Disclaimer: I don't own anything of the blacklist.

So Thursday was nuts. SPOILERS for the new episode of you haven't seen it but honestly, the news is everywhere so...but yeah that episode still has my feelings in a puddle on the floor, so I this me working that out haha

this fic is inspired by "All I Want" by Kodaline, so I suggest y'all listen to that. It's amazing. Also, "Pray" by Kodaline. Ugh. I think I'm just adding to my own angst here hope you guys enjoy!

Cradling the last remaining link to her, smiling, cherishing the moments before an inevitable, inner battle. Take her and go. Like before. That choice that seemed a lot more difficult after he'd made it. A different kind of fire raging. A different mother and child. I don't want that for her. There is a kind of breathlessness in relinquishing Agnes back to Tom. For a moment, gut clenched in nauseous desolation for the memory of letting go, his arms tighten a little when the soft,

"Can I have her back now?" Comes out of the man's mouth. It brings him to Kate telling him to leave, to him inhaling the smell of her one more time, to kissing her hands, her palm, to feeling the warmth of her as long as he can manage it. The police are here. Giving Agnes back, when her slight weight feels infinitely right in his arms, is like he's tearing a part of himself off; a callous, visceral sensation that leaves him scrambling for a place to moor himself in this intrepid storm of loss. Tom is looking at him, wary and on edge, vacillating between the distrust that still sits between them and this tentative connection they share: the daughter of the woman they loved.

"I know you probably want to get away from all of this," From me. From the situation I put you in. From the danger I brought down upon Lizzie and Agnes. From all of it. "But, please let me help you protect Agnes." His voice is like nails in his throat, a temptation to remove Tom from the equation sitting on the edge of his mind, that he can do better this time around. All the selfish desires and ideas of a man raw from ultimate failure.

"The threat's not over."

"No."

A small, quiet reckoning infiltrates the tiny surgical room where Lizzie had been alive and breathing. The place where he'd last seen her eyes and heard her voice and felt the strength in her hand. It's exhausting and, like a blind man holding a wilted flower for ignorance of its decay, he cannot bring himself to suggest they part with this space that had kept her, well and warm, for a time.

In their heavy silence, secure in this sanctuary, it's the noises of Lizzie's daughter that bring their temporary peace crashing down again. Red looks at Agnes's little face as she fusses, a tiny cry that sets his nerves on edge; distress forming in his chest again. She squirms in Tom's arms, and the younger man looks at Red with tears in his eyes again, the men knowing they can't give her who she wants.

All I want is nothing more

Than to hear you knocking at my door

'Cause if I could see your face once more

I could die a happy man I'm sure

That night is fraught with restless grief, a sense of loss so enormous the globe could not encompass it.

He came in with the emptiness of his life. Gruff and all sharp edges. Leave me alone. It's a message riddled in every contour of his face, in his bloodshot eyes, in the disheveled mess of his appearance. An argument with Tom, a discussion with Nick, the inevitable descent into a grief so deep he lost all semblance of where the lines were drawn; blew in like a tornado and left a wreckage in his wake.

A grieving heart knows little in the ways of prudence. Too much sleep. Not enough sleep. Too much alcohol. None at all. Eat too much. Skip meals for tea and random snacks Dembe makes him eat because there's a stone in his stomach and nausea seems to be that stone's best friend. Shower or don't, like it'll make moving on seem a fool's paradise, to wake him and keep sleep at bay for one day more.

There was nothing for him to do as he fought off sleep as though it were Death itself. Somewhere in his chest, a demon was digging a torturous hole and every sip of scotch that burned his throat wouldn't take away the ache. Nothing would fill it, save those brief moments when Agnes would come to mind, and then it was a tug-o-war with repeating past mistakes and leaving them for someone else to bear.

Let someone else eat up the sins of Tom Keen. Let them go. Let them be. Let Lizzie...let Lizzie what? Let her memory rest in what ever plan Tom had formulated? A risk, even with all the nonnegotiables Tom had tried to set during their last conversation. The same mistakes. The same regrets. He was confident, even if he assisted in Agnes's life, that nothing could fill that hole in him; burned away with an acidic and awful truth.

Without the strength to do much else, he'd sat up in this chair all night and obsessed over details of reality where all it boiled down to was that he didn't try hard enough. Don't go, Lizzie. Louder. He should have been louder. He should have removed her from that church immediately. He could have had a team take her out the back, a side door, blown the place apart to get her and the baby someplace safe.

