The Fears He Hides

Tag to 5x05, in which the team react to the video footage of drugged Kurt - and Tasha and Kurt discuss his ordeal a little.

Video dialogue is in bold italics, and lifted directly from the episode.

"You know, this technically means you've been inside Jane," Rich said, his expression thoughtful.

"What?" Patterson looked up from her computer screen, giving him a blank stare.

"That's pretty intimate. Putting your finger inside someone. Just sayin'." Rich sipped his coffee, smirking.

With an incredulous look, Patterson demanded, "What is wrong with you? It was a horrible experience for both of us. Why are you trying to make this into a sex thing?"

"I mean, I've had sex that was a horrible experience for both of us, so…" He sighed when she looked unamused. "Okay, I was just trying to make you laugh. Ever since the surgery, you've looked kinda grim."

"We only just got confirmation that Kurt is safe, and we don't know yet if he broke and gave up our location. I have reasons to feel grim."

Perceptive as always, Rich added, "And it freaked you out to literally have Jane's life in your hands."

Patterson finished typing and turned around to face him. "Okay. Yes. That was terrifying. She was awake, and I was hurting her, and at one point I slipped with the forceps and dropped the bullet, and Jane made this awful noise, and I'm gonna have nightmares about it."

"There you go! It's always healthier to talk about it. Feel any better?" Rich asked.

"Not really." Patterson shuddered. "I mean, I've had people's lives in my hands before. A lot. But that was all different; that was when I was controlling the technology or providing the information, occasionally when I was disarming bombs, or shooting people to save other people… The point is: I'm trained for that. With this, I felt like I was at the bottom of the Mariana Trench with only one small tank of oxygen."

"Yeah, I absolutely wouldn't have wanted to be you— Wait, was that your phone?"

Patterson leaned over to check. "It's Tasha. She's sent us the footage of Kurt's interrogation— Oh." She looked up at Rich in dismay. "They gave him some kind of hallucinogen to try to break through his defences. She says he's scared he said something that could lead them to us."

"But we can't move Jane, right? Not yet?" Rich restlessly glanced in the general direction of the bunkroom, where Jane was sleeping off the surgery.

"Let's not panic. We can watch the footage and see what the damage is. That's the first step." Patterson connected her phone to her tablet, hoping like hell that the drugs were just making Kurt paranoid.

A couple of minutes later, they settled down to watch the interrogation.

"Why don't we skip to my favourite part? Where you ask me where my team is, and I tell you to go to hell. 'Cause I'm never gonna give them up."

"Yeah, you tell her, Kurt!" Rich lifted his coffee cup towards the screen in a salute.

"Do you know what my favourite part is? That you really believe that."

At Ivy's response, Rich looked a little deflated. "Yeah, okay, that's a pretty good villain line. I would have been intimidated by that."

As they watched Kurt's bravado fade at the news that Jane had been shot, Patterson sighed. "That's not optimal. She knows Jane's his weak point. She's gonna lean on that."

"Let's hope she doesn't know his really weak point," Rich said.

"She for sure already knows about Bethany." As Ivy wheeled a cart carrying a tray of torture implements into the room, she hissed in sympathy. "Oh, no. Tasha didn't say they physically tortured him too…"

The blood drained from Rich's face, and she realised this must be giving him flashbacks to his time in the French black site. "Hey—you don't have to watch this. I can handle it."

Rich straightened his spine. "I'm fine. Just focus on the video."

Mercifully, Ivy decided to 'skip the theatrics'—but what she said next was just as worrying as if she'd begun to pull out Kurt's fingernails. "This is a combination of sodium thiopental, sodium amytal, and a cocktail of heavy psychotropics."

"Ohhhh, this is very not good. I don't know if he can withstand this."

"You're kind of ruining my image of Kurt as an infallible super-agent here," Rich grumbled.

They watched in tense silence as Ivy grabbed their friend in a headlock and plunged the needle into his neck, then stepped away. Kurt wrenched at his bonds, breathing hard, but Ivy had him tied up tight.

Patterson sighed and skipped the footage forward as Ivy left Kurt alone, giving the drugs time to work.

"I hate this part. The part where they leave you alone with your thoughts, to worry about what might happen next." Rich shuddered.

Patterson laid a comforting hand on his arm for a moment, then set the footage to normal speed again as Ivy reappeared with an IV stand.

As she crouched beside Kurt, presumably inserting an IV into the back of his hand, Rich shifted in his seat, his voice nervous. "Wait, more drugs? Is he even gonna be able to get back here before he keels over from an overdose?"

"That'll be the hallucinogen," Patterson said. "I doubt it's enough to kill him, but it's gonna really freak him out."

"It's funny. You talk about this team you're protecting like they're your family."Ivy hooked the IV line up to the drug cocktail.

"Uhh, we are family, lady," Rich said. "Just because we're not related, that doesn't mean anything."

Patterson shushed him, listening with resignation as Ivy began talking about Kurt's 'real' family—Bethany—and even dropped Allie's name into the mix, too. Pushing all of his buttons, and Patterson wasn't surprised when he lost his cool in response.

"If my daughter doesn't come out of that hospital…"

"No! Why'd you tell her Bethany's in a hospital? I don't think she knew that!" Rich groaned. "He's not even hallucinating yet, and he's already saying too much? I thought he was way better than this!"

"Calm down! He hasn't said anything specific. He just said 'hospital'. There are a lot of hospitals in the States."

"I know, I know, but…"

"Let's just have a little faith in him, until there's a reason to panic, okay?"

"Okay." Rich fidgeted, but was quiet.

Ivy had left Kurt alone again, and Patterson skipped forward until he began to talk to someone who wasn't there. Does he think there's a door guard? Maybe there's someone out of shot.

