A/N: This is DARK. There is angst and torture. There will eventually be fluff and smut, but we are a LONG ways away from that point. This is a multi-chapter Lizzington fic set post S2 finale. Please let me know what you think!
Disclaimed as always. I own nothing and make no money.
Chapter 1
Elizabeth Reddington had been deceased for three months now. Her headstone, a beautiful sculpture of an angel reaching seven feet high, bore testament to the depth of love her husband felt for her.
At first, his visits were two and three times daily, then weekly.
This visit would mark the first time he had been to visit his beloved in two and a half weeks.
"I'm sorry I haven't been to visit lately. I've had…business to take care of." Red's business consisted of hunting down her killers.
His guilt over her death haunted him every single second of the day, in between chasing leads and butting his head against the myriad of dead ends he'd encountered. He drank himself into a stupor every single evening, unable to bear living with her ghost.
Her presence was everywhere. From the dishtowels that had silly crabs on them that she'd insisted upon because they reminded her of their first time together, how a crab chased after her across the beach and she'd run screaming into his arms. To the cheery yellow she charmed Dembe into painting their spare bedroom because she'd sneakily been planning on using it for a nursery.
She'd never told Red that she'd wanted to try having a baby, but he knew her better than he knew himself. She couldn't hide her longing sighs whenever they passed a baby.
But all of those dreams were gone, mist in the night, fated to disappear in the dawn.
She had been taken from him, and she had suffered.
She flew ahead to their island only because he had a meeting to attend that he wanted her to have nothing to do with.
When the helicopter was gunned down, she was only identifiable by her wedding bands, her body so charred that her bones crumbled to dust when they attempted to recover her body.
How she must have suffered in that fire.
His own scars ached whenever he thought of the pain she must have felt.
The hot tears that tracked down his face were so common lately that Dembe just put his arm around him and told him to let him know when he needed to get sick.
"Raymond, we will find out who is responsible and we will kill them all." Dembe's words were angry, his body vibrated with fury. Dembe loved Elizabeth like a sibling. Whenever Red had to leave town, he knew that Dembe worried over her just as much as he did.
He mourned for Dembe who had known too much loss in his life.
Red wished that he could feel angry. But all he felt was broken. As if he had a gaping wound in his chest that just wouldn't heal, his breath constantly sucked out through the hole. The pain still caused him to gasp for breath over three months later.
But he knows that is exactly how one feels after having their heart ripped out of their chest.
He knew that whatever fates existed in the universe were making him pay for every single misdeed he'd ever committed. To lose his reason for existing, not once, but twice in his lifetime was a mark upon his soul.
When he finally found the bastards responsible he would finally be able to put his soul to rest. He didn't presume that he'd ever be allowed to remain with her in whatever afterlife did or did not exist, but hope was a plague, tainting him with the knowledge that any hope of being with his love was no longer in this life, but the next.
Dembe drove him back to their home from where her grave sat looking over a cliff at the ocean's edge.
She loved this island and he couldn't quite bring himself to leave it, no matter the danger it put him in. To hell with his adversaries, the cabal. They could go fuck themselves.
He made his way into the library where a plentiful supply of liquor was always stocked. More so now that he needed to drink to keep the demons at bay.
He sat down unceremoniously in an overstuffed leather chair, his ever present bottle of scotch in his hand when he noticed a large manila envelope in the coffee table in front of him.
He may be an absolute drunkard most of the time, but he knew that the envelope hadn't been there when they left.
His hands shook as he picked it up. So much that he dropped it to the floor. The contents spilled out onto the carpet.
He scrambled down on his knees to get a closer look, cursing the fact that he broke his reading glasses in a rage weeks ago.
Topographical maps, flight plans, US government documents and more were spread out in front of him.
However, it was the one, lone picture as the very back that made him sob.
"Dembe!"
Tbc…
A/N: Let me know what you think!