Please. Please, don't go. If he'd asked her when she was awake. If he'd listened to her months ago. If he'd told her the truth. If he had, just once, made the effort to level with her instead of running with the idea that she'd be safer in the dark. His light...kept in the dark, an endless night he now waded through without hope of ever seeing the sun rise again.

The middle of the night finds him in weak moments of rushing to the bathroom. Where it's just the echo of Nick calling her time of death. Where that awful, dropping silence resounds from the ambulance, when her body had grown so horribly still, and into the room where he sits. It's sounds of retching until his hands are shaking and his under shirt is soaked through with sweat.

It's passing out and waking with a start for the remnants of a nightmare whose entire meaning is just out of reach like an itch he can't scratch or traffic he knows will start crawling again but he's not sure he can take this speed for much longer without going insane and maybe he should just exit the freeway...and then there's water and boats and thoughts of drowning, flames and screams, ghosts with eyes that he remembers peering at him, ready to devour him with all their truths and secrets and blood and bullets and murder.

When you said your last goodbye

I died a little bit inside

I lay in tears in bed all night

Alone without you by my side

His body is a pile of rubble in this chair. Staring into nothing for hours. Sound, the light of dawn edging in through the window behind him, the kiss of sunlight against the back of his head is meaningless. He closes his eyes for a moment, unwilling to see the shadow cast out in front of him. The first night without her has passed him by in an agony that feels as though it lasted a week.

"Raymond." His eyes focus on the bag Dembe has dropped at his feet. He looks up, a feeble tilt of his head back against the chair, and sees the glass of water in his friend's hand. He takes it, not sure if he should be worried by the steadiness of his hands or grateful, and accepts the aspirin with a quiet thank you. The emptiness of his stomach and the gulp of water nearly collide in a violent way, but it settles after another sip or two.

Off in the shadows that still hug the interior doors of the room, Kate's slight figure wavers and then steps further into this odd sanctuary. Red's attention falls to her with a steeled expression, recalling her quiet reassurances in a different place, at a different time, when he'd failed her team with the same deftness that he'd failed Elizabeth. You won't lose her. Look how wrong they were.

"You're going to go clear your head, Raymond." He swallows thickly and realizes that the sound of his name is suddenly an irritant to him as the sunlight gets brighter and warmer and more oppressive. Raymond, I do love... "Everything has been taken care of. Our people are taking ever measure to do as you asked." Elizabeth's funeral. The burial plot he'd...a long time ago. A long, long time ago. He just never thought that he'd outlive her use of it. "But until then..."He looks away from her and to Dembe. Go. Clear your head. Stop this before it stops you.

But If you loved me

Why'd you leave me?

Take my body

Take my body

All I want is

And all I need is

To find somebody

I'll find somebody like you

So he does.

He goes to a place where all of his ghosts seem to reside. Any given day, they remain there, and he, having done so before, abides in grief.

Fate unfolds around him by way of a woman that has commandeered this sacred place for her own standoff. Tides pull him into the fray again, a battle that isn't his. The irony twists and ravages him deep where there is barely anything left to ravage. He tells her of his mistakes. The story of how he became this...thing.

There is nothing to try and mend when it, it seems, whatever it is, was broken long ago. A memory he never entirely grappled with. A chapter in life that never had any closure. Staring out at the sea, he's aware that he isn't altogether there. That pieces of him don't connect, and chunks of minutes go missing without his permission. He plays the piano, a cathartic gesture that only serves to exhaust him; a marathon of emotion he'll never stop running. When the music stops, the notes coming to a final end, he abandons the instrument, feeling for all the world as though it has mangled him somehow.

The sweet, sad notes, which, after a time, when the sun begins to set and the air becomes crisp, begin to play on their own draw him back into the room. A different melody; a swelling verse of inner determination and the falling baritone of dread, of war yet to come. It's her, this coincidence that enlisted his help, playing. This stranger, this woman, stares at him sometimes, seems afraid of him during others, and he only catches her staring off on her own the once before, true to the form of his life, everything goes to hell.

But this time, he doesn't fail entirely.

So you brought out the best of me

A part of me I've never seen

You took my soul and wiped it clean

Our love was made for movie screens

Kate said it had been a beautiful ceremony. That Aram had quoted him at the graveside. He's standing there, now, the fresh sent of soil cloying the air. Before it, before the immovable name fate has set in stone, he feels as though he has crumbled into the rubble he'd told Aram that he'd found himself reduced to, and wonders if anything can become of the toppled when the basis of living, that brick and mortar, has been yanked away so permanently. What he wouldn't give to see her again. How life loses all meaning when my heart is gone from it.