But then his focus seemed to shift, and he looked behind him, his face falling into defensive disbelief.

"Guess he's seeing someone new. I once had this hallucination on mushrooms, where my mom was trying to get me to sleep with her. If I had that one when I was in Kurt's situation, I would totally give Ivy anything she wanted, just to make her make it go away." Rich was still paler than Patterson would have expected, given that the torture was psychological. Maybe he'd been given drugs in the black site, too. If he was deflecting the memories with his usual inappropriate spiel, he was more rattled than she'd thought.

"Too much information, Rich," she said, but there was no exasperation in her tone.

Kurt wasn't giving much indication of whom he was seeing, except for to say that the person was dead. That narrowed it down, but not by much. It could have been anyone from his father to Shepherd, or even someone completely random they'd been dealing with, like Sho Akhtar.

"Do you think it's Reade?" Rich said.

Thinking of Reade was still so painful. Patterson shook her head slowly, ignoring the hurt. "I doubt it. He'd be talking to Reade like a friend. Same with Mayfair or Pellington. I don't think it's any of them. Wait… He said, 'I know who you are,' like the other person was introducing themselves—like they never met in real life."

Kurt was beginning to lose his cool—shaking his head, his eyes following the imaginary person as though they were pacing around the room. He wrenched at his bonds, but was still held fast. Then he yelled a denial, and for the other person to shut up, and Patterson shifted uncomfortably.

"I don't like seeing him like this."

"Yeah, me neither." Rich was a hundred percent serious about that, and she couldn't tell whether it was Kurt's distress that was making him so uneasy, or his own memories.

He'd never step away on his own, but maybe…

"I don't think Kurt would want us to see him like this, either. Not if he had a choice." Her mind made up, she stopped the video.

"But we don't have a choice. What are you doing?" Rich's quickly hidden expression of relief was a confirmation that she'd made the right decision.

"I'm gonna give it to Jane. If anyone has to see him like this, it should be her. She's the one who's closest to him; she's the one he'll feel least ashamed about having seen it, when the drugs are out of his system."

Rich stood up. "Are you sure she can handle it? I mean, she has just had life-saving amateur surgery…"

She'll handle it better than you would. Patterson didn't voice the thought, knowing he didn't need the guilt trip. "She's probably gonna want to watch it anyway. I'll go give it to her. Could you make us some coffee while I do that? Then we can carry on looking into places we can relocate to if we're compromised."

If Rich suspected she was trying to spare his mental state, he didn't acknowledge it. "Sure. I'll open the Doritos, too."

"Ugh. Flavoured cardboard. No thanks." Noting that her friend looked a little calmer already, Patterson headed towards the bunkroom.

Jane stirred back to consciousness fuzzily, wincing at the pain in her abdomen. Seeing Patterson standing beside the bed, she struggled to organise her thoughts. "D'you find him?"

Patterson crouched beside the bed. "The good news is yes. Zapata's bringing him home now. He's not badly injured."

Relief stole her breath for a moment. Thank god he's okay.

Then Patterson's other words sank in. "What's the bad news?"

"Ivy gave him a hallucinogenic cocktail to try to break him. When he got free, he took the SD card from the camera that was filming his interrogation, and Zapata sent the footage to us. He's scared he gave us up."

Oh, Kurt.

But she couldn't worry about his mental state right now. Damage control came first. "Did you watch it?"

"We started to, but it seemed like an invasion of privacy to watch him under the influence of all those drugs. We figured Kurt would feel less self-conscious about it if you were the only one to see it." Patterson handed her the tablet she was holding. "Plus, I think Rich was having flashbacks to the black site. I know you've been in one, too, but it wasn't recently, so…"

Jane nodded. Her trauma was far enough in the past that she was pretty sure she could handle this. The worst part would be that the victim was her husband.

She switched her brain to a different track. "Is he okay? Rich?"

Patterson shrugged. "He will be. I'm gonna distract him. But it's really important that you watch this now, if you can handle it."

Determination steeling her resolve, Jane nodded. "I'll yell if they broke him."

"Thanks. Do you need anything?"

Jane shook her head. "I'm all good. Thanks."

"Okay." Patterson hesitated for a second, thinly-veiled anxiety in her eyes, then left the room.

Jane took a deep breath, then propped up her head with another pillow, mentally preparing herself for the video. He's okay now. Whatever you see on this video, it's over. Zapata has him. They're on their way home.

She hit the 'play' button, and skipped through footage of Ivy setting up for the interrogation until a couple of Dabbur Zann guys wheeled Kurt in on a dolly cart, already tied to a chair, with a bag over his head. They yanked off the bag, then retreated. Kurt looked around him defiantly, taking in the exits and glancing up at the camera for a second. Assessing his chances of escape, using his many years of experience as a federal agent.

Ivy wasted no time in showing him proof that Jane had been shot, which confused her—if the Dabbur Zann had seen she was badly injured, why hadn't they taken her, too? Had she been caught on CCTV, and they'd only seen it later, after she'd already gone to ground?

Watching Kurt's antagonistic air fade to a fear he was attempting to hide, Jane cursed herself for being stupid enough to get shot. She'd given them more leverage to use against Kurt.

She watched, trying to keep her sore abdomen from tensing up too much, as Ivy injected Kurt with truth serum and baited him about Bethany, before hooking him up to an IV of hallucinogenic drugs. Okay. He slipped and mentioned a hospital, but that's not the end of the world. Most infections can be taken care of pretty quickly with antibiotics, even if they're serious enough to cause hospitalisation. Allie's a great agent; she knows how to hide. It'll take a while for the Dabbur Zann to search all of the hospitals in the country to find which one Bethany is in—even if they do track her down, she'll probably be discharged by then.

