A/N: I really liked some parts of "Check Your Ed", like all the callbacks to the first few episodes, but other parts bugged me, like the show's insistence on making Shepherd such a clear-cut villain. So I decided to rewrite some scenes from the episode. I repurposed some of the dialogue that I liked, but hopefully the other stuff is different enough that those bits aren't boring. This story will have two parts. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I don't own Blindspot.

Kurt bursts out of the room to the sound of frantic beeping behind him. He paces the hallway, timing his footsteps to his ragged breaths, but the sick feeling follows him. He can't believe what he's done. In his eagerness to get Jane back, he might have doomed her.

Patterson's in the hallway beside him before he even hears her approach. "What did I do?" he mutters, half to her and half to himself.

"Kurt," she just says, with a gentleness that crawls under his skin. It makes Kurt want to hurt something.

He rounds on her. "What did I do?" he repeats.

"It's done," Patterson states evenly, meeting his eyes. "There isn't time for this right now. Jane needs you in there, not out here."

Kurt deflates. "If she dies, it'll be my fault," he whispers. "I can't—I can't lose her again, Patterson."

"I know," she says, and he hears her own loss resonating through her words. "But we're doing everything we can. You're not going to lose her."

"You don't know that." Kurt glances at the door, feels his anxiety spike. "I should have just—"

"Just what? Let her stay Remi? Give up on Jane?"

"She's still my wife," he bursts out. His tone sounds too desperate in the empty hallway; he tries again, quieter. "Remi. She's still my wife."

"Kurt," Patterson cuts in firmly. "I don't know what's going to happen. But you need to keep it together for Jane right now, okay? Go in there, and hold her hand, and tell her she's going to make it through this. You have to be strong for her."

Kurt lets out a long breath, stills his shaking hands. Patterson's pointed gaze is searing into his averted eyes. After a moment, he nods wordlessly, and she pulls open the door back into the hell he's sanctioned.

The coin is cleaner than she recalls, as if the years of passing it back and forth never occurred at all. Jane rubs it between her fingers one last time before pressing it into the slot. As the elevator jolts awake, she dries her cheeks with a swipe of her sleeve.

But the elevator plunges downward instead of rising. "Why is it going down?" Jane yelps. She turns to Kurt, or this facsimile of him, anyway. He's not quite the man she remembers.

"You said Remi was above us," he says.

"She is," Jane answers uneasily. A cold dread is taking hold of her. "So where is it taking us?"

Just then the elevator jerks to a halt. The doors slide smoothly open to reveal Shepherd, flanked by four men with their guns trained straight ahead. Wisely, Kurt hangs back. But Jane walks forward without thinking.

All of a sudden the men are surrounding Kurt, dragging him out of the room. He grunts in surprise and struggles against them, but Jane just watches them go. Something in her knows she has to face this alone.

"Hello, Jane," Shepherd greets her. "You remember me, don't you?"

"I remember you," Jane replies. She takes a steadying breath. "But I'm not here for you. I'm here for Remi."

Laughing, Shepherd pulls her into the same game as always. She taunts her, cuts her down, reminds her that Remi is more than she'll ever be. Always the same thing, a hundred different ways. Jane is tired of it.

"You expect me to roll over while Remi steals my life from me?" she hisses at Shepherd. "I want my memories back. They're mine."

"You're a fool," Shepherd retorts, advancing. "You stole her life. Now she's taken it back."

Jane takes a step backward, suddenly feeling unsure of herself.

"But maybe I can help you," the older woman continues, smiling broadly now. "You want to remember?"

In an instant the armed men close around Jane, seizing her by the arms and dragging her back towards the elevator. "No! No!" she shrieks, fighting to break their hold, but she isn't strong here. As they bundle her into the elevator, she hears Shepherd say with eerie stillness from behind her, "Then remember all of it."

The elevator descends even further, even faster. The doors open into darkness. Into an abyss. She's walking down a staircase, straight into the depths. Her feet don't make a sound. It's all swallowed up in the dark.

Beds. There are beds down here. Who the hell could sleep in this place? Dim lights flicker with every step. The children are all staring at her, dead-eyed stares. Dead-eyed children with dirty hopeless faces, limbs brittle enough to snap. Each head lifts only to look at her.

