her reply that an hour had passed since Jane had been discharged and left the hospital stunned the group and galvanized them into action.

But by then, it had been far too late.

He'd driven to her safe house first, doing his best to keep his rising panic at bay, to convince himself that he was worrying for nothing and that she had just needed time alone to grieve her brother. Deep down, though, he'd known she was gone. That she had exited his life as quickly and mysteriously as she had come into it.

He had done his best to find her, of course. All of them had. He had contacted Reade and Zapata and Patterson the moment he discovered Jane had vacated the safe house—and Nas as well, though she was back at the NSA by then—and they had all converged on the office. He had put out an APB on his way there, despite the fact that Jane hadn't committed a crime and was free to leave, and for nearly a week, the team worked almost round the clock chasing down the few scanty leads that came in.

Finally, even he had been forced to acknowledge that the search was fruitless. Jane had told him once that Sandstorm trained its operatives to avoid detection, and clearly she had been an apt pupil. She wouldn't be found unless she wanted to be. Hell, he hadn't even been sure what name to put on the APB.

He hadn't given up looking, though. Her case file occupied a permanent corner of his desk within easy reach, and her case remained open. He had skirted the bounds of truth and classified her as a missing material witness, which wasn't a complete lie, since they were still chasing down leads from her tattoos. He thought of her every time they took down one of those bad guys, felt a pang in his heart every time he remembered how proud she had been to be part of a team that made the world a better place.

Why hadn't he ever told her that he was proud of her for taking a stand against those bad guys, even when it came at such a personal cost? That she made his world a better place just by being in it?

He'd almost bit Reade's and Zapata's heads off the first time they suggested he should close Jane's case, that she had moved on with her life and he needed to too, but over time he had come to appreciate the validity of their arguments. He had no claim on her, after all, and her bad memories here almost certainly outweighed her good ones. Perhaps the best thing he could do for her was to give up the search and let her go on with her life in peace.

Surprisingly, it was Allie who had convinced him to continue.

She'd come by his apartment one day six months after Jane had vanished to drop their son off for a visit and asked him how the search was going. When he'd confessed that he was considering giving it up, she'd all but begged him not to. "I saw your face the first day I met her, Kurt," she'd told him. "In all the time we were together, I never saw you look at me the way you did her when she walked out in that dress." Nor had she seen him look at another woman period on any of the occasions they had been out together with their son.

And as much as she didn't regret their child, she would always regret that her pregnancy had driven a wedge between them, widening the rift that already existed, even as Jane unselfishly sought to protect all three of them. Of course, they hadn't known that at the time. But she knew now, and she didn't want to live the rest of her life with the knowledge that two people who were so clearly meant to be together remained separated for the rest of their lives in part because of her actions.

"It doesn't matter," Kurt had responded. "I blew my chance with her. It's over, Allie."

"You're wrong," Allie had fired back. "Look, I don't know what happened between the two of you, and frankly I don't want to, but I can tell you with absolute certainty that Jane feels the same way about you that you do about her. I saw her face the night Shepherd accused her of blowing the mission because she was in love with you, and while that woman was crazy as hell, she was right on the money with that observation. So I don't know why she chose to disappear and why she's staying away, but it's not because she doesn't love you. Don't give up on her, Kurt."

And he hadn't. Allie's pep talk had carried him through another five months of exhilarating highs and agonizing lows in his search, but now that the one-year anniversary of Jane's disappearance was approaching, he was once again asking himself how much longer he could go on like this. Not one of their leads had panned out in all this time; for all he knew she could be dead, lying unclaimed in a morgue somewhere. Or been recaptured by the CIA, though Nas had assured him—repeatedly—that Jane was not in their custody. But he hadn't found that entirely reassuring, since they had no idea what name she was going by these days. They hadn't got any hits on Alice Kruger or any variant of Remi.

Her name . . . Kurt's head snapped up as the thought triggered a memory of the conversation they'd had shortly after she'd rejoined the team. He glanced across his desk to where she had been standing when it had occurred. "I miss her."

"You didn't know her, Jane."