As Kurt's image on the video began to talk to someone who wasn't there, Jane forced herself to focus again. He was alone in the room, but from his words, he was trying to persuade an imaginary door guard to help him. His wrists were chafed from his struggles against the zip ties anchoring him to the chair, and she winced, knowing how sore they must be now.

"Hey, how bad do these drugs get? What am I gonna see? Spiders? Snakes? Screaming terrors?"

All of a sudden, he froze, then turned his head to watch another imaginary person approach from behind. Jane caught incredulity and anger on his face as he listened.

"I know who you are. You're dead. You're not real."

Jane watched, trying to puzzle it out, as Kurt's attention roamed around the room, as though he were watching someone pace around. Someone who's dead, but who seems to have introduced themselves to him, so they must not have met while that person was alive. Someone he clearly isn't happy to see. Who is it?

"I don't have to. Just long enough for them to find me. Or to work something out on my own. There's always a way out."

He flinched at the hallucination's response, and Jane didn't have to hear it to guess the imaginary person was listing all the people they'd lost, who hadn't made it through. Or at least, they were mentioning Reade.

Kurt fell silent, though he was growing more subtly distressed by the second. Jane ached to wrap her arms around him and comfort him, but she'd probably been passed out or under the knife when this had all happened.

He continued to struggle against the zip ties holding him to the chair, but then his head jerked up, as though something the hallucination had said had hit a sore spot. After a few moments, he gritted out, "That's not true."

At the vision's response, he outright yelled, "No!"

A longer pause, as Kurt stared ahead of him, shaking his head a couple of times—and slowly the fight drained out of him as he turned to look into the air beside him, as though someone was crouched by his side. "Just…shut…up."

His head bowed a little, his shoulders slumped, and Jane realised he was fighting tears. Oh, god, Kurt…who are you seeing? What are they saying to you? She swallowed hard, his distress triggering hers.

Then, as if he'd heard her mental query, Kurt lifted his head and stared over at a sawhorse against the wall. "She may have loved you once. We belong to each other now."

Realisation rocked Jane, and she reflexively tapped the screen to pause the video as she took a second to process. Oscar. He's hallucinating Oscar.

She wound back the footage, watching it again with this new knowledge, and her heart sank every time Kurt reacted to something the hallucination said. With all her heart, she wished she could hear the other side of the conversation, to know what lies Kurt's brain was telling him about himself, and about her, and their relationship.

It was irrational to be angry at Oscar for this—after all, he wasn't really there. He'd been dead for over four years, and though he'd threatened Kurt's life to get Jane to do what he—and Shepherd—wanted, that was all over now. Kurt and Oscar had never met—Oscar had surveilled him from a distance, but had never stood right in front of Kurt, or talked to him. Everything the hallucination was saying or doing was just Kurt wounding himself.

My fault. This is my fault. I didn't know he still had doubts about us, or that he was worried that I would want Oscar back now my memories are all there.

Not that she could have had Oscar back, even if she'd wanted that. She'd killed him with her own hands—in self-defence, but she'd killed him, nonetheless. That was a little more complicated in her head now, because she remembered the full picture of their relationship—and she'd told him to do exactly what he'd done, dictated precisely how to lie to her. But then he'd shot Mayfair, and tried to correct the mistake by wiping Jane's memory again.

Looking back now, Jane knew Oscar had always wanted to kill Mayfair for what Daylight had done to his family—he'd just stayed his hand because she'd asked him to. Having Mayfair right there in the warehouse, pointing a gun at Jane, had just been too much of a temptation for him to resist, and everything had gone to hell from there. And then he'd planned to give Jane more ZIP, knowing it might mean he never got his fiancée back, but choosing to anyway, because his fear of Shepherd was stronger than his love for her.

Jane had struggled with it when she'd reverted to being Remi, but now she was a whole person again, she saw her relationship with Oscar the way it really had been—the constant need for Shepherd's approval had undermined their love from the start, on both sides. Their marriage would have been doomed, and though she felt regret for how screwed up everything had become, Jane didn't mourn Oscar anymore. His death hadn't been planned, but it had been justified.

The fact that Kurt was worried she might still miss her ex-fiancé was a revelation to her.

"We belong to each other now," the video image of Kurt said again. "I know exactly who she is. And I don't give up my friends. Not for anyone."

Jane managed a small smile. At least he was confident enough about their marriage to contest the lies his subconscious was telling him.

That smile dropped from her face a moment later.

"So, what do I do? Give up the bunker? Run to St. Louis? Pull Bethany out of that hospital before Madeline does?"

"Oh, Kurt," Jane whispered aloud, and paused the video feed again.

Okay. Don't panic. He said 'bunker'—he didn't give a location. And what was it Patterson said? There are around eight hundred bunkers in Prague alone, and there must be thousands throughout Europe, overall. Just keep watching. See if there's anything else.

She replayed the last few seconds, just to be sure she hadn't missed anything, and frowned. Bethany's not in St. Louis. Is Kurt mixing memories because he's confused, or is he trying to catch Ivy out?

She continued watching, her heart wrenching at Kurt's next words, spoken almost in a whisper. "Please don't do this. Don't make me choose." He looked down at his empty lap—did he see Bethany there?—then back up at his hallucination of Oscar as Ivy walked into the room, obviously ready to push harder now that Kurt was near breaking point.

Kurt didn't seem to notice her entrance, his attention fixed on the empty air, even when Ivy stood in his line of sight.

When she spoke, it was obvious that Kurt heard her words as Oscar's. "Look at her, Kurt. What if she's sick? What if she's hurt? She's the one who needs you right now."