Alice feels her breath catch in her throat. She turns back to the door she came through, but it's gone. She'll never get out of this hole.

Then a splinter of light appears in front of her. There's a hand in hers. The room is dissolving after her with every step she takes, but she knows she can never leave it behind.

They emerge back into that too-white room. Jane blinks at the searing light, realizes her face is dirty too, and tears have cut clean tracks through it. She wipes her cheeks with her sleeve as Shepherd lets go of her hand.

"Memories can be a dangerous thing," Shepherd taunts, but the malice has faded from her tone. "Do you still want to remember?"

Jane looks behind her, but the dark room only exists within her now. A phantom heartbeat pulses beneath her fingers, and she takes a breath. "Yes."

This time it's Shepherd who takes her by the arms, but she isn't quite as rough as her men. She marches Jane down an endless hall. Every inch holds a memory, and every memory rips through her with fresh anguish. Mayfair's face the instant she's shot, just before she crumples to the ground. Oscar, meeting her eyes one last time before he's gone, too. Kurt waiting for her in the safe house, his voice low and dangerous, a doll resting on the table. And the nameless ones: people dropping at Remi's hand, at Jane's. Everyone she's ever hurt, and beneath them, everyone who's ever hurt her.

Jane's whole body shudders. She staggers back against Shepherd as her knees give out. The woman's grip is steely, resolute.

"This is what you wanted," Shepherd reminds her. "Get up."

So Jane does. And with every inch of ground she gains, she starts to feel stronger. She fights her way past months of torture, past the countless bullets she fired as a Navy SEAL, past a little brown rabbit with its neck broken. Each time she thinks she can't keep going, she squares her shoulders and soldiers through.

Little by little, she conquers her grief.

Then her next step blanks out the walls. Behind her, Shepherd comes to an abrupt halt. "Keep moving," she commands, then, quieter: "I can't come with you for this part."

Without hesitation, Jane leaves her behind. The air around her blazes into life all at once: she's marrying Kurt, all her friends around her; she and Ian run alongside each other to their favorite spot overlooking the city, just in time for the sunset; Oscar is leaning to kiss her for the first time, and she never thought she'd be so in love. Jane feels a surge of white-hot strength, filling in every place where she was lacking. It comes from the sum of her life, all the grief and all the happiness, everything in between. The force of it drives her through the door at the end of the hall without another thought.

Shepherd waits for her, stone-faced, alone in the middle of the same cavernous room. She doesn't say a word. Jane notices, for the first time, the lines around her eyes. A sudden image surfaces from her reclaimed memories: Remi, trying to rally Shepherd again. Trying to fix a spirit broken by failure, by endless torture. She blinks the memory away to look at the woman standing before her, in a form that no longer matches reality.

"I remember now," Jane tells her. "But I'm not Remi. You can't control me anymore."

"I guess I have trouble letting go," Shepherd smirks. But her snark is halfhearted, her expression at odds with her words. It's so easy to see past it now, to see who's really left.

"Stop," Jane commands, forceful without being loud. "This isn't what you are anymore. You're tired, and you're weak, and you just want to flee the country so you can live the rest of your life in peace."

Shepherd smiles: mostly bitter, but a little sad. The remnants of her façade crumble. Stripped to the broken person underneath—bruised, thin, hollow-eyed—she's what Jane herself might be if she'd never gotten out of that blacksite, and somehow that makes it easier for Jane to talk to her. She tries to gather what she wants to say, but what comes to her belongs to Remi: a constant, suppressed ache.

"I know I was already too damaged, when you found me." She takes a shaky breath. "But you could have helped me."

"No one could have helped you. You and Roman, you were feral. You were trouble. I was the only one who would take you."

Jane's voice breaks when she answers, "You could have tried."

Shepherd is silent for a minute. Her features flicker pensively; finally she nods. "I suppose I was already damaged, too."

Jane closes her eyes. "I don't want to hate you," she confesses.

"Then don't," Shepherd replies. "Sometimes hate makes things too easy."

The sound of her adoptive mother's voice in the dark is almost comforting, but Jane's just gotten those memories back and she can't forget. Not yet.