"No. No, I mean . . .I . . . I miss being her. And maybe that's a horrible thing to say to you, but we're trying to be honest with each other now, right? Well, that's the truth. I miss being Taylor Shaw."

"I wanted to be Taylor . . . more than anything." Jane's words rang in his ears as Kurt surged to his feet and made his way to Patterson's lab so quickly the agents he passed looked at him in alarm, certain something catastrophic must have happened, or be about to. "Patterson."

Patterson looked up with a smile, but it instantly faded at the expression on his face. "Weller. What is it? What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong," Kurt told her, forcing a smile to his face in an attempt to reassure her that clearly only terrified her more. "I need you to look for Taylor Shaw."

Now Patterson was even more concerned. "Kurt," she said gently, addressing him by his first name as she so rarely did, "Taylor Shaw is dead. You found her body and reburied her, remember?"

"I know that, Patterson," Kurt said impatiently. "I'm not talking about the real Taylor Shaw. I'm talking about someone going by that name."

"Oh. Oh!" Patterson said, her expression clearing as understanding dawned. "You think that Jane might be . . ." She turned back to her keyboard without finishing the sentence, already clicking away.

Kurt grinned as she glanced over at him as she searched. "What did you think, that I'd lost my mind?"

"It did occur to me, yes," Patterson admitted in an undertone, shamefaced. Well, it wasn't a totally unreasonable conclusion. Weller had always been focused on his work, but he had thrown himself into it to an unhealthy level this past year, despite having a new baby at home. Well, not exactly at home, since he and Allie weren't a couple, but still . . . "What makes you think Jane is going by that name?"

Kurt related their earlier conversations to her. "It's a reasonable theory, right?"

"Sure," Patterson agreed hopefully, feeling her spirits rise at the first new lead they'd had in months. Unfortunately, it was also wrong. She sighed as she looked at the results on the computer screen, Weller peering over her shoulder. Of the hundreds of Taylor Shaws in the country, only a few fit Jane's age and general description, and none of those was her. Kurt's shoulders slumped. "It was a good idea, Weller."

"Yeah," Kurt said as he started to turn away. "Just not the right one." As usual.

"Hold on," Patterson said, her eyes narrowing as several pieces of a puzzle that had been nagging at her for months came into sharp focus. "You might be onto something. What if it's not Taylor, it's Jane?"

Now it was Kurt's turn to look at her as if she had lost her mind. "It's not Taylor, it's Jane?" he repeated. What the hell did that even mean? "Gonna need a little more information than that, Patterson."

"What if she's using the last name Shaw, but kept the name Jane?" Patterson suggested. "Jane Shaw. J. Shaw. Weller . . . I think Nas knows where Jane is."

Kurt had just been on the verge of urging Patterson to run the search, but her words froze him in his tracks. "What . . . what makes you think that?" He and Nas had conversed semi-regularly since Jane disappeared, and she knew damn well that his team was still searching for Jane, had been ever since that night, and that he was almost out of his mind with worry for her. Surely if she knew anything, she would have volunteered it. Surely she wouldn't have . . . "Why do you think that?" he repeated.

Patterson hesitated. "How much do you know about email?"

"Enough to send it and receive it," Kurt deadpanned. It was no secret he was not a technological genius. "Why?"

"OK, so here's the thing," Patterson began, attempting to break this down into the cliff's notes version for him. "The majority of emails are just sent to one recipient at a time, but you do have the option to send a copy to someone else, say your boss if you're on the job, or even a blind copy if you don't want the recipient to know someone else will be seeing it."

"I'm familiar with the concept," Kurt told her. He didn't generally use it personally, but agents routinely copied him on theirs. "What does this have to do with . . ."

"The downside to the blind copy option is that if the recipient of that copy hits reply all, instead of just reply, both the original sender and the other recipient will see it," Patterson continued. Kurt shifted impatiently, and she hurried on. "As you know, Nas and I have stayed in touch, both personally and professionally, but a few months ago I received a reply from a recipient she had blind copied and realized I wasn't the only one getting the emails. I asked her about it, and she said it was a computer expert she had keeping tabs on any leads as to Jane's whereabouts for us, but that explanation never set right with me." She finally came to the point. "And Weller? The other recipient of that email? It was a J. Shaw."