Jane gritted her teeth so hard that her jaw ached, promising herself that if Kurt hadn't had to kill Ivy to escape, she'd track the bitch down and do it herself.

"Please, make it stop."Her strong, proud, brave husband begged for mercy like a broken child, and Jane swiped a tear from her eye, fighting a sob.

I will hunt her down, and I will blow her goddamn head off.

"She's just a little girl," Ivy said gently. "If you give up the team…they'll let her go."

He looked down at his lap again, and screamed, "No! You're not here, and neither is she!" His voice fractured on the last word, and he sobbed, tears running down his face.

"No," Ivy said, and Kurt looked up, obviously seeing her for who she was, now. "But you did just tell me your team's in a bunker. That's new information for us. And I did just make you cry."

Jane let out a shaky breath as Kurt lowered his head in defeat, realising he'd screwed up. Sobs shook his shoulders.

Shooting her is too good for her. Focusing on her anger to conquer her anguish, Jane clenched the hand that wasn't holding the tablet into a fist. I'll tear her limb from limb with my bare hands.

"You and I are just getting started," Ivy said smugly, and left the room again, leaving Kurt alone with his guilt and pain.

The next couple of minutes were hard for Jane to watch, but she didn't dare skip a second, in case she missed anything Kurt might have said. He continued to cry for a minute that seemed like an hour, and Jane hovered her finger over his image on the touch-screen, as though it would give him comfort. All it did, when she finally pressed her fingertip to the screen, was pause the video again.

Jane sighed, drying her eyes as she set the feed running once more. Kurt was only halfway to composing himself when he began to talk to someone else who wasn't there.

"Is this fun for you? Seeing me like this? Is this what you signed up for?"Who was it he was seeing this time? The same imaginary Dabbur Zann guard from before, the one he'd tried to ask for help?

It seemed as though he didn't expect an answer to his question, but looked up hopefully when he imagined one.

"Some family," he replied. "They're murderers."

Whatever the response was from his hallucination, it must have hit a nerve. "We're not the same. You know that."The calm he'd been struggling towards broke again, his voice shaking with barely contained emotion as he pleaded, "Help me get out of here. I can protect you, I promise."

Whatever the answer was, it made him lapse into hopeless silence, and he bowed his head, suffering alone in the empty factory. Gradually, his breath evened out and he composed himself, then began to struggle against the zip ties again, grimacing as he abraded the raw skin of his wrists even further.

"Don't give up, Kurt. You can do this." Maybe it was stupid, to be cheering on a video image of her husband when she knew he was already free and on his way back to her, but it gave Jane the strength to keep watching.

She glanced at the timer on the video, realising there was a whole hour left on it. As Kurt gave up the struggle, the drugs and the emotional turmoil clearly having exhausted him, she dared to fast forward the footage. Kurt sat and stared at nothing for a while, not surveying his surroundings for an exit strategy, not attempting to break his restraints. It was so unlike her determined, analytical husband that Jane began to worry that his mind might be broken beyond repair.

It's the drugs. Just the drugs. He can't focus, that's all.

After about twenty minutes, his head began to nod and he seemed to doze off, which must have been unacceptable to Ivy. Within five minutes she'd returned to the room, taunting him awake with fake concern. "You must be so tired. You want to tell me where they are."

Kurt struggled to wake up as she continued, "Yeah, I can feel it. I can see the name taking shape in your brain…forming inside your mouth."

Jane scowled at the screen. Ivy's interrogation style was different from Keaton's, but the smugness was a common thread in both. She recalled countless monologues just like this from her time at the black site, and it hurt her to have Kurt exposed to even a fraction of what she'd been through back then.

"You're running out of places to hide. Where are they, Kurt?"

Wearily, Kurt told her, "They're under the fort."

Oh, no… Jane's stomach turned over. Kurt was so desperate to keep himself from breaking that he'd brought his most traumatic memories to the surface, throwing them to the front of his mind like a shield.

'She's under the fort' had been part of his father's deathbed confession. Bill Weller had killed Taylor Shaw, and Jane was sickeningly certain that Bill would be the next person Kurt saw in his drug-muddled mind.

His attention tracked from one side of the room to the other, Ivy forgotten, and his weariness fell away as he shifted in the chair, looking behind him as best he could with his wrists still restrained.

When he spoke, his voice seemed younger, lighter, more innocent. "Dad?"

"Oh, Kurt," Jane whispered, heartbroken at what he'd gone through tonight. She'd guessed, but took no pleasure in being right.

Still looking behind him, still with that childlike air about him, Kurt asked, "Can Taylor come?"

Jane swallowed hard, watching his face drop from eagerness into confusion. "Why? Her dad's gone, and her mom is stuck at work all day. Half the time, she's on her own over there. Taylor needs us, Dad. We're all she's got. Shouldn't we help her, if we can?"

Despite the situation, Jane smiled sadly. That was her wonderful husband—always protective, always considerate of those in need. He'd started at an early age, and god knew where that had come from, because it sure as hell hadn't come from his parents. Maybe it had been Emma Shaw's influence.

"Why not? Give me one good reason why Taylor can't come with us."

His childlike expression grew uneasy, a little fearful, at his hallucination's response. "No. I don't believe you."There was a pleading, fragile note to his voice, and Jane could almost hear his inner ten-year-old's innocence being torn away, the same way Taylor had been torn from him.

Fuck you, Bill Weller. Wherever you are now, I hope you're suffering.

Kurt's gaze tracked the imaginary Bill around the room, nearer to the exit where Ivy leaned against the wall, quietly listening. His expression aged before her eyes, until he was the adult she knew so well. And he was furious, confrontational.