"Agnes won't suffer my presence in her life." He knows his voice is thick, knows the unsteadiness of its tone, can feel it waver with the slight wobble of his chin. "I promise you, Lizzie."

It's a rigid, callous determination he feels when he walks away from her grave. He should have never come into her life. And now, he would make sure he didn't with Agnes. Mr. Kaplan had somehow gotten through to Tom in a way he never would have been able to, working her magic to give the baby up for adoption. Tom was hell bent on going after Solomon, to seek revenge upon the man that stopped Liz's convoy and, ultimately, her life. The news of a family vetted by Kate, unknown to Red upon his request, finally came to him, and he accepted it with just a silent, regretful nod. He doesn't say goodbye to her, that same sensation from the day of Elizabeth's death creeping back into his limbs. To say goodbye to the last piece of Lizzie would undo what ever was left whole within him.

An old nemesis comes back into the picture and Red forgets the good that Elizabeth brought into his life. He's been let loose in ways he didn't think himself possible. Piece after piece of himself is wiped away, body after body felled in this new stage of battle; a siege that he can't see an end to. Tom gets sucked into a life away from the war he'd tried to get Lizzie to see the magnitude of, away from everyone, away from Agnes, away from...him. A woman, a spy, Tom called her Scottie, and Red had gotten wind of her, sent Cooper and the team after her while he continued to deal with Alexander.

It's going on two months since they buried her, and one sleepless night too many finds Red forcibly seated in a chair by Dembe, who looks from him to the cut on his cheek, to the blood seeping through the slashed material on his left arm. He wasn't quick enough. A misstep and his attacker's swipe had gotten his bicep, his face, until Red had been able to overpower the man by sheer force. Truth was, with the adrenaline pumping through him, the ache in his arm, the stinging of the cut on his face, this was the most alive he'd felt since-

"You can't go on like this, Raymond." It's a conversation Red's been dodging for a week now. His reaction time is slower. His sleep patterns worse than ever. He hasn't been eating much. Focused, so focused, on fighting and doing nothing else until fate decided that his number was up.

"I know." Quiet and honest, though he thinks that might be the point. He can't do this much longer. At what time would his ragged body give up and beg of him, no more? Did he have to force that moment? Would it even come with his knowing? He'd always been so prepared for his own death, embracing it with a whisper of her name, his last good thing, and then surrender. But her death...his folly...

"Kate is nearly here." At some point, Dembe had stitched his arm up without him giving much notice to his friend's doctoring, and barely nods at Kate's imminent arrival. She'd swoop in like she always did, fuss over him in her way, the chilliness having vanished between them a week prior, and she'd get him to function again. But, until then, he'd drift into thoughts of Elizabeth, picturing her that day in the theater they'd been hiding out in.

Swaying with the dress clutched to her, reciting her fantasy. He'd place her there, Agnes in her arms, in the park, on the beach, in the family room of her apartment...smiling, laughing, getting mad at him, frustrated again and again. Mundane images that cut through him with beautiful precision.

There's a distant knock at the door, and he's drawn out of his thoughts enough to notice that Dembe hesitates, that his brother looks over to him once before he leaves to answer the door. It's then that Red hangs his head a little, sucking in a breath to armor himself against more care and more compassion. He is so tired of everything. He thought he could do it, for a time, that this exhaustion of the heart would leave him like it did before, but it hasn't.

And he doesn't think he can grieve that long again. Doesn't know if he's strong enough for another round. If only these people would let him ruin himself...the pain wouldn't have lasted this long. The sorrow wouldn't be far from ending. He hears Kate's voice calling to him as he stands, stiffly, his left hand disappearing into his pocket so he doesn't have to put much effort into moving the injured arm. Dembe must have given him a local, or he's already so burned out that pain is a distant fog registered in the deep recesses of his mind.

He turns and his stomach drops, his heart suddenly in his throat. Kate is standing in the hall just off the foyer with an expression that he's seen a few dozen times before. Namely, when she'd relayed Josephine's prognosis to him. When she'd told him that Newton's family hadn't taken the news well. It was the face she'd greeted him with when Marcus's men shot and killed her cleaning crew. He takes in a sharp breath.

"What is it?" There's a slight shake of his head, a numbness in his brain for any more tragedy. Cooper's team? Baz? Mr. Kaplan remains by the edge of the wall for a moment before she steps into the room and regards him with tears gathering in her eyes.