"Son of a bitch," Kurt exploded. "That lying, conniving, manipulative—" He bit off the rest of the words he wanted to say with an effort as Patterson's eyes widened. Strictly speaking, Nas wasn't any of those things. None of them had ever asked her point-blank if she had any knowledge of Jane's whereabouts that he could recall. They'd all just taken it for granted that she didn't. No wonder she had been so certain that Jane wasn't in CIA custody. And why Jane had been able to vanish so completely. He yanked his phone off his belt and punched in the number for the team's pilot. "Fuel the jet. We're leaving for Baltimore ASAP."

"Weller," Patterson said patiently. "It doesn't work that way. You can't just show up at Fort Meade and demand to be let in. And Nas works for a division of the NSA that doesn't officially exist. There's no way that—"

"That's why you're coming with us," Kurt told her. "We'll call her en route and tell her we have an urgent tattoo case you need to consult with her about." Not exactly a lie. Jane's case was still open, and it was urgent that they speak to her. At least to his mind. "She'll see us."

Patterson didn't attempt to argue any further, didn't attempt to play devil's advocate and point out that she could be wrong, that this could simply be another heartbreaking dead end. The set of Weller's jaw told her his mind was made up, and to be honest, the geek in her was more than a little excited about the prospect of seeing the NSA. Even if they wouldn't get any farther than the Visitor's Center.

Weller's words proved to be prophetic. The flight took under an hour, the drive nearly that due to traffic, but in much less time than Patterson had expected, they were being ushered into a private room in the Visitor's Center where Nas was already waiting. "Director Weller, Agents Reade, Zapata, and Patterson," she greeted. "It's lovely to see you all again. What can I help you with today?"

"Cut the crap, Nas," Kurt growled. "You know exactly why we're here."

Nas dropped the act. "To tell the truth, I was expecting you much sooner. You're slipping, Agent Patterson." She looked at Weller. "She doesn't want to see you, you know."

Kurt refused to rise to the bait. He could hardly blame her for that. He wouldn't want to see him either, in her shoes. "How is she?" he asked.

Nas hid her smile. Time had clearly done nothing to diminish his feelings for Jane. She had been hoping that was the case. "Miserable," she said succinctly. "If you hadn't come for her soon, I was considering drugging her and dumping her in Times Square for you to find."

"Then why did you take her from us?" Patterson demanded. "And keep her whereabouts a secret all this time? When you knew—"

"What I knew, Agent Patterson, is that Jane was leaving with or without my help," Nas interrupted. "I thought it would be best if at least one person who gave a damn about her remained in her life. As for not telling you about her whereabouts, I'm sorry, but she swore me to secrecy, and I wasn't going to break that promise and risk losing her forever. I honestly thought that time would . . . I thought she would be ready to return to you of her own volition long before this, but she . . ."

Whatever Nas was about to say was drowned out by approaching voices. "Aren't you tired of this yet, Tiger?" a man asked. "The danger, the beatings when you get caught, the endless supply of seemingly one-way missions?"

"Every mission is one-way unless I come back from it," said a female voice philosophically. A very familiar female voice. "You of all people should know that, Mac. And I don't get caught that often." She stepped through the door and Kurt's breath caught in his throat as he got his first glimpse of her in more than a year. She looked like hell, was his first thought, as he took in the cuts and bruises on her face. And she was still so damned beautiful in spite of it all was his second.

"Hello, Jane," Kurt greeted quietly. "It's good to see you again."

Jane stiffened as she caught sight of the room's occupants even as her eyes lit up at her first glimpse of him. She blanked her expression even as she fought the urge to run to him, to run from him, and walked further into the room. "Kurt," she returned as coolly as she could manage.

Her past had finally caught up with her, and it was time to pay the piper.

A/N: As always, reviews are greatly appreciated. The more I get, the quicker I post! :)