"I don't believe you!"he repeated, his tone matching his demeanour. "What really happened that night that Taylor disappeared? Where were you? You left that dinner party for three hours!"

He leaned forward in the chair, seeming heedless of the pain it must have caused his wrists. His arms tried to move in gestures to emphasise his words, even though he was securely tied. Did he even know he was still in the chair?

"I don't want the line you've fed everyone for twenty-five years! I want the truth!"

Twenty-five years. It would be closer to thirty, now. So in his mind, this conversation is taking place after I came out of the bag, back when he was starting to talk to his father again, but before he died.

Jane fought a wave of guilt. What she'd done to Kurt was reprehensible, and if she hadn't erased her memory before she'd first met him, she never would have been able to go through with it. Only the belief that she really was Taylor Shaw had kept her trying to fill the role of his dead childhood friend. She still struggled with her guilt that she'd planned to take advantage of his pain, before she'd even known him.

She would never do that again, not with anyone. Not for any reason. Even if it dropped incriminating evidence about Madeline into their laps.

She was better than that now. Kurt was the main reason she'd changed—and that just made her all the more ashamed of what she'd done. Nausea roiled through her gut.

I'm sorry, Kurt. I know it would always have hurt you, but it hurts more because of what I did. And now you're living it again.

"Why were your shoes muddy?" Kurt wasn't yelling anymore, his voice losing most of its force.

Jane winced. He was reliving a conversation he'd actually had. Kurt had told her, a few weeks after they'd stopped Phase Two, that he'd queried the state of his father's shoes the night of Taylor's murder, and that Bill's answer had been that he'd been planning to kill himself, that he'd walked into the river and then changed his mind.

"You thought that I was asleep. I saw you hosing them off that night, when you got home."

The hallucination of his father must not have given the same answer as he had the first time Kurt had had this conversation, because he grew even tenser than he had been, if that were possible. His voice was quiet and dangerous. "What?"

Whatever his mental image of Bill said in response, it was lengthy, and brutal enough to drain the confidence from Kurt. The anger fell from his face, and he leaned back in the chair, devastation written across his features. He muttered a denial, almost as a plea for Bill to stop talking, but whatever he was hearing his father say, it didn't stop.

"No!" he shouted, pure desperation in the word.

Jane struggled for composure as Kurt shifted as far back in the chair as he could get, becoming almost childlike again in his fear.

"Go away and leave us alone!"he yelled.

Us? Does he mean all of us, as in the team? Or does he mean…is he seeing Taylor now? Or Bethany again? Sarah? Sawyer?

He stared at the vision of his father for long moments, shaking his head a little at whatever he was hearing. As his own mind ripped into his convictions, drawing out the doubts beneath, he grew close to tears again.

As his chin dropped to his chest in defeated misery, Ivy watched intently, still keeping quiet for now. She knows Bill isn't done breaking him yet, Jane thought, focusing on Ivy only because the alternative was to break down and weep for Kurt.

After floundering for a few seconds, Kurt rallied. "No. I'm nothing like you." His voice was contemptuous now, and his confidence in himself grew with every word. "You killed an innocent little girl, because you're sick. You're weak. I've dedicated my life to stopping people like you."

Yes. Tell him what a good man you are, how many lives you've saved. How his terrible crime has motivated you to become the best version of yourself, so that you can hold your head up high and know that you're nothing like him. You're Kurt Weller, and he does not deserve a son as amazing as you are.

But her mental encouragement was useless. Whatever Bill's response was, it was already putting Kurt on the defensive again. "No. I stop bad people from doing bad things. It's not the same."

The righteous fury drained out of him at whatever he heard next, his gaze dropping a couple of feet, drifting to one side. Taylor. He must be seeing Taylor. Oh, Kurt, don't listen to him. He's already dead. You don't have to let him do this to you again.

Her heart pounded. Were the drugs going to make him hallucinate Taylor's murder, or what he feared had preceded it? Please, no. Anything but that.

But then Kurt's attention shifted again, and he gazed wildly all around him, craning his neck, as though surrounded by multiple hallucinations, not just one or two moving figures. What are you seeing, Kurt?

Whatever had come before, this was worse. Before, he'd been helplessly despairing as he'd begged for Ivy—Oscar—to make it stop. But this? This was adrenaline-fuelled, fearful agitation, close to panic. He was still trying to back away while tied to the chair, his breath shaking, tears in his eyes. Jane didn't think she'd ever seen him like this. He couldn't even seem to speak anymore.

Bill must still be there, in the hallucination, because he kept looking back to a spot in front of him. But he couldn't focus completely on him anymore. Whatever he thought was happening around him was tormenting him too much. He was losing more and more composure by the second, and the look on his face was more than just fear—it was shame. Shame, and pain, and the all-consuming need to get out of there.

Then, just as Jane thought he'd scream or begin to hyperventilate, his focus snapped to the same point near the door as it had the other couple of times, when he'd spoken to the invisible guard. He lunged forward in his seat as though grabbing for a lifeline, so jerkily that Jane was surprised the chair didn't overbalance.

"Hey. Hey. Hey!" he called desperately. His next words were a terrified plea for mercy, for human compassion. "Help me. Please…"

Jane choked back a sob, almost unable to bear seeing him this way. At least he's focusing on one person again, she tried to reassure herself. At least he's not chafing his wrists bloody anymore.

She blinked away tears as he began to lean back in the chair again, confusion seeping into his fear. "What?"

As though sensing now was the opportune time to strike, Ivy pushed off the wall and slowly began to approach Kurt, keeping quiet for now. He watched her, but he wasn't seeing her. Whatever the new hallucination was telling him, he was stunned, working towards some kind of revelation, one he didn't want to believe. Jane couldn't even begin to imagine.