"But I can't forgive you, either," she adds quietly.

"That's okay, too," Shepherd says, as gentle as Jane's ever heard her, and when she opens her eyes again, she's alone.

Jane's hand is so limp in his. As he holds it, Kurt tries to remember the times he's been in this position before, sitting at his wife's side as she recovered from her latest injury. It's not an insignificant number, considering their line of work. He reminds himself, as a comfort, that she got back up every single time.

He runs his thumb lightly over the intricate lines on the back of her hand. When she's asleep, it's easy to forget that this woman is a stranger to him, has been for months. Kurt shifts closer.

"Remi doesn't control you, Jane," he whispers to her. "You are just as strong as she is." There's no trace of recognition on her face, nothing but her steady breathing. Kurt watches her for a moment. In and out, in and out. "Take your life back."

Jane can't stop watching the doll dangling from Alice's small hand. She sees a steady repetition of Kurt dropping it onto a table, the most dangerous cast to his movements. Over and over, each time it swings back.

They turn a corner and suddenly he's there, filling up the hallway. He still wears the same innocuous expression, but there's a gun held at his side. "Are you ready?" he asks with strange intensity. "Are we going to bring her down?"

"Kurt—" Jane flounders for the right words. This feels wrong somehow. Alice, voiceless Alice, seems to sense it too, shrinking away from him.

"Remi has a lot to pay for," Kurt declares. He pounds a fist into his palm, still holding the gun precariously. Jane flinches back. This is not like the man she knows at all.

"This isn't about you, Kurt," she tries.

"Of course it's not about me." He looks wounded. "She stole your life from you. I just want to help you get it back."

Jane shakes her head. Not like this, she thinks, and her heart sinks. As much as she doesn't want to, it's time for her to let him go. He looks just like her husband. But she knows.

The whole hallway seems to shiver. Jane reaches for a wall to brace herself when a feather-light touch on her back steadies her instantly. She takes a deep breath and meets the eyes of the man before her. "You've been here for me this whole time, whenever I needed you," she tells not-Kurt, as if he were the real one. "But now I need you to go."

A beat of silence passes between them. Finally, he gives her a resigned smile, just like she knew he would. "Okay," he agrees easily, and in the red-tinged light of the hall he already seems half gone. A glint of something catches Jane's eye; she looks down to find a ring resting on the floor between their feet. She reaches for it, and as her fingers close around it, a flash of her wedding day sweeps through her: flowers, sunlight, a happiness she never thought she would contain. "I love you," she says, to an empty hallway.

Alice steps out from behind her as she's fitting the ring carefully onto her finger. The doll has disappeared from the young girl's grip; she presses her empty palm to the scanner outside Remi's doors. A chime sounds, familiar and clear. The doors unlock with a series of heavy clicks, and Jane looks up into a set of her own eyes.

From her vantage point, Remi tracks Jane's progress through the world of her head. Each time they make eye contact, however brief, Remi sees the anger in Jane's eyes. Good, she thinks. Let her know she's just like me.

Until the last time Jane stands before her doors. The whir and clank of machinery signals their imminent opening, and Remi looks up in disbelief. Her eyes meet Jane's and there is no more anger there.

Remi doesn't think she's ever felt such a rush of rage. How dare Jane—self-righteous, cancerous Jane—invade the last place she has left. Jane, who can afford the luxury of no longer being angry. Because her whole world hasn't collapsed around her, because the people she loves still live and breathe, still care enough about her that they'll…

Remi rises from her throne to face the intruder, that mere shade of herself. She tugs the sleeves of her shirt down over her tattoos—Jane's tattoos. They've made this Jane's body, and Remi can acknowledge now that that might have been one of the biggest mistakes of her life. Everything is crumbling around her now. This fortress is the last thing that's hers. And she intends to guard it with everything she has.

The room is bathed in a glaring red that pulls every detail into it, leaving only smudges of light and shadow. Entering it is as disorienting as plummeting underwater. Jane wades through with all the strength she's found. She thinks she hears light footsteps behind her, but her gaze is locked on the woman staring her down at the other end of the room. Remi visibly blazes with fury. She approaches, every muscle wound tight as a tiger poised to strike. "Jane," she spits out.