"Raymond," Bite the bullet. What ever was coming, it couldn't possibly be good. Not with this slow, choking pace. "When my girls were killed and Marcus's men spared me, I knew our paths had diverged. We didn't have the deal with the devils we once did. I was no longer untouchable." Red means to take a step forward, but his legs won't budge, won't move as he bids, and so he simple grips the back of the chair he'd been sitting on with his right hand; a crutch, a thing to prop him up.

"Dembe wasn't untouchable, his daughter, his granddaughter-" He feels that punching effect he'd felt when she'd blamed him, outright, for Lizzie's predicament during her labor, and before Kate can get another word out, he cuts her off with a sharp,

"Spare me the guilt trip, Kate. I'm doing the best-"

"That is not the point, Raymond, and you know it." His mouth is open slightly, a mixture of frustration and hurt crossing his face. Chest heaving, he indicated for her to continue and contemplates sitting back down in the chair. "I've put my own security measures in place because I won't be fooled again, and those security measures were an enormous risk, but I need you to remember the moments I just spoke of." You had us all fooled.

"I remember every failure on my part, every betrayal, every sacrifice, every death. I'm well aware that it's all on me." His heart feels as though it will beat out of his chest. He can't believe he has to tell her this, not when she'd so explicitly stayed with him countless times before and told him what he'd needed to get through the night, the day, the week. When Carla had been abducted, when Lizzie had started to resist all forms of help after she'd gotten pregnant, when she'd been beaten half to death on a parking lot by some low life.

"Okay," is all she says in reply before she looks down the hall where he can't see and gives a small, reassuring nod.

But If you loved me

Why'd you leave me?

Take my body

Take my body

All I want is

And all I need is

To find somebody

I'll find somebody

He's closed his eyes against the image of her, clenched his jaw, and bid the ache in the back of his throat away. Light and floating, a weightlessness that accompanies the roaring in his ears, makes him grip the back the chair harder. Something sturdy to hold onto when she'd appeared around the corner of the wall. Something real. Something to ground him. He swallows around the rage, the disbelief, the undeniable gratefulness deep inside of him that bubbles up as if to choke him.

Moments pass with the quiet anticipation of familiar footsteps.

The cool touch of her hand against his cheek, the gentle brush of her thumb over the cut there. Mirrored against the limp and lifeless clutching he'd done in the back of that van, her strength is real when he turns his face, just slightly, into her palm.

Inhale.

Exhale a ragged sound from the back of his throat.

"Raymond?" His eyes are full of her own; blue and depth-less and shining. He extracts his hand from his pocket, thankful, that Dembe had seen to his injury before this moment, and brings it up to cup the back of her hand so he might press it to his face just a little harder; lips reaching to kiss her alive and awake as he did when he thought her dead and gone forever. This last goodbye, our first hello. His other hand has relinquished its hold on the chair, that death grip from before no longer enough to hold him up. He needs her. He needs to hold her. And in a swift motion, an echo of the moment of hesitation outside the courthouse after she'd been released, they crash into each other.

Amid I'm sorry's and the sound of her name from the back of his throat, those choking sounds of relief and soul-binding joy, he has gathered her into himself with all the fierce gentleness of his love. She clings to him in much the same way; arms wrapped around and holding tight. ...Don't go. Please, don't go. It's quieter than most, this moment of theirs, and he absorbs everything about her all over again. He turns his face into her hair, burying it in the nape of her neck, and inhales around shaking breaths of a world made right.

She pulls away from him, and he obliges her with a resolve blossoming within him. Words jumble together and he marvels at her; drawing up a hand to replace the hair that's fallen into her face back behind her ear. There is nothing about her that he has forgotten. Every detail. Every slight facial movement. The way her eyes crinkle when she smiles. How she tries to hold back her tears with a brave face. Compelled to beg forgiveness, compelled towards some undying action to seal them together, feeling as though he is floating, a sort of blissful shock setting in, he grasps at small words with larger, more profound, promises.

"Lizzie, I'm-" She shakes her head and he can feel his brow furrow; her expression effectively cutting him off. She brings her hands up to his face, runs a thumb over his bottom lip, a serious, almost sorrowful look on her face, studying the way he frowns, before she meets his eyes again as if to say, what have you done to yourself?

And it isn't a moment later that she's leaning towards him to place a soft kiss on his lips.

If you loved me

Why'd you leave me?

Take my body

Take my body

All I want is

All I need is

To find somebody

I'll find somebody like you

welp there it is. I may proof read it a bit more because I'm writing this on my phone while waiting for Record Sale Day to start haha let me know what you all think! And, seriously, listen to Kodaline. They rock.