Until he asked brokenly, "Bethany? Is that you?"

Why wouldn't he recognise his own daughter? Jane was missing something, but she was too worried about Kurt to figure it out.

Ivy stopped in front of her exhausted captive, gazing down at him. For a few moments, she waited, while Kurt stared up at her with despondent, guilty misery.

Then the ruthless bitch reached out to touch his face. "Where are they, Dad?"she asked.

Kurt opened his mouth, then closed it again. Hesitant, knowing something wasn't right, even if his mind was lost in his hallucination. Jane's scrambling mind finally pieced together what was happening. If Bethany was interrogating Kurt, that must mean it wasn't child Bethany he was seeing, but his daughter as an adult. Working with the Dabbur Zann.

No wonder he was looking at Ivy as though he'd failed her and would never forgive himself.

Ivy shifted her hand, gripping Kurt's face more firmly. "Just tell us where they are."

Don't do it, Kurt. Please. You are so strong. You can fight this.

Maybe the impossibility of having skipped forward in time, to Bethany's adulthood, was enough to disrupt the effects of the drug. Or maybe Ivy's touch was too out of sync with the way his hallucination was behaving. His expression sharpened with realisation.

"This isn't real," he said, as though convincing himself. Then anger asserted itself, and he yelled, "You're not real!"

Jane let out a relieved breath, not just because Kurt had broken out of his hallucination and avoided telling Ivy anything, but because anger would help him dispel the lingering fear and pain. He'd need all the anger he could get right now.

Ivy didn't loosen her grip. "It's over, Kurt. You don't have to fight anymore. Just tell me what I want to hear."

She released his face, and his head dropped as if it weighed too much for his neck to support. He took a couple of panting breaths, gathering himself. Then he looked up into her face. "You're right. It is over. Did you think I was just gonna give you the team?"

Ivy shifted uneasily.

Kurt's voice was slow, weary, but held a note of triumph. "We have protocols. One of us gets grabbed, and the rest just disappear. This whole time, you think you've been wearing me down, but I was just playing you out. Buying time. If you ever do find that bunker, you'll be raiding an empty shell."

Seeing the defiant smile growing on his face, Jane smiled too, love swelling in her chest. As Kurt dropped his head again, laughing softly, she let herself relax a little. You did it, Kurt. You played her out. You resisted. You won.

Tense and furious, Ivy began to walk away, then spun back to face him. "We will kill your daughter," she threatened evenly, all traces of smugness erased from her countenance. "Do you understand me? My people in St. Louis are just a phone call away—"

Jane grinned, realising he'd decided to use his slip about Bethany being in the hospital to find out what they really knew about her whereabouts, even as he'd been hallucinating. I love this man so, so much.

"You don't have her,"Kurt interjected, interrupting Ivy's tirade. "You didn't say 'hospital' until I did. And then when I said 'St. Louis', you said that right back to me, too. They're not there."

Ivy had grown very still, but Jane could imagine her mind racing to find a new option—a different pressure point to manipulate. She wouldn't be able to use Jane's injury, not now. The interrogation had started many hours after Jane had been shot, and his drug-fuelled nightmare had lasted another couple of hours. Since Kurt hadn't leapt to betray their location when he'd first seen the footage of her gunshot wound, he had to know that the team had found her medical help by now—or else she was dead, and giving away her location would do nothing to help her.

Without being able to threaten Bethany or Jane, and since FBI agents were trained to withstand physical torture, Ivy was out of options now the mind games had failed.

"You've lost. I'm useless to you. And as soon as Madeline Burke finds out that her team-hunter came up with exactly nothing, then you…are as dead as I am."

Ivy nodded to herself, fury written in every line of her body. Then she at last lost her temper, kicking Kurt hard in the chest and sending him toppling backwards onto the unforgiving concrete, chair and all.

Jane caught her breath, fearing that he'd hit his head, but as Ivy drew her weapon to snuff out his life, Kurt lashed out with his foot, knocking the gun out of her grip.

And the chair had splintered, freeing one of his hands.

Yes!

Afraid to breathe, she watched him get to his feet, swinging the chair around at the recovering Ivy and snapping the other zip-tie in the process. It knocked her out cold, and Kurt lunged for her gun, then stumbled into a shooting stance, aiming at her sprawled, unconscious body.

Jane wouldn't have blamed him if he'd shot every bullet into her, until the magazine clicked empty. Defenceless though she was at that moment, Ivy was still a major threat to the whole team—maybe even to Bethany—and losing her would be a setback for Madeline.

But Kurt was Kurt. He would no more kill an unconscious opponent than Jane would—she'd never stooped that low, even at her most despicable—and after a few seconds of battling his conscience, he stumbled back, clearly dizzy and in pain.

Jane wished she'd been there, to wrap her arm around his waist and let him lean on her as she got him the hell out of there. Hopefully, Tasha had done that for him when she'd tracked him down.

Recovering from the spell of dizziness, Kurt stooped to grab Ivy's phone, then looked around the room for anything else that would be useful, his eyes alighting on the camera.

His steps a little uncoordinated, he crossed the room, his eyes seeming to meet hers as he looked up into the lens. The last couple of seconds of the footage showed his determined expression, before he leapt up and grabbed the camera from whatever had been supporting it.

That was the last of the footage.

Jane let out a huge sigh of relief, dropping the tablet onto the blanket beside her. For a moment, she just let herself wallow in gratitude that he'd managed to escape unharmed. It was one thing to hear it from Patterson, but it had taken watching the whole video for her to really believe it—and even now, she couldn't relax completely until he was back home with her.