Jane freezes for a moment, face to face with what she's been chasing. Then a small hand finds its way into hers, and its warmth thaws out her voice. "Look," she says to Remi, inclining her head towards the little girl. "Do you remember what it was like to be her?"

But Remi clings to anger like it's the only thing she has left. She lifts her gun straight at Jane, but the girl silently steps between them. It's a futile gesture—she doesn't even reach Jane's shoulder—but Remi plays along, obediently lowering the gun to Alice's height. "Have it your way, kid."

"You can't hurt her," Jane says quietly. "Not more than she's already been hurt."

Remi's mouth tightens, and for just a second, her grip falters. Jane might remember, but she hasn't lived through it, not the way Remi has. And that's why Jane needs her.

"It's too late for her," she continues. "But it's not too late for you."

Remi's eyes snap toward hers, the movement as sharp as a knife. "Well," she grinds out, "it's about to be too late for you." And she lunges.

Her body skims through Alice's like the girl isn't even there and then she's on Jane and they're trading blows, as evenly matched as a mirror image attacking itself. But while Remi is wrathful, Jane is still deciding. Her determination wavers, and Remi strikes in that window of weakness. She sends Jane flying through the contents of a table, crashing into a monitor and sending up a shower of sparks so bright they feel like shattering glass. The ground rushes up at her hard.

Jane staggers to her feet. She manages to land a few blows on Remi, but the other woman drives a fist into her stomach, then knocks her back with a powerful kick to the chest. Jane hits the wall with Remi's hands at her throat. "This doesn't belong to you," she croaks, remembering a sliver of something just beyond her reach. Remi's eyes narrow. She glances towards the doors for a second; when she turns back, her face is cast in fire. Jane's flat on a table before she even registers what's happening. The impact knocks her breath away and—glasses shatter, a wine bottle tips, Roman and Kurt are gone, gone—the images overlay, her own face looming over her. "You're not a person," snarls Remi. Her grip tightens painfully. "You're nothing but a device. And you've outlived your usefulness."

Something glimmers above: a knife held aloft in her hand. And Jane remembers how this goes, remembers the cool metal plunging into her chest, the death she woke up to. Maybe this is all she gets. But don't give up, breathes a familiar voice in her ear. And Jane listens.

She lashes out with everything she has, launches herself off the table and attacks with a viciousness she knows belongs to Remi, and it shouldn't work but somehow it does: in the end Remi knocks her away, but the knife comes to a rest between Jane's feet. She straightens to see Remi's gaze flicker to the doors and back, rapid-fire.

"You won't kill me," she sneers at Jane, her scowl deepening even as something entirely different surfaces in her eyes. And suddenly Jane sees her, really sees her, maybe for the first time.

"You're right," Jane says slowly. She lets the knife fall from her hand, nudges it across the floor. "But you won't kill me either."

Remi scoffs. She glances suspiciously at the knife, but though she should be rushing Jane right now, she holds her position.

"You won't," Jane repeats. "I'm your only way out."

"I don't need a way out," retorts Remi, her voice harder than ever. But Jane knows her. She knows what that hardness hides.

She thinks she understands now, what Roman meant.

She inches a fraction closer, and Remi, amazingly, lets her. "You do. More than ever," Jane says to her. "Everything you had is gone. This doesn't end well for you. But you gave me the chance to start over, once, and now I can help you do the same. I'm the only one who can."

Remi studies her distrustfully. Apart from the way her eyes keep darting toward the entrance, she is stiller than ever. "I don't need you," she denies, every syllable bit out razor-sharp.

"You are me." Again, Jane moves closer, and again, though she's coiled tight as a spring, Remi makes no move to stop her. "I know you. I remember everything that happened to you, the good, and the bad. And it wasn't your fault."

Remi's breath catches audibly, as if no one has ever told her this before. And the words keep spilling out of Jane, and as she speaks them aloud she means every one. "Shepherd should have helped us," she says. "We needed help, but she needed soldiers. So she manipulated you, kept you alone, wielded you like a weapon. But she was wrong. Just like what happened to you in the orphanage was wrong. What you were made into, all the things you were made to do, they're not your fault."