The pain in her bullet-torn abdomen encroached on her consciousness again, now that she could stop worrying about Kurt. She groaned and looked over at her cell phone, which someone had put on the floor beside the bed, somewhere between her collapse before the surgery and her transfer to the bunkroom.

The battery was probably dead, even if she could endure the trial of leaning over the side of the bed to grab the phone. But she wasn't sure if she could yell loud enough to attract Patterson's attention, either.

"Guys?" she called, her voice emerging pathetic and weak. Grimacing, she cleared her throat and tried again. "Patterson? Rich?"

Rich skidded into the doorway a couple of seconds later. "What's up? You okay? You're not bleeding, are you?"

"No," Jane reassured him quickly—then realised she had no idea if that was actually true. "At least, not that I've noticed. Uh, I finished watching Kurt's interrogation. We don't need to move just yet."

Rich grinned. "Ha! Suck it, Ivy!" He leaned out of the door. "Hey, Pattycakes, we're safe!"

"Oh, thank god," Patterson called back, and a moment later joined them in the bunkroom. Her relief faded when she saw Jane. "Why do I think this 'we're safe' comes with a 'but'?" she asked, her brow creasing.

"It's not that bad. Really. Kurt didn't give Ivy a specific location…but he did slip up and say 'bunker'. That narrows down their search parameters a lot, but…"

"But there are at least eight hundred bunkers in the vicinity of Prague alone, and they know we've been in Germany, Finland and France since we left Iceland, so we could be anywhere in Europe, for all they know. And of all the bunkers in Prague, this one is the most well-hidden. I don't think we need to panic unless we get new information about their search radius." Patterson let out a long sigh, leaning back against the wall.

"Okay, so, from one crisis to another—Jane, do you need painkillers? Food? Water?" Rich gave her an expectant look.

"I could use help getting to the bathroom," Jane confessed, "and then I'll drink a little water and pass out for a few more hours, if you don't need anything else. I'm hurting, but I'm so exhausted, I don't think I'll even need the meds. Save them for the next emergency."

"I'd offer to escort you to the bathroom, but…"

"No offence, Rich, but I'd rather make this a girls' trip. You could help me up, though?"

The ordeal that followed was painful and draining, but mercifully brief. After Patterson replaced the dressing after checking on the sutures, Jane handed back the tablet. "Here. Nothing seemed to change during the actual interrogation, but I noticed Ivy had her phone out just before they wheeled Kurt in. Maybe you can read the screen or something if you enhance it?"

"Sure, I'll take a look." Patterson hesitated. "How bad were the hallucinations? Is he gonna be okay?"

Jane shook her head. "Pretty bad. The drugs pulled all the fear out of the corners of his mind. He saw his dad. My ex. Imagined Bethany growing up as a terrorist. I don't even know what he was looking at, at one point—just that it freaked him out worse than I've ever seen him."

Patterson squeezed her hand, concern and sympathy for both Wellers plain on her face. "Are you okay? That must have been hard to watch."

"I'll be better when he's home safe." Fighting exhaustion that even overwhelmed the pain, Jane blinked slowly. "Wake me up when Kurt gets home?"

Patterson smiled. "I'll do you one better. I'll get him to wake you himself."

"Thanks," she mumbled, and lost her grip on consciousness.

They'd crossed the border from Germany back into the Czech Republic with no issues, but Zapata was still jumpy. They still had an hour or more to go until they were back in Prague, and under their usual protocols, they would have travelled separately, but Kurt had been too far gone for that earlier. It had taken them until about twenty minutes into the train journey for him to stop staring at her like he was worried she was going to morph into Ivy.

God, that was a close call. If he'd shot me…

She rested her hand on her abdomen, refusing to carry on with that thought.

It was almost dawn, and she was hiding her face behind yesterday's newspaper, keeping a wary lookout in case someone from the Dabbur Zann had managed to tail them onto the train. Unlikely, but not impossible.

In between glances toward the vestibule at end of the train carriage—Kurt was sitting opposite her, and keeping an eye on the other one, behind her—she attempted to figure out the subjects of each newspaper article. She didn't know enough Czech to interpret much. Kurt spoke better Czech than she did—it was closely related to Polish, which he was semi-fluent in because he had family from Poland.

She glanced over at Kurt, finding him watching her from under the baseball cap she'd brought with her, knowing he could use a disguise. She had a floppy hat she never would have worn if she hadn't needed to hide.

"How're you feeling?" she asked quietly.

"Clearer. Tired as hell, but less…out of it." His expression was serious. "Are you sure Jane's okay?"

Tasha smiled a little. "For now, Jane is fine. We're gonna have to make sure she takes antibiotics, and watch her in case we missed any internal damage, but Patterson got the bullet out and we sewed her up."

"Is there anything Patterson can't do?" Kurt asked, shaking his head incredulously.

"She would have been lost without Jane talking her through it."

Kurt stared at her. "Jane was conscious?"

"Yeah, watching with a mirror. She told Patterson where to cut, how to get the bullet out… Didn't pass out until it was time to stitch her up." Remembering it, Tasha shuddered. "I don't think I could have kept as calm as she was."

Fear and pride warred in his eyes. "What about blood? She must have lost a lot. Did you donate some of yours?"

"No."

She could tell him about the pregnancy, but she still didn't know how she felt about it. She needed time. She'd told Rich because she'd needed to tell someone, and he'd gotten her the test. Patterson and Jane only knew because of Rich's big mouth—though admittedly, he'd stopped her from endangering the baby, so she couldn't be too mad at him.

And Kurt would find out soon enough. She'd take a few more hours of relative normality before she had the whole team flitting around her like mother hens, looking like they wanted to encase her in bubble wrap.

"Rich knows a guy who can get blood on short notice, apparently. He was gone over an hour, but he came through."

Kurt nodded, his surprise lasting a split second before relief took over. "Guess I owe him one."

Tasha couldn't help but snicker. "He'd take payment in hugs, if you're short on cash. Probably more than hugs, too."

He groaned. "Just…don't go there. Bad enough that Jane and I have to sleep in the same room as him, without thinking about that."

Quiet fell for a few moments, and Tasha re-assessed their surroundings. No one new in the carriage since she'd gotten distracted by the conversation.

"In case I didn't say this before, when I was out of it… I'm sorry. For holding you at gunpoint." Kurt's voice was wry, but the apology was sincere.

She snorted, hiding the quiver of anxiety she felt behind amusement. "I could have taken you."

He lifted an eyebrow, though the gesture was more feigned than genuine. "Yeah? Ivy thought that, too."

"Do you wanna talk about it?" she asked, though she didn't expect he would.

He sighed. "Yes and no. You ever been interrogated on hallucinogens and truth serum?"

"No." A little ashamed, she added, "But I have been in the room for similar interrogations, with the CIA."

Kurt nodded, his expression carefully blank. She knew he was judging her, but she couldn't blame him. She knew he disapproved of the CIA's black sites, and their particular brand of interrogation. Even Tasha had to admit enhanced interrogations were fifty-fifty when it came to getting actionable intel.

Reade would be judging her too, if he were here. Since her deep cover op with Madeline, she had to admit to herself that she'd been crossing lines she'd never thought she would ever since she'd joined the CIA. When she'd rejoined the FBI, she'd resolved to be a better person—until everything had gone to hell.

"I know it can get…scary, for the people under the influence," she admitted.

He shifted uncomfortably, rubbing the back of his hand, where the IV line had been inserted. "That's one way to put it."

She didn't want to push, but he'd said 'yes and no' when asked if he wanted to talk about it. "You said you thought you were losing your mind."

A statement, not a question. Kurt could choose what to do with it.

"You ever have thoughts that you don't acknowledge for more than a second? That you push down because you just can't handle what's behind them?"

Uneasily, she nodded, a few of her own attempting to surface. She'd grown used to ignoring them, and it was easy enough to do that when she was still on alert for potential Dabbur Zann attackers.

"I needed something to distract my brain with, so I wouldn't think about the information Ivy was asking me for. So I pulled those thoughts out and let them take over." His expression was bleak. "And I still think I might have broken."

"Jesus, Kurt." Tasha let out her breath slowly, imagining the hell he must have been through. He had more demons than most people, many of them stemming from his father's murder of his childhood friend. "No wonder you were a mess."

He looked over at her, asking something she never thought she'd hear from him. "Are we on the right side of this? The things we've done, since we left the States…" He shook his head. "Sometimes, I don't know."

"The other side is Madeline's, so I'm pretty sure we're the good guys." Her voice was a little snappier than she meant it to be, but seriously? Was he comparing them to Madeline?

"I know we're not on that level. But there's a spectrum of good and bad. I don't know where we are on it anymore."

Now, that feeling, she was familiar with. "Of all of us, Kurt? I think you have the least to worry about."

"I cut a guy's hand off, Tasha."

Their conversation was low enough that it wouldn't reach the other two passengers in the carriage, but Tasha still kicked him under the table that separated their seats. "This isn't the best conversation to be having in public."

Maybe there were still enough drugs in his system to have lowered his inhibitions, because he looked as though he'd only just realised what he was saying. Self-recrimination in his eyes, he shook his head. "Right."

Fifteen minutes passed in not quite comfortable silence, until Tasha's phone vibrated. She glanced at it, and let out a breath. "If we can get the rest of the way back to the bunker without attracting attention, I think we're good."

Kurt took the phone from her, reading Patterson's text message. "Shit. I knew there was something."

He'd told Ivy they were hiding in a bunker, but not where. She understood Kurt's anger at himself, but as Patterson had pointed out, it wasn't a huge slip. Not when there were so many bunkers in Europe. "They need more to go on before they can find us. Way more than just 'bunker'."

"Still too much. Damn it," he muttered under his breath, staring out of the window.

"Hey," Tasha said sharply. "I've seen people spill every detail of their lives under those drugs, right from their earliest childhood memories. I'm impressed you even got out of there on your own, let alone that you're coherent right now. You did so much better than you think you did."

"But not good enough." His jaw was taut.

Tasha rolled her eyes. Kurt would never allow himself to be less than perfect without beating himself up over it. "Give yourself a little credit. You could have thrown us all to the wolves to try and save yourself. You didn't."

"I wanted to," he said, so quietly that she almost thought she'd imagined it. "Just to make it stop."

"But you didn't. Because you're a stubborn bastard, and we're your family." She took his hand for a moment, squeezed it in reassurance. "And we owe you for everything you put yourself through to hold out against Ivy. Don't think we'll forget that."

He shrugged, still looking unconvinced.

"Maybe Jane will be able to talk some sense into you."

If he wouldn't listen to the truth, maybe she could at least stop him from obsessing over his perceived failure. She released his hand, but not before squeezing it one more time. "Now, come on. You speak more Czech than I do. Help me translate this article—it's been driving me nuts."

If she had to, she was even prepared to tell him she was pregnant with Reade's baby—but Kurt took the paper from her, saving her the discomfort for now. He seemed glad of the distraction, and Tasha hoped like hell that Jane could soothe his mind where she'd failed.

She really wasn't good with this emotional stuff.

Bringing up a kid is gonna go great…

But that was one of those thoughts Kurt had mentioned. The ones she was too scared to let herself think about.

END