Remi looks away, a curtain of ink-dark hair hiding her face. "We were beyond help," she answers distantly, as if she's talking to herself. "Killers. No one could have changed that."

"You weren't irredeemable, Remi, you're still not." Jane shifts forward again. They're barely a foot apart now. "You deserved help. You deserve the same second chance I got." Remi's shaking her head, just barely, and Jane follows her line of sight to the doors, to the phantom lingering there. "You don't have to be what she says you are," she tells Remi quietly.

"It's what I am," Remi responds, but her voice wavers. And as if summoned, Alice is back, at Remi's side this time. She gives her older self a mute smile, slips a hand gently into hers. Remi swallows. Her features contort into a grimace just like Jane's when she's in pain, but her hand tightens around the little girl's.

"You're more than what you've done," Jane says, to Remi, to Alice, to herself. She feels the room becoming indistinct around them, their focus narrowing to just each other. "I remember it all now. And I forgive you."

Remi takes a shaky breath. Jane mirrors her, but there's still something bitter on her tongue, a debt she owes. "There's something else," she confesses. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry for what I did to Oscar. I'm sorry I couldn't protect Roman. I'm sorry for what happened to Shepherd. I—I'm sorry for what I did to you. All of it."

Without warning, fury pours back into Remi. "You took everything from me!" she explodes, startlingly loud in the wake of her silence. She wrenches her hand from Alice's grip; the girl staggers backwards. Distracted, Remi doesn't seem to notice. In her loss of control, she's exposing more weakness than Jane has ever seen in her.

"Do you know how much I loved Oscar?" she says sharply. "How much I loved Roman? And now they're gone."

Rattled, Jane steps back. Her heart wrenches with sorrow all over again. "I know," she murmurs. "I know."

Remi lets out a jagged breath, wipes her face angrily. "How can I forgive you?" she asks, devastatingly quiet, her voice breaking.

Behind Remi, Alice is draped in half-shadow. Jane watches her for a minute. "I don't know," she answers honestly. "Maybe—maybe you need to remember."

"Remember." Remi chuckles humorlessly. She turns away, catches sight of Alice, stiffens. Something unreadable flickers across her face. After a second of hesitation, she reaches out to take the young girl's hand. Neither of them speaks, but Jane remembers the strength Alice gave her with each touch, the strength she drew from remembering, no matter how it hurt. Finally Remi breaks through the hush. "You took everything from me," she says to the air, "but I gave it up first."

Jane shifts uneasily. That vague impression resurfaces: a long-haired version of herself at her own door, taking back what's hers. "It doesn't belong to me."

A corner of Remi's mouth twitches grimly upward. "It does. I can't take that back." She exhales heavily, lifts her free hand to examine the patterns inked into her skin. In the hazy red light, the designs look nebulous, transformed. "You said that I'm more than the things I've done."

"I meant it."

Remi closes her eyes. After a long moment, she opens them to look down at Alice. "You can go now," she says, her voice low and raspy with unshed words. When she speaks next, it's so soft that Jane barely hears. "Be at peace."

The room has changed around them. The tables and conference rooms and computers have crumbled into the background, leaving only a dark expanse and a circle of thick crimson light. Remi tears her eyes away from the empty space where Alice stood. She lifts her face to Jane, and there's something incredibly vulnerable there, as if she's grown too weary to disguise it. "I just want to understand," she says hoarsely, and Jane hears the veiled request there. She extends her hand. Still, Remi hesitates.

"Come with me," Jane offers, almost pleading. "We're one person. We don't have to be separate anymore."

Remi's gaze sears through her as if searching something out. Jane swallows. "I need you," she admits, and her voice trembles. And Remi reaches out for her hand.

A slice of light pierces her through the middle. The red drains away into white, revealing workstations, offices, people working at their computers or milling around with files and tablets. All the details fill back in. And she—Jane, Remi—fills in too. She's the sum of her experiences, all of them. She is the hurt she endured as Remi and the truths she found as Jane. She is everything, every minute of her life. She's finally, finally, whole.

And she opens her eyes, breathes herself back into the world.